Electric Box

February 26, 2009 8:45 AM

Electric Box is a puzzle game with the goal of getting power from point A to point B. To accomplish this there are solar panels, refrigerators, lasers, kettles, electromagnets, and other doodads. It's Friday somewhere, right?

There is a built-in level creator and the game is also available on Kongregate.

posted by Korou (23 comments total)

I beat this the other day. I thought it was really great until there was a complexity jump that required a walkthrough on the last level. Fun game.

I was waiting for Friday to post this, but I'm glad I don't have to do the work now.
posted by schyler523 at 9:20 AM on February 26, 2009

It's a fun game - doesn't get too tricky until the last two.

30 more levels here [using the enter a code feature - I'm trying them out now]:
http://blog.candystand.com/candystand-blog/2009/2/24/electric-box-level-pack-vol-1.html
posted by radicarian at 9:45 AM on February 26, 2009

oh, and the level creator/entering a code only works on the candystand site
posted by radicarian at 9:46 AM on February 26, 2009

Another fun diversion on the same site (which I was going to post tomorrow, but linking the same site twice in two days is probably overkill): the Space Game, a kind of 2d space tower defence game.
posted by Electric Dragon at 9:50 AM on February 26, 2009

I like the Rube Goldberg/Mousetrap vibe.
posted by not_on_display at 10:16 AM on February 26, 2009

I've been playing this for a couple of days, and level 15? Yeah, it's not easy.
posted by Sova at 10:37 AM on February 26, 2009

Hint: Level 14 is awesome
posted by Damn That Television at 12:33 PM on February 26, 2009

I miss The Incredible Machine...(this is fun though)
posted by Navelgazer at 12:52 PM on February 26, 2009

I just had my ah-ha moment on 13, and it was really satisfying.
posted by The Bellman at 1:14 PM on February 26, 2009

god i feel stupid. level 12 doesn't seem possible.
posted by shmegegge at 1:22 PM on February 26, 2009

For the people who care, it's on Kongregate with two badges and a card at the moment.
posted by flatluigi at 2:08 PM on February 26, 2009

never mind. i just never noticed the ball item in the inventory.
posted by shmegegge at 2:18 PM on February 26, 2009

This is great - similar to the incredible machine and reasonably nicely balanced. And damn, level 14 was evil.
posted by BigCalm at 2:44 PM on February 26, 2009

15 took me a bit but I eventually figured it out. The secret is ... well, I'm not going to spoil it.

I did find myself annoyed at the slowness of it all though. I found myself frustrated at not being able to make changes as it ran or having to wait forever for it to run through the animations after I made a minor change. I loved the somewhat similar shareware game a few years back that used laser lights; can't remember the name, but it let you change mirror or laser positions at any time.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:47 PM on February 26, 2009

caution live frogs, was it Reflections?
posted by Skot at 2:54 PM on February 26, 2009

Is it just me, or does the solution to level 15 actually depend on the behavior of these doodads being inconsistent?
posted by creasy boy at 3:57 PM on February 26, 2009

I was going to talk about how awful a game this was, because the first 10-13 levels were way too transparent. I felt like I was in that Eddie Izzard routine where James Bond always has exactly the right gadget at the right time. But the last two levels were decently ingenious.

creasy boy: I don't think it depends on the inconsistency of those things, I assumed that was a bug.
posted by goingonit at 4:54 PM on February 26, 2009

That was fun.
posted by Alex404 at 8:35 PM on February 26, 2009

SPOILER: goingonit, the way I did it, I had the mover-bot moving left with a mirror and bumping into the columns of obstacles. Each time it bumped into the obstacles it stopped, then the obstacles were knocked out by the falling ball, and then it moved further left...until the last column was knocked out, then it stayed in place although it could've kept going left. My solution actually depended on this fact and I didn't see any other way of solving it. And I even went back and replicated my solution.
posted by creasy boy at 1:19 AM on February 27, 2009

Re: Creasy - It stayed in place because there was no power to the robot any more. It's meant to do that! (Weirdly, I found level 15 fairly easy. 14 was the killer for me).
posted by BigCalm at 4:30 AM on February 27, 2009

Oh. That could be. I can't picture it in my head that exactly anymore, but that would explain it.
posted by creasy boy at 8:40 AM on February 27, 2009

Is it just me, or does the solution to level 15 actually depend on the behavior of these doodads being inconsistent?

I thought that too, but I think the components are only inconsistent when you don't have them in the right place. When you have them in the right place, it will always work.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 12:02 PM on February 27, 2009

Skot - I think it was called LightSpeed. I was able to find it on Archive.org Wayback Machine but looks like the author has closed up shop. Which sucks, really, because the game is shareware, and this means I never will see what the last few levels look like...

There's a similar, older game out there that I played recently. Also uses light beams. It turned into freeware at the end, and the author released all versions free for Mac + Windows. I finally gave up on it and deleted it because it was a time-suck, and also because I was hopelessly stuck.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:56 PM on February 27, 2009