• Overall score 82%
• Fun factor 8.2
• Visuals 9
• Story/Concept 8.4
• Sound 9
• Originality 8.4
• Longevity 5

User score80%

Slide to rate

0100%

• Publisher: Amantia Design
• Developer: Amantia Design
• Platform: PC (Window, Mac OS X, Linux)
• Release date: 2009-10-16
• Genre: Adventure/Puzzle

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Machinarium is an intriguing independent title which players will remember both for its charming and unique art direction, as well as its diabolical puzzles. As is common with indie games, there is a tale of passion and dedication behind the development.

The game was created in Flash over a period of three years by a team of seven Czechoslovakian developers who financed the project with their own money. The game went on to win the Excellence in Visual Art award at the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival. With a meagre US$1000 marketing budget, Amanita published the game through digital download services.

Lo and behold!

Visually, the art style employs high detail pencil drawings, which were touched up digitally before being implemented in the game. The same process was applied to characters and interactive objects in the game to such great effect that nothing stands out as an obvious point of interaction.

The style was influenced by famous Czech and Russian artists, with a sprinkling of steam punk. The world of Machinarium is a living mechanical construct complete with rust patches, bad wiring, heaving industrial machinery and leaking pipes. It's difficult to convey in words the unique visual styling of the game, so best take a peek at the accompanying screen caps.

Say it ain't so?

The old adage of pictures being worth a thousand words especially holds true in this game, as there is not a single spoken or written line of dialogue used to drive the narrative. As far as design choices go, this one is pulled off expertly – the characters rely on thought bubbles and expressions to convey their situation.

The game puts players in charge of a nameless robotic protagonist who is unceremoniously dumped onto the garbage heap of life with little explanation. As the story is fleshed out, the player comes to realise that the robot hero is on a quest to rescue his robot girlfriend. Of course, rescuing a damsel in distress is never simple, and the hero soon comes across the nefarious 'black cap' gang of robots, who have coincidentally previously made life miserable for the hero. Without giving too much away, it would appear that the gang is concocting their biggest misdeed ever.

The nuts 'n bolts

It might be prudent to mention at this point that this game firmly targets adventure game and puzzle fans. Those expecting a thrill a minute will probably be disappointed. The gameplay is a combination of point-and-click adventure, room escape and logic puzzles, with a sprinkling of arcade action for good measure. In general, players will have to use their puzzle solving skills to escape from each of the various scenes presented as the game progresses. At about the halfway mark, the game opens up a little and the player will have to solve puzzles spread across a few different locations.

The robotic avatar will have to walk within range of interactive objects in the environment before it will engage with them, or even acknowledge that they might be of use. This removes a common point-and-click gamer's tendency to just click away at every object on the screen in the hopes of uncovering something useful.

As players navigate through the world they acquire objects needed to solve puzzles, and escape from scenes. Machinarium does a neat job of giving you exactly what you need to get the job done, and prunes the inventory when something is no longer required. Even though this inventory management streamlining does whittle down the players options, it by no means makes solving the puzzles any easier.

The puzzle elements come in the form of some recognisable and classic mind-benders, such as five-in-a-row, as well as some fresh challenges created by the Amanita team. Pattern recognition and logical elimination puzzles both make a showing. Depending on how quick witted a player is, the initial play through will last around 6 hours.

Having completed the game once will definitely remove some of the compelling room escape action, and most of the puzzle's will be easier to solve the second time around.

All the while, a musical score accompanies the player along their way. Each new scene receives its own unique musical backing, cleverly creating the perfect audio atmosphere to compliment the graphical scene. Sound effects are employed when necessary, and these also come across as well executed. Some of the puzzles revolve around a musical solution, and it's pleasing to observe that even robots know how to get down and boogie.

Does...not...compute

Should any of the scenes prove too difficult to escape, or the puzzles too taxing on the grey matter, a hint system is at hand. Players have one hint per scene, designed to point them in the right direction. If one is still stumped after that, there is a walkthrough 'book' for each scene. The player will have to complete a simple arcade sequence to unlock the walkthrough each time however. This sequence is simple enough, yet adequately irritating so as to deter walkthrough abuse.

Ghosts in the machine

The game oozes character and charm from its joints, making it a pity to have to point out a few of its shortcomings. Annoyingly, once the player has clicked on a location, the robot will diligently mosey on over to that spot, no matter how badly one wants to cancel the command. One of the arcade sequences near the end of the game seems rather contrived, as if it was slapped on because the developers ran out of ideas for a good puzzle at that point.

There were a few minor issues with the interface at times, but the latest patch seemed to clear these up. There have been reports of people having trouble running the game on low resolution screens (such as those on netbooks), with the edges of the game world 'cut off' and therefore inaccessible. Since the game is based on Flash, and the save game system uses a form of LSO Flash cookies to store data, any security clean-up utilities (such as CCleaner) or Web browser privacy addons (such as FireFox's Better Privacy) will happily obliterate the player's progress.
 
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Beautiful and detailed artwork, a unique narrative mechanism, an atmospheric musical score, and challenging yet rewarding puzzles all make for a highly recommended title for adventure game lovers. Even after being completed once, Machinarium begs to be explored a few more times.

Keeping things in perspective, for an independent team of seven, Machinarium is a highly polished and professional offering. One can practically feel the pride and dedication that went in to creating this title, and you can't put a rating on that.

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