Apparatus
Hello and welcome to the sixth Principia building contest. This one is a bit special, as the contest is starting on the 15 year anniversary of the original release of Apparatus, 11th May 2011.
To commemorate this, we will be running a contest with the theme being... Apparatus! Namely, create a Principia level as if you were making an Apparatus level. This comes with a lot of limitations both in terms of the range of objects and what you can do with them, but will hopefully be an interesting challenge.
You can either make a custom level (Apparatus) or alternatively a puzzle level (Challenge). Custom levels have endless possibilities for what you may create, while puzzle levels will have the classic objective of getting a marble into the basket.
What will you create, given these limitations?
Rules
The objects you are allowed to use for your level are:
- Plank
- Cylinder
- Platform (Not allowed to attach anything to them!)
- Rubberband
- Wheel
- Damper
- Weight
- Land mine
- Power Supply
- Simple Motor (You can attach this to a platform to simulate a static motor)
- Power Cable
- Signal Cable
- RC Basic (Only simple buttons and horizontal sliders)
- Interactive Cylinder (Enable the "Do not require dragfield" level property to make them work without a Dragfield)
- Ball or Metal ball (Your choice!)
If you are an Apparatus pro, you may be aware that some of these objects behave differently in Principia, are shaped differently, or have more configuration options than in Apparatus. This is fine! The purpose of the contest is to promote creativity through the limited palette of objects and hopefully encourage those who don't know the ins and outs of every object in Principia to participate. Apparatus players used to do amazing things with just this set of objects!
You are allowed to use things like Cam targeters and Cam zoomers if it makes the level better, but this should be well hidden to not break the illusion! You are also allowed to use Y-splitters or OR gates to simulate the cable hub in Apparatus. If you are making a puzzle level then you are allowed to use plastic beams, an Object finder and a Game Manager in order to simulate the blue basket from Apparatus.
In addition to that, the typical contest rules apply:
- Only one level per player participating in the contest!
- Old levels created before the contest are not eligible for entry.
- Theft of entire levels is not allowed. Inspiration is allowed, plagiarism is not.
Scoring
Once the contest is over, a winner and a runner-up will be decided by the contest judge (ROllerozxa). Both will get their levels featured on the front page as well as awarded a stylish trophy badge on their user page.
Depending on the amount of entries, there may be some other level entries that will be highlighted, for things that are interesting but didn't make it to the top.
Submitting an entry
Upload your level to the community site from in-game. You will then be prompted to go to the level page where you can add it to a contest in the dropdown.
Timeframe
The contest was started at 11 May 2026.
The contest will end at 25 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT. Time left:
