Incredible Machine developers announce spiritual sequel to the series

Man, you should've seen the number of metaphorical hoops I had to jump through this morning to get my laptop on a stable internet connection. How fitting, then, that today also marks the announcement of Contraption Maker, a sequel of sorts to the excellent Incredible Machine series of yesteryear! Will the year 2013 bring any simple new (and needlessly complex) tasks to carry out?

The news comes via Wired , who spotted the newly minted dev blog . In it, developer Jeff Tunnell reveals that not only is the spiritual successor a thing, but it's also got the full original Incredible Machine team on board for the series' brave foray into contemporary times.

"Working on Contraption Maker with modern processors and GPU's, huge memory, connectivity, and high definition monitors is like being in a dream world," he says. "We can't wait to show you all of the ideas we have for this product."

The official Contraption Maker website reveals a few more neat details—such as the fact that an alpha release is winging its way to us already, for a projected arrival date of sometime this summer. Also intriguing? A planned is a cooperative play feature, which will no doubt see players flood each other's inventive contraptions with hundreds of needless cats.

I personally look forward to utilizing a basketball, a few cogs, a surly hamster, and maybe a half-full ketchup bottle in pursuit of the objective "Get laptop to connect to internet and stay connected ."