Machinarium, you lovable monster

Previous post stated that I  bought the Humble Botanicula Debut, which I did. Botanicula is an amazing discovery game and is infinitely cute, but the real prize here is Machinarium, another game in the same pay-what-you-want bundle.

The game is a 2D point-and-click adventure game, a nearly dead genre. This game requires that you have adequate thinking skill, persistence to figure out what you have to do next, a good brain to solve some puzzles, and, most of all, the desire and patience to click every dang surface in the game, to try combining every item with every other item, and to try using every item with every surface that you can interact with. In other word, it's a point-and-click adventure game. Not really special in this regard. 
 

The scenes, however, the visual, is stunningly beautiful, in a steampunk sort of way. The animation is fluid and detailed. And although it has no dialogue, at all, it can still tell a story with its animations and visual dialogue boxes. It's music is nice and very fitting with the atmosphere too.

Visual, music, and gameplay tests are passed. It's a great game and I really like it. Here's the deal though: At times it can be real frustrating trying to figure out what to do, or how you can do what you want to do, or which surface you can press to get what you want. Its logic can sometimes end up being utter nonsense.

Okay, so there's a little round door at the ground. You can't open it, probably locked. But there's no keyhole, so it probably doesn't use a regular key. You look around, and after doing some things end up with another robot's longer arm and a piece of wood. There's a mouse hole to the room left, so you use the robot's arm to go though it. At the end, you find a mop-scubber thing. Not... sure what it's supposed to be called in English. After having it, you happily give the robot's arm back. So what now? Combine the wooden stick with the scrubber so it stick at its end, and use it to open the door. Yeah, it's not making things clear for me.

Sure, it makes sense in the game's gameplay context.The wooden stick can't be combined with every other object, and it's obviously supposed to be used on something. It only works with the door, so it must be the key. No other explanation, not even why you can't just use the wooden stick or stick it with the robot's arm or something. Still, with the game being as it is, if you find a solution to your problem, no matter how nonsensical it is, you'll be real happy just for solving it.

Oh, but the game is still great. I love this monster of a puzzling game. And it has a full visual in-game walkthrough for when you're really stuck and/or really desperate, so it's not that bad. In fact, I like it so much, I make a forum sig of it. Click for full view.

It was meant to show the game's various environments, then the plan got derailed. Now it's just a nice slightly emotional piece. Ah, it's been a while since I mess with Photoshop, and this one doesn't look too bad.

Might post my impression of Botanicula too some day.