Using the newest version of the brain-twisting program, Crazy Machines 1.5 (**** out of four), you can have fun solving "Rube Goldberg" type machine puzzles. Or, if you feel creative, you can try making your very own wacky contraptions. The program includes more than 200 puzzles to solve (by assembling the provided parts); these puzzles range from very simple to very complex contraptions, all designed to do easy tasks in a fun, weird and wacky, complicated way. Version 1.5 includes additional action elements to work with and more challenges to solve.

You’re best starting off the game in the Inventor’s Training Camp, where the "professor," your host for the program, gives you challenges. The challenges are simple ones first, such as controlling how a ball rolls down a plank to hit a basket, but soon you move on to more complex challenges. For example, "professor" wants to grill his sausage. You are given a stock of parts to use. So you assemble a machine that puts a flame under a tank to boil water in the tank to create steam that drives a steam engine that turns a pulley that turns a belt that turns another pulley that turns another belt that turns the rotisserie that holds the sausage. And don’t forget to put a fire under the sausage too. The more than 100 included elements range from simple pegs, platforms, wheels and belts to canons and fireworks to airships, robots and electric generators and more; most perform some action that creates a chain reaction to get a final desired result.

In the My Lab section you can assemble your own machines to show your own ingenuity, such as making a machine that lets a ball fall on the plunger of a blowtorch, lighting it. The blowtorch flame lights a rocket that, when it goes off, knocks a box off a shelf that falls on a switch that turns a light on. Now, isn’t that an easy way to turn on a light? Use your imagination, and you’ll have a world of fun designing and assembling these perfectly useless crazy contraptions. And, you can export your inventions to drive other inventors crazy figuring them out.

In the New From the Lab section of Crazy Machines 1.5 you’re introduced to the many newer and harder challenges. But by now you’re an expert inventor, so you should be up to the task.

The 3D graphics are good and use accurate physics models to control their motion. These models add to the challenge at time, for example, if you don’t give a ball enough push, it may not reach the switch or knock the block off the shelf. The program is fun for the whole family, and we find this newest version with new content even more challenging and quite addicting. Highly recommended.