Do you like point and click adventures? They are like the hidden object games but you have to solve puzzles by using different items in certain places instead of looking for hidden objects.

This genre isn’t very popular between casual games developers yet but many modern hidden obects games are very close to the point and click adventures.

However some companies makes a lot of money by developing and selling adventure games. Like, for example, TellTale Games that is famous by giving a new life to old classic quests Sam & Max and The Monkey Island and who also developed an award winning set of episodes about Strong Bad that is called Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.

There is also a small Czech company called Amanita Design that is not as popular as TellTale Games, but they create the most unusual adventures you can imagine. Their first game, Samorost, is available to play online for free. And a sequel (Samorost 2) costs as little as $5 and is also available from their website.

But recently they published another game. The game with the amazing hand-drawn graphics. The game that win numerous awards. The game about  a small robot in a strange world. And this game is called Machinarium.

The game starts with the episode where someone throw your character from the top of the tallest tower of the city to the dump outside. And now you have not just to find a way back, but also to save the city from the explosion.

After a small tutorial that teach you how to assemble your robot from different parts arount the dump you are on your own. Don’t expect much of help from the outside world. Although you always can play a minigame and get a detailed explanation of what to do next. Unfortunately, the interface is not very friendly. You can’t see which items are usable and which are not until you come close to them. And sometimes it makes different to find items and to find a place where they have to be used. Also if you accidently click on the far side of the room and your robot begin to go there, you can’t cancel it and turn him back until he finish the movement. And if you pick up an item from the inventory, you can’t click a right mouse button or something to put it back. You have to move the mouse cursor to the inventory and put it back. And because of so many problems with the interface the game is not an easy to play.

But what you’ll get if you are ready to suffer the unfriendly interface?

The mot interesting feature of this game is that you can resize your robot. There are buttons that you can’t reach while you big, and there are objects that you can’t get while you small. Developers created many puzzles based on the correct size of the robot for a certain situation. So be ready to stretch and squeeze often.

To make the game even harder, the developers allowed us to combine items in the inventory. This is rare feature in modern aventures because its usually hard to find a right place to use an item. And its much harder to guess how the items should be combined and then to find where to use them. And although in most cases you can’t get from one room to another until you solve all puzzles in the room, prepare to spend a lot of time trying to find out what to do next.  Because many puzzles are not obvious. So if you don’t like adventures that are hard to play, this game is not for you.

So, the interface is almot terrible, the gameplay is a hardcore. And what about the graphics and sounds? As I said before, the game is completely drawn by hand. It has around 30 complex and very detailed locations. There are some rumours that guys from Amanita Design have hired a famous artist to draw the game.But I can’t say it for sure.

Machinarium is well-animated. It has small cutscenes. And also small cartoons about the past life of the main hero. These cartoons are used to show us some funny episodes or to introduce us the new characters that we meet around the game. And sometimes we get hints from them. Oh, and if you want to see the funniest cutscenes, just don’t touch the mouse and let your character take some rest.

The game has a background music to accentuate the style of the game. Sounds are soft and fits perfectly. The sound engineers did great job.

So, despite of awful user interface Machinarium offers hours of fun with a stunning graphics and sounds and a whole bunch of puzzles that are hard to solve. It costs $20, which I believe is a bit too much for a game like this. And you can play the demo online. You don’t have to download it to try.

Tags: Game Reviews