A Ruberg-machine construction game in the vein of The Incredible Machine, I Heart Geeks (or I <3 Geeks, if you're so inclined) is a game that has you building strange contraptions from various parts in order to solve a level's goal, whether it's getting a ball into a basket, turning on a light switch, or any other number of mundane tasks.

The pieces you're given determine how to solve the puzzle, and while some of the challenges may look easy, actually figuring out how to use what you're given is a different story. Using motors to fling bowling balls across conveyor belts, weighing down balloons with sponges, and knocking objects with catapults are some of the things you'll need to do in order to solve the hundreds of puzzles given in I Heart Geeks. But the problem here is that it's just not very fun to solve them.

Puzzles lack any interesting parts, and are fairly mundane (or at least as mundane as they can be in this sort of genre). The flat art style contributes to this, as does the lack of interesting objects to use. But even if you do want to play the game, you're going to run into hurdles: first is the strange physics that the game uses. Things don't feel quite right in how some objects interact with each other; this is most notable with the springs that seem to send the balls on a strange, jerky trajectory upwards. It makes solving quite a few puzzles an excercise in frustration as you have to move things repeatedly every time you run the attempted solutions.

This wouldn't be too bad if the hint system was any better. See, when you click an item, you can get a hint if you want on where the item is supposed to go. This does invalidate your score for the level, but since there aren't any online components, the score itself is pointless. In any case, sometimes the hints are quite correct. In addition, the hints disappear the second you stop pressing the hint button. This isn't always a problem, but many pieces require you to have some damn fine precision in their placement and rotation, so when the hint location disappears you're on your own. And since there's no way to skip levels, if you can't solve one puzzle you're stuck.

There's not much else to say; it's hard to get a good impression from I Heart Geeks. The art style is boring and flat, the puzzles aren't very fun to solve, and there's no real impetus to move forward in the game. It's hard to explain, but the game just isn't very interesting. There aren't a lot of these types of games out there, especially for handheld devices, but even if you've got a hankering to build a Rube Goldberg machine, pass on this. Play the Incredible Machine Too instead.