Machinarium was developed by Amanita Design, released back in 2009 and is your good ol’ point and click / escape the room type adventure. It’s reminiscent of Wall-E as the game as no dialogue whatsoever, oh yeah and there’s robots.
You are a cute little robot who is out to stop some another bunch of robots known as the Black Cap Brotherhood from blowing up a tower. While your robot does not speak, he occasionally has thoughts which appear in bubbles. Again no actual text appears, it’s all animated thoughts. Some of these thoughts are hints, some are seemingly random. Despite this it still effectively tells the story, and there is even space for a little bit of love in there too.
Each scene is it’s own puzzle. Generally you work out how to get through a door out of reach, or how to sufficiently distract a guard to sneak past. Another interesting point is that even though it’s point and click, you can only interact with object that are close enough for you to reasonably use.
The artwork is truly stunning. Objects that you interact with blend so well that sometimes it’s hard to see what can and can’t be used but that is the beauty of these puzzle games. It really makes you scrutinise every piece of the room you are in order for clues, some of which are not at all obvious. The animations are simple and yet so effective and often humorous.
Overall its a game that’s great for ticking the old grey cells in the brain. Machinarium is available on pretty much every platform, Windows, Mac, Linux, PS3, Wii, iPad, Android, Blackberry and some more so there is really no excuse not to give this a try if you missed it first time round.