In contrast to GTA, where the series took a different turn (going full 3D instead of top-down perspective), this game does not have a popular up-to-date successor. Instead it formed a whole genre of physics/’rube goldberg device’ – puzzle games.
So the games inheritance is very prominent up to this day – especially on mobile devices.
The music is quite pleasant and I could at least hum 5 melodies that were used in the game. The game does not have a very ‘distinct’ music sound to me: Not going all electro or for a certain style it feels a little ‘all over the place’. The few sounds on the other hand are burned into my ear and I could identify them as being TIM games at once.
By the way: I tried the game with my MT32 and the music is quite good, but the sound-effects obviously suffer.
My favourite sound of the game is the “phew / sure” sound the little creature makes in the intro.
The controls: Some stuff would be done differently nowadays and there are some low hanging fruit of things to change for the better. On the other hand there are so many things done right: No weird “left+right mouse button at the same time” etc, the dragging of planes feels nice, etc.
The puzzle aspect: The first few levels feel boring like crazy if you already now the game and come back – on the other hand they are solvable quite fast.
With the later levels there usually I feel that there often is an ‘par’ solution and a weird one if you just place your parts right. Loooots of trial & error involved – but that is part of the fun.
The freeform mode was my favorite as a kid: just playing around in a sandbox where I can do stupid stuff. As with playing with (technical/motorised) lego, I loved to build machines that would do loops, example:
Balls flying in a pattern with seesaws and trampolines constantly bouncing them up again in a symmetrical way so they – after some time – would end up in the starting position and start all over again.
