From the makers of the Flash web-games Samorost and Samorost 2 comes Aminata Design’s third brainchild: Machinarium. It won the Excellence In Visual Arts category in the Independent Games Festival 2009, and let me tell you, it well-deserved it. The visuals in this game are haunting, charming, moody, and adorable all at the same time. It’s hand-drawn  steam-punk artistic bent really immerses you into its alluring robotic world.

Story

The story begins with our robotic protagonist being thrown in to an odd world.  You traverse the world while attempting to solve various puzzles in order to reunite our hero with his long-lost robotic girlfriend, return home safely and, on the way, prevent a terrorist attack.

In the same spirit as Pixar’s Wall-E, there is no dialogue in the game (read: easy for developers to localize). This means not having to sit through long conversation or traversing through extensive dialogue trees. Instead, the story is presented and driven by simple cut scenes and thought bubbles.

Genre: Adventure Puzzler

The game is cataloged as an adventure-puzzle game. Anyone who has ever played an adventure game will instantly be familiar with its point-and-click interface. More specifically, you will spend most of your time collecting objects and combining them together to solving a variety of puzzles in the scene. Our hero can also extend and shrink his robotic torso, making for some intriguing puzzles.

The first few scenes are easy to solve. The main purpose is to teach you the simple mechanics of the game. However, the difficulty quickly escalates. But before you go crying to GameFAQs, you can ask for a free hint in the form of a thought bubble. And if that is not enough, you can also open a locked book that our hero keeps in his inventory. To open it, you must complete a mini-game and should you be brave enough to overcome it, the book will open up and provide you with a walkthrough of the entire level. Pretty neat, huh?

Sound

The game includes an incredible soundtrack. The futuristic ambient soundscapes really plays well with its artistic theme. The music shifts during certain scenes and capture various moods which definitely adds to the experience.

Price

The game costs $17 on their site and $19 on Steam. For me, it was totally worth them greenbacks. Plus, supporting indie developers makes Jesus smile.

The developers also released a free demo version of the game to try if you are at all curious.

The Bad

One of the biggest complaint of this game is that it was too short. With about 6 hours of gameplay, it definitely leaves you yearning for more. Also, several solutions of the puzzles did not seem particularly evident. As a result, you spend time randomly clicking through objects until a solution becomes clear.

Grade: B+

Although the game was quite short, it had great visual style, incredible music, and fun logical puzzles. It is definitely worth the small price the developers are asking for it.

Maybe this review was a bit skewed. But what can I say? You had me at “robots”. You pretty much have to be a total asshole not to like robots. And if you put them inside an artsy puzzle video game, I’m in! So go take a gander and feel the love.