| 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, Principia for Apparatus Players
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.
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.
A large amount of versions of Apparatus has been archived in the Bithack Game Archive. 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 was an unofficial update developed by ROllerozxa by means of reverse engineering. The primary purpose of the update was to connect the game to the unofficial community site replacement apparatus-web. However apparatus-web has been shut down due to inactivity and the community site component is again no longer functional.
In addition to apparatus-web however, it had a number of other changes such as reverting to the classic music soundtrack and some classic sound effects, added the ability to use the Christmas themed background as well as red buckets in any level, disabling the "Adjusting graphics" check and disabling the bounds check.
The last beta version of 1.2.2, Beta 3, can be downloaded here. It no longer sees any updates.
The official Apparatus community site was available at apparatusgame.com, which shut down sometime in early 2018. However, the levels are not completely lost, and an archive with the levels may be available sometime in the future.
In a similar way to principia-web, ROllerozxa started apparatus-web as an unofficial community site for Apparatus. It has since been shut down due to inactivity and wanting to focus more on Principia after the release of its source code. An archive of the levels that were uploaded to apparatus-web can be found here.
The classic music soundtrack of Apparatus consists of three tracks played in order: Limefrukt, Vempunkt and Valley. The LITE version only contained Limefrukt and Vempunkt. The Christmas update (1.1) replaced the classic soundtrack with one track Joy of Apparatus.
All of the tracks were made by Daniel Hjerth and can be found on his Soundcloud.
