After a little week off from iPhone games review (Midterms Madness Go!), I am back with a review of the much-awaited indie game by the developers of Samorost 1 and 2: Machinarium.

Machinarium (PC, Mac)
Developed by Amanita Design
Released on October 16, 2009

Machinarium is, at its heart, a return to the classical definition of a point-and-click adventure game. The gameplay is very traditional; you go from screen to screen and you solve puzzles to advance. Those puzzles mostly falls into two categories: one will have you use various items on the environment, like those old adventure games from the 90’s, and the other will have you solve mini-game puzzles that are more reminiscent of Myst, like sliding stones, playing leap frog with arrows and connecting lights to create shapes. You’ll even get to play a Space Invaders clone on your journey through the steam-punk city of Machinarium. One of the interesting aspects of the game is that you have to move your little robot close to items and mechanism before picking them up or using them. That kind of removes the tedious pixel hunting that can go on in games of the same genre.

Everything starts of pretty easily, but as the game goes you will be faced with more and more challenging puzzles. The items matching puzzles aren’t the hardest part; the real difficulty will come from the mini-games puzzles. Thankfully, the game comes with two hint systems. One will give you a small hint in the form of a thought bubble, and the other consist of an in-game guide with all the solutions to all the puzzles. The only thing stopping you from getting to that guide, beyond any shame of taking the easy way out, is a little side-scrolling shooter mini-game that lasts about 15 seconds. Just enough to make you think about it before you overuse the guide.

If anything, the real hook of this game is the aesthetic direction. First, there is the music. The nice ambient tracks by Tomas Dvorak really set the mood of the game; calm with and underlying aura of mystery. Secondly, as Michael Abbott recently posted on his blog, hand-drawn graphics are currently living some sort of resurgence and Machinarium sure is part of it. While the lo-fi charm remains the same, the guys from Amanita Design departed from the “photo-realistic surrealism” of Samorost 1 to something more logic and believable in term of universe (while keeping it weird and offbeat), with some beautiful hand-drawn graphics for all the screens and the characters. And even if they never speak a word, or just have thought bubbles at best, each and every single of the robots you meet in the game (from the bullying Black Cap Brotherhood to the street musicians) are unique and filled with personality.

The most speaking example of this is your little robot avatar. From the start of the game, you will fall in love with him and his story. While nothing is exposed directly to you in term of story, the little thought bubbles of your avatar when he sees something that reminds him of earlier days, or just when you idle for too long, do more than enough to get you to know this little chap and the universe he lives in. While the universe and the plot seems light at times, the whole thing being pretty much a save the princess story, there is a very dark depiction of the world under all of this. But this analysis is for another time.

Even with its fairly standard gameplay, Machinarium offers an original and stylish presentation of an old genre with a very touching story and a universe that begs to be explored. For 20$, this is one of the finest, most original, point-and-click adventure game I’ve played in the last few years.