Fantastic Contraption is a new challenging puzzle game on PlayStation VR. Is it worth your time and money? Read our Fantastic Contraption review to find out!
The aim of the game, which by the way includes 40+ different challenging levels, is to get a blob of gel back home to a bigger block of gel. Sounds simple, right? Looking across all platforms, the most popular games that have good longevity are those that involve users being imaginative and creative with things they can build and the puzzles they solve. This brings a great sense of achievement, which is why games such as Minecraft and Little Big Planet work really well for people of all ages.
Fantastic Contraption falls into this category. You start off in a room with a ‘table’ in front of you where you will start building your contraptions; next, a quick basic tutorial teaches you how to create a contraption using a wheel and a stick. Little by little, basic outlines guide you with the correct placement of the items in question. And then, a quick press of the move button sets the newly created contraption in motion.
The initial couple of levels are really quite easy and are basically to get you thinking about how you can get from point A to point B, picturing in your mind what sort of contraption you need to transport the gel back home.You can grab an object with the Move controller in your right hand, and then you can pull on the object, like a rod, to stretch it out to a larger size. You can resize objects until they fit just right in your contraption. I started with simple designs, but then found myself trying to work out really intricate ones that spin and flop around to get to the end goal. At the end of each level, a dog pops up with a huge button for a face for you to click to move on to the next level.
You are joined by a trusty cat Neko who holds all the parts available to you in the game. It has two different types of rods for a tail, a wheel in it’s back, pins on its head for bursting items you don’t want in your design, and blobs from its stomach which sticks joints together and stops them from flexing so much. The tools do seem a little limited, but I suppose they are only limited by your imagination, and bye how good you are at engineering and problem-solving.
There is a special area where you can save your contraptions and change levels, which is basically VR within VR, and kinda cool. You put on a space helmet, and it transforms into another VR area – at one point I managed to get both VR worlds active within my PSVR view as I was turning around. Weird and funny!
By the time you get to level 5 how you cam get the gel to its target starts to get trickier and trickier, and it is then that your imagination needs to make the most of the tools at hand. I loved playing the game as it gave my brain a solid workout, making me think about things I wouldn’t normally think about during a normal day.
Graphically the game is pleasing, with a colorful setting that motivates you to keep going. There is a good amount of levels for you to chew your way through, and if I had to note one criticism about this one is that I’d like it if it had more “tools” to add more variants and options into the mix.
Right now there is a distinct lack of this type of game in the PlayStation vR lineup, with most companies leaning toward the “experience” type of releases, which isn’t a bad thing per se, instead of focusing on how creativity can innnovate in gameplay thanks to what the virtual reality hardware can offer. So if you’re looking for a clever, colorful and fun puzzler on PS VR, you should definitely try Fantastic Contraption!
Disclaimer
This Fantastic Contraption review is based on a PS VR copy provided by Radial Games.
