The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect is a physics-based puzzle game about cause and effect. Your task is to build complex mechanical systems using levers, rocket-like cola bottles and ordinary objects like tennis balls and bikes to accomplish simple tasks. This is also known as a Rube Goldberg machine or a Heath Robinson contraption. This type of game was pioneered by the game series The Incredible Machine in the 1990s.

In each level you are presented with a certain scene and a task. The tasks are usually simple (but not always easy to achieve), like putting tennis balls into a chest, toppling a bowling pin, and so on. You have a “toolbox” in which you have several objects you can add into the scene in order to solve the problem. For example, you can place a floor to help a ball cross a gap. There is no time limit, you can try as often as you like to solve the problems.

Most levels are of easy to medium difficulty, but a few difficult levels exist.


  • 76 puzzles to solve
  • Several objects to build your contraptions, such as ramps, walls, wedges, balls, bowling pins, balloons, cacti, cola bottles with mint, penguins, springs, remotely detonated dynamites, butterflies and a few more
  • Post-it notes explain you the game and contain hints
  • Start, pause and fast-forward the simulation
  • A level editor for creating your own puzzles (still under development)
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