Josh Reviews: Machinarium

This is the problem with starting up a new thing and setting yourself a goal - you immediately forget about it until about 10 minutes before your self imposed deadline. That's exactly what happened to me on Saturday night, so I failed one week in! Still, it's my deadline so I can do whatever I wish with it. This week I'll try and do it on time, I promise.

Seeing as I've been busy with work this week, I haven't had much time for playing new games, just the old standbys. I did however boot up a game I received in a game bundle called Machinarium. Seeing as I haven't spent that much time with it, this is more of an impression than a review.

Machinarium is an old school point and click adventure game with a lot of charm for such a simple game. Well, I say simple, sometimes the puzzles that you need to solve can be a tad infuriating! In the traditional point-and-click style, you walk around the environment (by pointing and clicking no less!) trying to work out how to advance to the next part of the story by solving the puzzle that you are presented with.

 The difficulty of these tasks is largely subjective, one person may spend forever trying to solve a level while another person might just 'get it' instantly. Even on the most difficult levels, the one thing that can keep you going is the absolutely gorgeous game art. It's like playing a game that's been made inside a painting. The size of the screenshots here really don't do the game justice. The soundtrack is well written as well, it really fits with the atmosphere that the game produces. It's easy to see that a lot of love and care has gone into making this game and that effort has paid off! The game is really worth giving a go.

You can find a demo of the game and more information at the game's website - http://machinarium.net/demo/
The game is written in Flash, so it will run on most operating systems with flash support. You can buy the game from the website for $20 which includes the game's soundtrack, or the game is available for £14.99 from good old Steam sans soundtrack.

Next week: Osmos. Of course by next week I mean this week, look for the next review around Friday

TTFN