Although they’re best known for their 3D animation suites, Autodesk has created “Tinkerbox”: an application designed to inspire creativity while being fun to use.

The application has two main modes: puzzles and invent.

“Puzzles” begins by holding your hand to guide you through how the physics and the properties of the game components work together: chains, platforms, dominoes, buttons and balls, to name a few. After that, the puzzles become more complex and your lateral thinking will be put to the test. Sometimes you’ll come up with a solution that wasn’t as clearly presented and you’ll feel wiser for having discovered it.

These physics-based puzzles clearly lay out how to complete the stage, but then the player needs to use their creative faculties to accomplish the goal; there are many solutions for most problems. The puzzles are designed so that the player is forced to look at the big-picture, as well as analyze its various components and make decisions accordingly. If this sounds too technical, I assure you, it isn’t – it’s a lot of fun.

That isn’t to say the game is perfect: there are some glitches and it can be frustrating when you need to have absolute precision in order for a ball to bounce a particular while not affecting any other components. This can be forgiven, however, because the sheer joy of the “eureka” moments you’ll experience make it all worthwhile.

The “invent” mode is your sandbox to make whatever your mind can conceive of. All the components are at your disposal and work exactly how you’d imagine. You’ll find yourself putting together ideas in your head long after you’ve put down your device – there’s much fun to be had and you and your friends can email your inventions to eachother.

The folks at Autodesk have set out to make an application that’s both educational and fun and they’ve succeeded in a large way. It’s amazing that they’re offering this for free on iOS devices with updates planned for the future. Do yourself a favor and check this application out. If you spend a fraction of the time you use facebook or twitter on this, you’ll be rewarded with feeling more creative and thoughtful in your day-to-day.

Pick up TinkerBox via the App Store here