TLDR: a great retro puzzler that avoids frustration through clever mechanics

As others have mentioned, this feels like a spiritual successor to The Incredible Machine but with an unexpected dash of Lemmings thrown in. I loved The Incredible Machine back in the olden days, but I wasn't big on Lemmings. Brilliantly, though, Captain Contraption's Chocolate Factory manages to sidestep everything I found frustrating about this genre of game.

Instead of requiring 100% perfection, the you only have to hit 75% of your quota per stage. Instead of a strict budget limit, it gives you a par cost to shoot for. Instead of making you 100% complete every area before moving on, or even finish every stage in an area, you just have to hit 30% completion.

Since every stage has three goals (hit the 75% quota, hit the quota under par cost, and hit the quota in a wacky variant of the stage), this means that you have options. If you want, you can brute force your way through, hitting the quota on every level through expensive and complex mechanisms. If you just can't figure out one stage, you can go back to one that was easy for you and try to get it under par and/or complete the wacky variant.

The presence of the leaderboards is surprisingly encouraging as well. They show you where your solution to a stage ranks in terms of cost, speed, and results. When the par was 450 credits and you only spent 300, you should feel proud, even when you see that someone else managed to do it in 60 -- that just means you've got more to learn about the mechanics. When you go back and try to figure out how someone did it so simply, you inevitably figure things out that will help you in the levels to come.

In short, it's fun, it stretches your brain, and it's way less stressful than its forebears. I recommend it.

TLDR: a great retro puzzler that avoids frustration through clever mechanics As others have mentioned, this feels like a spiritual successor to The Incredible Machine but with an unexpected dash of Lemmings thrown in. I loved The Incredible Machine back in the olden days, but I wasn't big on Lemmings. Brilliantly, though, Captain Contraption's Chocolate Factory manages to sidestep everything I found frustrating about this genre of game. Instead of requiring 100% perfection, the you only have to hit 75% of your quota per stage. Instead of a strict budget limit, it gives you a par cost to shoot for. Instead of making you 100% complete every area before moving on, or even finish every stage in an area, you just have to hit 30% completion. Since every stage has three goals (hit the 75% quota, hit the quota under par cost, and hit the quota in a wacky variant of the stage), this means that you have options. If you want, you can brute force your way through, hitting the quota on every level through expensive and complex mechanisms. If you just can't figure out one stage, you can go back to one that was easy for you and try to get it under par and/or complete the wacky variant. The presence of the leaderboards is surprisingly encouraging as well. They show you where your solution to a stage ranks in terms of cost, speed, and results. When the par was 450 credits and you only spent 300, you should feel proud, even when you see that someone else managed to do it in 60 -- that just means you've got more to learn about the mechanics. When you go back and try to figure out how someone did it so simply, you inevitably figure things out that will help you in the levels to come. In short, it's fun, it stretches your brain, and it's way less stressful than its forebears. I recommend it.