Progress as a Mechanic

Gamestar support responded to my query. Seems as if they are still refining their level controls:

MESSAGES
Gamestar Mechanic Your bug report Sep 7th, 2010
Hi, SCSpaeth-

It seems you have found a bug! The system has been incorrectly unlocking some quest games for users. You are required to beat all missions in an episode before the next episode is unlocked. You can currently check to see if a mission is completed by a red check mark that appears on the mission tab. If there is no red check mark, then the mission is not complete.

As it currently stands, if you do not finish a mission, the next one will still unlock. You can go back to a mission by clicking its tab in the mission screen. You may experience unexpected behavior in how your episodes unlock until we address this issue within the next week.

Thank you for your bug report!
-MKG

I returned and reworked through all the levels in Episode 2 and finally got to move on to Episode 3. While I worked, Kate asked me what I was doing. She is used to a regular pattern of sounds coming from my computing. This certainly differed from my typical computing. I told her personally, that I'd prefer solving puzzles (e. g. mind bending) to action but the Factory is training well-rounded game mechanics.