Fantastic Contraption

A fun online physics puzzle game

 

Credits and Special Thanks

Colin Northway

I designed and wrote the first Fantastic Contraption in 2008. It changed my life and allowed my wife and I to start Northway Games.

But Fantastic Contraption wouldn't exist today if it weren't for the contributions of all the people on this page.

Thank you to everyone.

Sarah Northway

Sarah Northway (originally credited as Sarah Collins) created the art for Fantastic Contraption and helped with UI and backend code. She now runs Northway Games, creating new games and maintaining older ones, including a 2020 PC port of Fantastic Contraption Classic.

James Mark

James Mark wrote, performed, and mixed the music for Fantastic Contraption.

Andy Moore

Andy Moore's rich understanding of physics and puzzle game play helped steer Fantastic Contraption through development. He became Fantastic Contraption's first community manager and was instrumental to keeping things running.

In 2015 Colin and Northway Games teamed up with Andy and Radial Games to create Fantastic Contraption VR together.

inXile Entertainment

Thanks to everyone at inXile for running the game from 2009 - 2015 under their Sparkworkz brand, also producing a sequel and mobile versions of FC1 and 2.

Special thanks to David Heeley, Brian Fargo, Mike Newman, and Jeff Bowden for their support and hard work.

And to Jason Dora who worked with Colin to transfer the game back to Northway Games servers in 2015. During a critical part of the life of the game he went out of his way to make sure everything worked out.

Albert Pham
(sk89q)

Albert took it upon himself to better the level and design searching/display by writing the FC Resource, which is now offline but many of his useful tools are still in use in the Contraption backend. He made the game much better and I am grateful to his effort and skill.

Perry Ravet (uJellyBrah)

When the official forums fell to spam Perry started up a new place for Contraptionistas to gather, chat, and challenge eachother. His forum and discord channel are linked at the top of the page and are now the official communities of Fantastic Contraption. Thanks for keeping the band together Perry!

Level Designers

Thanks to: MetallicDragon for 'Cave Escape' which is used in the tutorial, Paul Henshall Jr. (onion) for 'U-Turn', Albert (sk89q) for 'Fix Big Ben', Jamie van den Berge (Entity) for 'On the Edge', OfficiallyHaphazard for 'Brick Layer', 'Tote 'em Pole' and 'Close the Door'.

In 2015 the community designed and chose five final levels for the game. Some of the designers integral to that process were:

compscure, Doinkster, hero88go, ID36, inventeur61, jdelgado06, kala2500, ken75, kezzaatkin, lkjsafdhg, PerryandBrock, Rie and sp3000.

All the Hardcore Players!

Wow, seriously guys, you've stretched the game in amazing ways. Seven years Twelve years later and there are still passionate, caring players. Not many games get that. I'm thrilled I get to help guide this game and support this community.

Special shout out to players on the Discord Server who helped test and improve Fantastic Contraption 1 and 2 during the 2020 update and port to PC:

Zhyrek, Jelly, ID36, WizBang, rrrrmrmr, schmittd, Empika, rlbabits, ken75, Silver, dmasters, Brian, Brainet, marcxb, MLGMASTER, Maxim, electronic12345, gavinroo538, marjo, camaro 09, Beadrix, Foro, BCPowerhouse, FluffyKatz, and anyone else I missed.

Thank you for your help and for keeping Fantastic Contraption alive!

Our Patrons!

Colin created a Patreon account in 2015 to help pay the continued server cost of hosting over 70 thousand user-generated levels, 10 million contraptions and 1.6 million user accounts. Our patron donations inspired Sarah to port the game to PC in 2020 as the end of the Flash plugin drew nigh.

Box2d Physics

Fantastic Contraption was written with the Box2d physics engine by Erin Catto and other contributers. Box2d is a dream to work with. It is flexible, fast, and simple to use.

Thanks to Matt Bush for porting the Box2d physics engine to flash. His Box2dFlashAs3 was a necessity for me and trouble free to work with. A portion of the proceeds from Fantastic Contraption have been donated to Box2d and Box2dFlashAs3 projects.

Aaron Mishkin

Aaron helped to update Fantastic Contraption in 2015, adding new functionality and fixing bugs in the game.

Pez Cuckow

Pez kindly provided much needed hosting for Fantastic Contraption in its early days. She took the load off and made sure the music didn't die.

Original Testers

Mum & Dad, Alan Northway, James Anderson, Meghan O'Connel, Peter Ziemkiewicz all helped with testing and feedback. Thanks to all of them.

Those Who Came Before

Fantastic Contraption takes inspiration from some of the great physics games that are out there. There are alot of really good physics games. Here are a few of my personal favorites: