I felt compelled to write a review for this because of my very mixed feelings about Machinarium. - Machinarium can be described as a point-and-click puzzle game. As a once avid player of old school adventure games this genre is one I'm rather familiar with. - What works? I think Machinarium is absolutely stunning. You can really imagine how this weird world works, with machines mimicking human behaviour. Brilliant artwork and great music. A beautifully and imaginitive world. Many of the puzzles are mini games, mostly of the logical kind. I know some people will be put of by these but I found most of them very enjoying. Frustration in these puzzles comes from not being able to figure them out but once you do there's that feeling of satisfaction and relief and you go "ah of course!". The hint system is pretty smart and helped a few times. There's also a semi-working walkthrough meaning they know the audience will at some point consult the almighty Internet for walkthroughs... - What doesn't work? If puzzles in the mini games are often in the logic domain, the puzzles in the game world certainly is not. Have you played Samorost (from the same guys)? If not, go do so. In Samorost you're basically in a room you have to get out of and by clicking different things in the room you find the way out and get to the next room. Machinarium plays bascially the same, only you have an inventory and the solution to one room could be in a very different location. The problem is that there's generally no logic to what works so you'll have to randomly click everything to see if something happens or you recieve an item. Often I felt stuck knowing what to do, but was missing some crucial item from a room I've already been in. So everytime you're stuck you start thinking "have I missed an item in some room?" and start going through all rooms, clicking on everything again. The problem having the Samorost "escape the room" mechanic over many different screens is there's exponantially increasing possibilities. There often was another problem with the inventory, that I couldn't see what the object was supposed to be... I clicked something randomly and received something. Is it a rusty nail? A rubber band? All these problems led to me often being frustrated at the game. I can usually forgive one or two pixelhunts in old adventure games, but this seemed like pixel hunting all the time! One could then argue that the walkthroughs available in the game should relieve this frustration; if you're absolutely stuck, just fire up the walkthrough! Problem is, the walkthroughs only shows what to do in that room so if you where supposed to pick something up five rooms ago you still have no idea where to go. The other problem I have with the walkthroughs are that they really shouldn't have to be there! If you expect the player to cheat, perhaps you should instead try and make the puzzles more accessible (and with that I don't mean "easy", but rather "somewhat logic and concievable"). - I really wanted to like this game. The game world is absolutely brilliant - I'd love to see it in a open world point-and-click or something like that - but relying too much on pixel hunting made playing through it a too frustrating experience to be truly enjoyable. 3/5 for lost potential... - (did not mention the problems from having it coded in Flash which often adds a layer of UI frustration of its own)
