Ugears: A wooden 3D puzzle game has arrived. Now with music

Designers have always been popular - they like both children and adults. Build your own zoo with plastic animals or build a dream car with your own hands - what could be better. Some designers like Lego Mindstorms can be called very complex, but you can also create real masterpieces from them. But, unfortunately, Mindstorms is not suitable for everyone, and there is a lot of constructor of this type.



We at Madrobots like many designers, but most of the time we spend on Ugears 3D puzzles.

Ugears - what is it?

This is a very unusual designer that can appeal to both children and adults. These puzzles appeared only in 2014 thanks to the idea implemented by Denis Okhrimenko. Initially, he did everything manually, packing the boxes with the designer on his own, in the kitchen, with a building hairdryer in his hands. Now the team has more than 50 people. At the very beginning, the designers were sold in single copies, now they are sold in thousands. By the way, the creator of Ugears received funds for the implementation of his idea with the help of Kickstarter . Platform users praised the idea highly - the Ugears developers requested only $ 20,000, and received $ 400,000. In general, the goal was not money, but promotion in Western markets. And it turned out to kill two birds with one stone - get money and fame.







As for the idea, it takes several months to develop one 3D puzzle. After all, everything is connected here - if there is one poor-quality part, marriage, then the puzzle mechanism will not work. All parts are made of three-layer plywood with a thickness of 3.5-3.7 mm. Details are cut with a laser, which ensures the required accuracy. The time of assembling the puzzle is from 20 minutes to several hours. It all depends on the number of elements in the puzzle - their minimum is 5, maximum 500.





Models are not painted, so that the smell of wood and wood texture remain, which creates the effect of lampiness.

History repeats itself

Now the company has completed the second project on Kickstarter. The idea is old, but now it’s not a steampunk-locomotive, little car or some other vehicle to assemble. No, the buyers of the new Ugears will have to create something else - namely, a musical instrument called the wheeled lyre. In the Middle Ages, it was called an organist. Now she is known more as a wheeled lyre, but there is another name - “hardy hardy” (hurdy-gurdy).







This is one of the oldest musical instruments. The first mention of the wheel lyre are found in the 11th century AD. The wheel lira was modified several times until it became what it is now. And yes, you can play the model, it’s not just wooden pieces, but a full-fledged musical instrument.





Of course, the lyre should work perfectly. Understanding this, the developers improved the accuracy of processing wooden parts down to 0.01 mm. All the parts are already cut, they can only be removed from the wooden base.







Hardy Hardy has only two strings, but one lira will pass for a whole orchestra. Of course, there is a tuning mechanism - string tension. Without this, nowhere - musical instruments need to be customized so that they sound good.



In addition to the lira, the Kickstarter campaign included two more models. This is a mechanical calendar , which will work correctly until 2044, a tramway , a railway loader and a factory of robots .







The mechanical calendar can be collected with the child to teach him time wisdom.





Well, and then there will be a place for a calendar on any table - at least at home, at least in the office.



The last three constructors are part of the Mechanical Town Series.





Ugears Tram Line Model. Mechanical Town Series





Ugears Rail Manipulator Model. Mechanical Town Series





Ugears Robot Factory. Mechanical Town Series



There is also a treasure box . This is a box for storing valuables. Although it can be stored not only jewelry, but anything. To open the box, you need a key that fits to a mechanical lock. The key is slyly built into the mechanism of the box itself. In general, it's better to see everything here than to read a long description.

Already can buy?

Pre-order Kickstarter users have already started receiving their orders. By the way, the project collected $ 288,326 instead of the requested $ 15,000. For those who did not succeed or simply did not support the Kickstarter campaign, all the new items are already in the Madrobots assortment.

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