If there is one thing missing from Crazy Machines 3, it's heart. While this sounds like an inexcusable oversight on the part of creators FAKT Software, heart is not necessarily needed in a game that's all about building intricate machinery. This is a piece of software, a tool, not your new best friend. Featuring 80 pre-made levels and extensive Steam Workshop support, Crazy Machines 3 could be every tinkerer's dream come true.

The basic concept really isn't new, as the series' first part was released 12 years ago and harkens back to the glorious Incredible Machine series of Rube Goldberg style puzzles. Completing weird contraptions in order to solve silly tasks - put the ball through the ring, power up the machine, stuff like that - is the order of the day. The existing levels are sadly arranged in a rather specific way and don't allow for your own creativity to shine. There are fixed ways of solving each level, and bringing all the pieces into position can be somewhat fiddly to the point of being slightly rage inducing. Arranging gears in particular is a nightmare.
This is compounded by the fact that you cannot speed up time when setting the machine in motion, which means that you'll spend quite some time just watching the events unfold until finally realizing that you should have moved one domino a bunch of pixels to the left at the very end. With some of the contraptions taking 20 seconds to complete, this is trying your patience. In other words: most of you...