Machinarium Review

To help solve the puzzles you are given a hint bubble and a walkthrough book. The hint bubble was very minimal and not too helpful as it offered you a single picture of an important object or even an end goal. The walkthrough book however is unlockable by playing a very monotonous game. In this simple game you are a key navigating a simple, dull and sometimes very lengthy space with the ability to shoot at spiders moving up and down.

This mini-game requires no brain skill at all and is designed perfectly. Your choices to complete the actual game puzzles are to use your brain or to not use your brain by playing this simple game. Ironically as I continued I wanted to use the walkthrough book much less because it was so long, boring and made me feel stupid. I wanted to use my brain to solve some of these puzzles and it did succeed in actually making me use it less – not more. If you do genuinely get stuck the walkthrough book shows very clearly how to complete the puzzles on that screen with walkthrough images.

The walkthrough book does not however tell you how to obtain items that come from other places in the Machinarium world. You will need to find them yourself and sometimes it did get fairly difficult to track down the right items. On the odd occasion the puzzles were a bit outlandish in their design with some strange placements. If your memory is good, and you can recall all the game screens, you will have a much easier time. At times the logical connection between the items at other locations was very thin or nonexistent.

The game rarely slips up although I did get a little annoyed when I started an animation sequence and would not be able to stop mid way through. There was also one section that allowed me to loop back down to an older area. Because I was struggling with the new puzzle I did this a few times in order to try to solve it. However to go back to the new area I would have to repeat the same puzzle clicks on an elevator contraption that I did previously. Minor problems aside the Machinarium world is a great place to visit, it’s interesting, well designed and has some good audio tunes. I felt challenged by the puzzles but with the walkthrough book it’s not a hard game, even still it’s a great puzzle game with relatively few faults.

Machinarium is a flash game, but honestly it does not matter and it should make no difference on your decision to test out this clever little puzzle game. Flash is purely the medium to present us with some amazing art work and interesting puzzles. Indeed the art is probably one of the greatest features of Machinarium. The volume of drawn detail in every scene, the characterisation of the robots and the short animation bubbles is impressive. Nothing feels disconnected and I felt compelled to continue viewing the story of this little robot character.

Machinarium can be found at the budget price online, and many wouldn’t pay more considering its flash powered. However later in the game I felt somewhat guilty buying the game for such a low price when it’s simply a fantastic game. Even if you just dabble in the odd puzzle game from time to time Machinarium is highly recommended.