Machinarium Collector's Edition

First off, this is a very short game. About two dozen locations (scenes) total. Second, the game is hard. Sometimes you need to be in the right "shape" (robot height) to reach things or interact with things. That's fine, but after the first few scenes, this stops mattering, and the game starts "auto-shaping" you to the right size, *most* of the time. Then later, for no reason, with no explanation, the game expects you to guess when you once again need to start adjusting your size. On the same note, you often need to be standing in a certain location (at the right height) to interact with objects. If you're not standing exactly right, your mouse won't even indicate that you can interact with an object. This would be ok if you could stand anywhere within reach, but you can't. This leads to taking a few steps, mousing over the thing you want to interact with, then changing size, lather-rinse-repeat. It's annoying. Finally, the game is illogical. Some puzzles are intuitive, many aren't. Usually once you know what your objective is with the puzzles, you can solve them. Too often you're left clicking around trying to figure out what your goal is. Taken as a whole, the game fails to deliver much value. I've finished it, but that's mostly because it's so short. Some of the puzzles are really enjoyable, so it might be worth a play just to get those. It's probably not worth more than a dollar or two at the very most though.

Wonderful game. Too bad I can't save a game. Using Windows 7 - a known issue, apparently.

Machinarium feels very unique and fresh amongst adventure games. The art style is wonderfully stylised and creates its own world; however, personally I found the colour palette and the images not particularly to my taste. I recognise that the artwork is extremely well done, but in terms of feel I found it somewhat ugly, and even repulsive at times. That is down to me, and I stress that the games artwork is stunning, it just turned me off somewhat. Similarly, the soundtrack fits the images perfectly - unfortunately, that means that I found it quite unpleasant. What I did like very much was the way the game plays. Having no diaogue means that the way information is presented to the player needs to be creative. Hints are absorbed by the player through imagery, and it's done extremely well. I found the game very difficult, and the (inspired) hint system did need to get utilised a few times. The game is quite short, but you could spend quite some time with it due to this high difficulty level. The story is quite charming, and kept me interested even without a huge amount of depth. Without dialogue, it meant that the personalities of the characters really needed to come through, and they do wonderfully. An unfortunate segment at the end of the game is an arcade style sequence which I absolutely hated. Add to that the fact that it caused my game to crash the first time through, and I had to repeat it all again, and for me the game ended on a sour note. Very well put together game, it has a strong personality that makes it stand out. Unfortunately, from a stylistic point of view it just didn't work for me.

As the title suggests, the protagonist is literally thrown into a world that's full of robots, rust and mechanical contraptions, without much of a backstory. The game gently introduces the player to the interface during the first few screens, which are very linear and solvable with whatever you find on screen. However, the pace quickly picks up, and once you enter the city, the world seems much more open to exploration, and the puzzles are getting more complex, too. Unfortunately, you will also have to "win" a few arcade-minigames, as well as solve logical puzzles straight out of a computer science textbook, for example "winning 5-in-a-row against a perfect AI" or solving the "four color mapping problem". I consider this unfortunate, as these "puzzles" feel uninspired, like a poor add-on to hinder progress in an otherwise very atmospheric setting. Granted, these minigames are artistically nicely integrated, using nuts and bolts, levers and buttons, but the point still stands that these additions feel out of place and artificial, and sometimes are frustratingly hard to solve unless you know the "trick". It's easy to forgive the occasional unintuitive puzzle in an adventure game, and it's not always clear where to go next, but that makes victory that much sweeter! If all else fails, a remarkably unusual hint and help system is integrated. Machinarium easily scores a 5 in charm and atmosphere, for it's beautiful (if you like rust and mechanics!) backgrounds and adorable characters, and how it manages to convincingly tell a story with animations and pictures only. The user interface is decidedly simple, but since you can only interact with items close to you, sometimes it's pure guesswork finding out where to stand to uncover something else to do, acerbated by the feeling that some puzzles are way beyond a human's logic to comprehend. This, and the annoying minigames, cost Machinarium the perfect rating for me, but I still had a few very enjoyable days with this indie gem, and would recommend it to classic adventure fans without doubt to have a look at, if only for the nice artwork. Absolutely suitable for children, too, if possibly a bit frustrating at times.

Cant stop listening to it. Of course, beautiful game. Puzzles can be a bit unclear but there's a simple minigame that unlocks a walkthrough if necessary.