The Rube Goldberg-esque game of choice. 
Photo: Peter McCollough/Wired
Raise your hand if you’re sick of Angry Birds. Yeah, we thought so. Now that Rovio has saturated the market with Angry Birds-branded games, toys, clothing and even fruit snacks, the developer has set its sights on a boy named Alex and his Rube Goldberg-esque shenanigans.
Amazing Alex rolled into the iOS App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore on Thursday with nary a bird in sight. The physics-based game follows the same puzzle-solving path of Angry Birds, but instead of launching avian salvos from a huge slingshot, gamers finish Rube Goldberg-style contraptions the protagonist hasn’t completed. The game play is great. The pricing, not so much.
Why can’t Alex finish his convoluted, incredibly inefficient construction projects? We’re guessing the internet destroyed his attention span. Like Angry Birds, the game is addictive as the levels get incrementally more difficult. Rovio has clearly figured out the best way to keep gamers hooked without frustrating us or making its games too easy.
Various items that help complete each level’s problem are stored in a “tool box” in the lower-right corner of the screen. Just drag and drop the items onto the playing field, and rotate the objects for your desired effect. You get to play with things like pipes, scissors, ropes, buckets and tennis balls (and that’s just in the early levels). Each item has its own properties, and not all of the items available per level are necessary for success. As the game progresses, there’s no “right way” to solve a puzzle.
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