Machinarium | A Beautiful Little PC Puzzle Game

Game Play:8

Graphics:9

Music:8

Value For Money:9

Overall Rating: 8.5

Are you one of those people who regrets that PC games seem to have had their soul sucked out of them and have become tools of the evil one, turning perfectly nice gamers into little more than digital psychotics who become grossly uhnappy if five minutes goes by without someone's head being blown off? If so, you need to play Machinarium. Playing this game is like playing through a children's story book, one made back when illustrators were still illustrators and they occasionally got real ink stains on their fingers. Machinarium is imbued with a winsome sense of innocence that pervades the game and enchants the player.

I found this on Steam under 'Adventure' games, but they were lying, lying when they categorized it that way. Adventure games are games in which you roam about and explore things. This is a game in which you aren't able to get off the screen you're on until you work out how to get yourself through the latest predicament you find your tinny little robot self in. Yes. Machinarium is really a puzzle solving game. A point and click puzzle solving game.

Now I loathe point and click games enough for starters, and I harbor special distaste for games in which most of my time is spent staring at the screen with my brow furrowed put me off entirely, so usually this would be enough to send me screaming for the hills, but this little game from Amanita Design is just so charming that I had to keep playing.

In Machinarium you are a little robot dumped on the trash heap of life. It's up to you to recover your limbs and set yourself back on a journey of redemption. Along the way you will need to solve puzzles to get from beautifully designed screen to beautifully designed screen. The atmosphere of this game is astounding and for what is essentially an independent game, the game play is incredibly slick.

All your problem solving skills are soon put to work just trying to get out of the rubbish heap. You'll need to think laterally and make use of all the items around you if you want to succeed. There are hints to help you along the way, and if you get really stuck, there's a cheat sheet, only accessible by playing a little mini game in which you must navigate a key through a spider filled brick cavern. Even the way they help you cheat is innovative in Machinarium.

You can play a flash demo on the Machinarium site, and you can buy it there as well, though it is a fraction of the price on Steam.