Machinarium Review

In the world of Machinarium you play as a robot who will overcome some challenging puzzles to free other robots, free yourself and stop “bad” robots from blowing up a tower. All of this puzzle solving is set in a uniquely stylized mechanical world which feels fresh and interesting. Some of the puzzles that form during the game are a little abstract but many are straightforward, giving you just enough hints to complete them. There are quite a few brain teasers here too, the type that would be more at home on an IQ test rather than in a game. If you do play Machinarium persist with the puzzles for as long as you can as they are quite rewarding on completion. The game includes a walkthrough book and a hint bubble for those who are a little lost so you won’t even need to search elsewhere for a walkthrough. It all begins with wonderful art and good music tracks that complement the smart puzzle design.

Machinarium is a charming puzzle game that will probably last you a good six hours at a steady pace depending on your aptitude. You control a robot that has a few movement restrictions in a delightfully metallic world. You aren’t free to move anywhere on the screen, rather discrete spaces next to objects or buttons. You can use your extendable height to make yourself taller or shorter to gain access to things above or below you in these discrete places. This height feature wasn’t used very much and only stumped me early on. As the robot you can only interact, and see objects to interact with, when you are in range of them. This includes those above and below you so you may need to stretch yourself if you get stuck. The game sets its own style by not having any dialogue or text to tell a tale. All the story elements are done cleverly with animation bubbles that show a sketch about the current situation or the events leading to it. Once you acquaint yourself to the robot world you’ll need to start solving puzzles to progress.

Basically you’ll be required to find items, combine them and use various tools to accomplish some typical tasks. The animation bubbles will tell you what you need; the world will tell you were to find those items. As you progress throughout the game some of the puzzles are quite challenging brain teasers. These brain teasers are pure puzzles in the sense you may have to move knobs in the correct order to unlock something, control a computer to fill up squares with no blank spaces, or move beads around a circuit in the correct order.

I was surprised at the raw genius required to brute force these compulsory puzzles at times. While some are tough, many are actually deceivingly difficult; taking a break will probably jolt your brain into action. Even looking closely at the puzzle before just clicking things will help immensely. One puzzle near the end however involved a musical tune that needed to be repeated on a keyboard at another location. Clearly I was tone deaf because I was quite a way off the actual tune, and I had been trying for quite some time. Luckily the walkthrough book located at the top of the screen was there to lend a helping hand telling me the exact key sequence. Thankfully you can request a little bit of help in game to solve the harder puzzles.

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.