Machinarium

Machinarium is one of these games that comes along and just makes you happy. Jakub Dvorsky founded Anamita Design in 2003. Based in Brno in the Czech Republic where Illusion Softworks and Pterodon also started life. So something of a hotbead of games development. We caught up with Jakub to get more background on the people behind the game.

“I always wanted to create games with distinctive style and nice graphics, but I didn't want to enter the games industry with all the big and growing companies. So I decided to be freelance graphic designer, animator and illustrator - that's why I founded Amanita Design. However after I published my first free Flash game Samorost on the web, I realized it was so popular that I should try to do it full-time and it worked. We are 7 people now and the vision is still the same - make great games which are fun to create and play.

When we created Machinarium we have several key areas - of course good narrative and character design are important for us, also the whole world where the game takes place must be unique, beautiful and believable. Game design and original puzzles are also more and more important for us. Every aspect must fit together perfectly.”

And so to the Game, Machinarium is a point-and-click adventure. The old-fashioned sort, where one screen can keep you stumped all weekend, where having a notepad to hand is a good idea and where every door and hatchway is guarded by some fiendish puzzle. As amusing as Telltale's Sam & Max games have been, a few hours in Machinarium's arcane steampunk world makes you realise just how far the genre has wandered from its traditionally ruthless roots.

It's the tale of an adorable little robot, cast out from a mechanical city by accident. He must find his way back home, rescue his girlfriend and prevent a gang of robot hoodlums from setting off a bomb. Inventory puzzles are the game's main currency, but it has a refreshing disposable take on this old genre standard. Once a puzzle is overcome, items are automatically discarded, so there's none of the inventory bloat that other adventure games suffer from.

It's a streamlined procession of smaller brain-teasing chunks which lead seamlessly into one another while keeping their mysteries neatly separated. To begin with, the influence of Samorost - the earlier Flash game by creator Jakub Dvorsky - is hard to miss. Puzzles are restricted to just one screen, calling to mind the familiar truncated explore-and-click aesthetic of old, and it doesn't take long to work out the sequence of actions needed to shunt your robot pal a little closer to his goal.

Unlike other point-and-clickers, where you can mouse over everything on-screen to see what can be interacted with, Machinarium only lets you tinker with things that are within reach. Your robot chum is flexible as well, capable of scrunching down to floor level or expanding upwards to reach higher locations. Checking each location for useful features therefore becomes a question of painstaking exploration, making sure that every possible combination of position and height has been exhausted in order to clear each location of every usable trinket.

There is, thankfully, a two-tier hint system available. The first option - a light bulb icon - simply gives you a broad clue as to what you should be trying to do. Like all in-game information, it's presented as a doodle with no further explanation.

If that's not enough, you can access the walkthrough book, which spells out the exact steps required in a sepia comic strip. This information must be earned, however, by playing through a short mini-game in which you guide a key through a Defender-esque cave to a keyhole. It's hardly taxing, but it is intrusive enough to make you think twice about reaching for the answers too quickly. I found that sometimes it would kill you as soon as you started, while other times the key would be left floating in an empty void with no end in sight. If that's punishment for abusing the system, it's never explained. Such helping hands are a luxury in the early stages, but become harder to resist as the puzzles begin to overlap. Often, checking the basic hint offering is the best way to find the start of a puzzle thread, rather than traipsing around working out which of the numerous puzzles available can be tackled first. When the puzzle in question involves putting a cat up a didgeridoo, it's clear that finding the solution through trial and error won't be achievable for everyone.

The game also loves to trip up your progress with more traditional puzzles. Along the way you'll be forced to dust off brain cells to move pegs around, rotate coloured dots to fit a pattern and play leapfrog with arrow buttons. There's one of those sliding-block puzzles that you get in Christmas crackers, and even a protracted version of Connect 4 against a robot hustler.

Your robot hero is an instantly likeable little chap, packed with personality despite never saying a word. Background details abound in the scenery, and there are lots of charming interactions that do nothing to further your game, but raise a smile nonetheless. Watching him strain to do a robot poo before sadly shaking his head, for example, or sliding gleefully down a handrail rather than trot down some stairs. Tim Burton's sketches are an obvious touchstone for the visual style, though I couldn't help but see the work of the wonderful Peter Firmin in its warm, hand-made textures.

The game doesn't bother to mask the fact that it's a simple Flash file, and there are clearly benefits to this low-tech approach. It has a tiny system footprint, it boots up almost instantly and you can resume play only a few seconds after double-clicking the desktop icon.

Machinarium is a game that hooks you with its charm whilst giving you a hugely engaging challenge. We look forward to Animitas next adventure, but expect to be playing Machinarium for quite some time yet.