''The Incredible Machine'' series situates the player as designer/engineer, exploring possible relations between objects interacting within rudimentary physics laws, such a gravity and inertia. However, the performative learning opportunities, and other educational affordances of the instant mechanical/engineering/design competency are somewhat usurped by the game’s reliance on its own idea of physics and the cartoonish function of its machines’ parts, such as a monkey cycling frantically (a motor), after being activated when the screen in front of him reveals a banana (a downward pulling action, usually using a pulley). Still, the core idea of the game could be employed effectively to emulate real physics and perhaps even investigate real problems. But set against a background of nothingness, the machines of the game exist only for their own sake, and neither their mechanisms nor their function does anything beyond the immediately self-referential. Incidentally, a predecessor to ''The Incredible Machine'', called ''Interactive Physics'' did branch off into viable mechanical simulation models, including a 3D version, ''Working Model'', that “could simulate complex mechanical devices like motorcycles or copy machines, and it went on to become a volume leader in mechanical engineering simulation” (Baszucki, 2011).  

''The Incredible Machine'' series situates the player as designer/engineer, exploring possible relations between objects interacting within rudimentary physics laws, such a gravity and inertia. However, the performative learning opportunities, and other educational affordances of the instant mechanical/engineering/design competency are somewhat usurped by the game’s reliance on its own idea of physics and the cartoonish function of its machines’ parts, such as a monkey cycling frantically (a motor), after being activated when the screen in front of him reveals a banana (a downward pulling action, usually using a pulley). Still, the core idea of the game could be employed effectively to emulate real physics and perhaps even investigate real problems. But set against a background of nothingness, the machines of the game exist only for their own sake, and neither their mechanisms nor their function does anything beyond the immediately self-referential. Incidentally, a predecessor to ''The Incredible Machine'', called ''Interactive Physics'' did branch off into viable mechanical simulation models, including a 3D version, ''Working Model'', that “could simulate complex mechanical devices like motorcycles or copy machines, and it went on to become a volume leader in mechanical engineering simulation” (Baszucki, 2011).