Machinarium
A point and click adventure game never looked this good.
Back in the late 80s and for most of the 90s point and click adventure games ruled the gaming world. Then they sort of disappeared for a while and only recently started to make a little bit of a comeback. One of the most interesting titles that’s been part of this resurgence is a little gem called Machinarium from indie developer Amanita Design. Playing this game really brought back some memories for me of the glory days of adventure gaming, which during that era was my favorite type of game.
You play the role of a little robot who’s been kicked out of a futuristic city full of robots and dumped into a scrap heap just outside the outskirts of the city. The first order of business is to get your alter-ego reassembled. This isn’t too difficult and it more or less serves as a tutorial on how to play the game and what to expect. After this you’re off to the city to attempt to regain entry, rescue your robot girlfriend, and get revenge on the robot thugs who wronged you. Along the way you’ll encounter plenty of strange contraptions, colorful characters, and brain-bending puzzles.
There is no dialogue in the entire game. Instead any communication is conveyed by thought bubbles above characters heads. Thought bubbles are also used to advance the story, provide background information where needed, and even provide subtle hints if necessary. Chances are you’re going to need hints on occasion because some of the puzzles are really hard. You can call up a subtle hint by clicking on a button at the top right-hand portion of the screen. If all else fails much more thorough hints can be provided by completing a mini-game. I found this to be a bit annoying but fortunately the mini-game isn’t all that difficult so it won’t ruin your enjoyment of the game. If none of those hints are enough Google is your friend. You’ll also run into some math-based mini-games along the way which add some variety to your adventures. Most of these aren’t as difficult as the logic-based puzzles you’ll encounter but I’ve seen some reports of people having difficulty with the "five-in-a-row" mini-game you’ll encounter about half-way through. Diligence is your friend here so sooner or later you’ll get it. I’ve never been that great at hidden object games and that came into play right after completing this mini-game. There were five objects that needed to be collected on the same screen and for the life of me I could only find four! So I spent quite a bit of time walking all over and searching everywhere, thinking perhaps the object might be somewhere else, only to finally discover it was back where the other four objects were right in front of my eyes! Fortunately this isn’t a common occurrence in the game so it’s only a minor quibble at most.
Now I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the visuals. Machinarium is one of the best looking 2-D animated adventure games I’ve ever seen. And that’s really saying something considering this game comes from a small indie developer! The game has sort out a futuristic steampunk look to it. The look kind of reminded me of an old single player role-playing game called "Arcanum" from 2001 or even something out of a Jules Verne book. The sound and music are also quite good as well. In fact this is one of those rare occasions where you won’t want to turn the music off or down in an adventure game after playing for a while because it’s that good. Amanita Design feels so confident about how good the music is that they’ve released it separately as a digital download in MP3 format.
Now to the all-important interface question. I’m happy to say Machinarium is about as easy to play as you can get. If you can move a mouse cursor and left-click and left-click and drag then you can play Machinarium. Most of the game is just simply point and click but there are a few occasions where you’ll need to click and drag. Most of that occurs with your alter-ego in a clever gameplay addition that I don’t recall ever seeing in any adventure game before. You can make the robot taller and shorter by clicking and dragging his neck up or down. Depending on how tall or how short you make the robot will affect his walking speed, but more importantly it can be vital in solving certain puzzles. For example, in one instance you have to make the robot as tall as it can be in order to "see" an object on a scrap heap above. So in this case until you make the robot tall enough the hotspot for the object won’t show up. But there’s no fast action involved here or anything like that so this type of clicking and dragging is simple. So even those who rely on dwell clicking should be okay here. KeyStrokes is visible in both full-screen and windowed-mode but you won’t need to use it unless you access the full hint system. I mentioned earlier the annoying mini-game you have to play in order to earn a more complete hint. The mini-game is sort of like the old Atari arcade game "Defender" and you have to use the arrow keys on the keyboard to play it. It’s pretty slow moving and easy to beat so the arrow keys on KeyStrokes more than suffice. But if you really have problems with this you can always just use Google to find the answers you need. The built-in full hint system is nice but any walkthrough you find on the Internet is probably going to be more thorough anyways.
Despite its minor flaws Machinarium is a great adventure game. I found it to be a bit difficult at times but all the puzzles do generally make sense. So if you’re not too impatient (unlike me) you should be able to figure just about everything out yourself sooner or later. The artwork, music, and sound create an atmosphere that will draw you in from the moment your alter-ego crawls out of the scrap heap in the beginning. I probably got just over 15 hours of gameplay out of Machinarium. Some people seem to finish it in less time but that’s not surprising since I usually take my time with these types of games, exploring every inch possible. So with that said the game is a bargain at $20 in this reviewer’s opinion.
Machinarium is available for Mac, PC, and Linux. A free flash demo is available from Amanita Design’s website.
System Requirements:
Macintosh
- Mac OS X 10.4 or newer
- Processor: 1.8 Ghz
- Memory: 1GB
- Hard Drive Space: 350 MB
Windows PC
- Processor: 1.8 GHz Processor
- RAM: 1024 MB RAM
- Hard Drive Space: 250 MB
- Operating System: Windows XP / Vista
Paul Natsch
RSS 2.0