Apparatus

Apparatus
Developer Bithack
Initial release May 11, 2011
Last release Jan 17, 2014
Platform(s) Android

Apparatus is a game developed by Bithack in 2011 and released for Android. It was published onto Google Play (named Android Market at the time) as a paid app, with a free Apparatus LITE being released sometime later.

Apparatus received widespread critical acclaim and news coverage from Android news outlets and beyond, topped the list of both best selling and top rated game in Android Market at its peak, and was handpicked as "Editor's Choice" by Google for several months.

In late 2011 the development of a sequel to Apparatus was announced, Apparatus 2: Principia. It was later rebranded to just Principia and released on Android in late 2013, later releasing a Windows version in early 2014. For Apparatus players wanting to try out Principia, see the Principia for Apparatus Players page.

Both the full version and the LITE version of Apparatus was taken down from Google Play along with the rest of Bithack's games at an unknown point in time. The official community site at apparatusgame.com was shut down sometime in early 2018 along with the official Principia community site.

For more information about Apparatus, see the unofficial Apparatus website.

Gameplay

Apparatus is a physics-based sandbox and puzzle game with a focus on mechanics. The Challenge level mode (equivalent to Puzzle in Principia) has you construct things with planks and other objects in order to bring a blue marble to the blue basket. The Apparatus level mode (equivalent to Custom in Principia) is completely free without any objective and may contain any sort of contraption, that may be controllable by the player with the control panel.

Download

The latest official version, 1.2.1, can be downloaded here.

The 1.2 update for Apparatus was released in November 2013 approximately two years after the previous version 1.1. It updated to the latest version of libGDX, which also switched the physics engine to vanilla Box2D shipped with libGDX rather than the modified version of Box2D used in 1.1 and before. With this essentially every old level completely broke as the physics engine behaviour was substantially altered by this change. If you would like to be able to play old levels created prior to 1.2 then you would want to use version 1.1 which can be downloaded here.

1.2.2

See The unofficial 1.2.2 update

Community site

See Community site

Music

See Soundtrack