Review | Machinarium
It’s just splendid. It dances from freeform jazz to ambient post-rock, but always with such clarity and sensibility, never settling into the background but always understated, elegant and evocative. A whole puzzle even revolves around one cute little motif. It’s all composed by Tomas Dvorak, a long-time collaborator with Amanita. Though every one of the team’s games sounds wonderful, this is easily his finest work to date.
The cherry on the icing on the already delicious cake is how neatly it all works together to create a marvellous whole, the artwork and the music and delightful diegetic sounds combining with such cohesion, such tremendous brilliance, that it’s almost overwhelming. The only thing spoiling Amanita’s masterful vision is an irritating remnant of its Flash-based development. Right-clicking brings up the standard settings menu, when you might expect it to de-select an inventory item. Until you get used to this quirk, expect to see it popping up frequently, prodding a tiny hole in the otherwise inescapable atmosphere.
//A whole new world
That atmosphere is what absolutely defines the game. It’s not just through its audiovisual flair that Machinarium absorbs, either. Amanita have a penchant for storytelling like no other, using a variety of nonlinguistic cues that remain utterly compelling throughout.
Interestingly, the developers have downplayed Machinarium’s narrative in the pre-release hype. They were either being hugely modest, or haven’t realised just how powerful this charming tale really is. It’s all about the simplicity, with every piece of the story told through endearingly animated thought bubbles or simply by the world itself. To tell a story so rich, without any need for dialogue, is a stroke of brilliance. It sets a new benchmark for the style.
Machinarium begins with little context, but snippets of background emerge with every new character you meet. It’s the story of Josef, an alarmingly cute little automaton who has, for some reason, been thrown out of the city of Machinarium, dropped onto a pile of scrap metal in the wasteland beyond its walls. Attempting to sneak back in, he inadvertently uncovers a plot by the evil Black Cap Brotherhood – a villainous group of thugs whose sense of humour resembles that of a school bully – to bomb the entire place. To make matters worse, his girlfriend’s been kidnapped too. What a conundrum.
While there’s nothing immediately special about the premise, its complete lack of pretension makes it thoroughly engrossing, and unmuddied by speech it remains innocent and playful throughout, even in its darker moments. But the mood swings wildly. It is in turn laugh-out-loud funny, quietly disturbing, heartbreakingly tragic and gleefully uplifting. Machinarium might be a game about robots, but the effervescent humanity of the tale and its characters makes the whole thing shine.
The city of Machinarium, rusty and worn, breathes with life. Play for just half an hour, and you might be forgiven for assuming it to be a linear series of rooms, with a lightweight puzzle barring your entry to the next. But the game quickly extends into a sprawling, interconnected hub. Each area links seamlessly with those adjacent, and discovering how it all joins up is fascinating. Even when it approaches non-linearity, Machinarium’s world is spectacularly cohesive.
While it may have been nice to see more of the place, or to see it more densely populated, it remains one of gaming’s few actually convincing cities. But the hub is also the precursor to Machinarium’s biggest problem. Its maze of interconnected rooms, corridors and courtyards is impressive, but the puzzle structure becomes slightly confusing as a result.
[Continues...]
Actually, you can get back up. Interact with the character at the window, have them help you “refuel” and you’re good to go.
Actually, you can get back up. Interact with the character at the window, have them help you “refuel” and you’re good to go.
Needless to say, the rest of your review is spot on and this game is stunning. Just play it.
Well you’ve sold me. Great review Lewis. Looks brilliant, once I get some spare cash I’ll definitely look into it.
It sounds great but… I hate when reviews force you to click through a ton of pages for a review that isn’t even brutally long. Frustrating for me to read and it’s just to increase your hit counts.
Just for reference: Page-hits don’t actually mean much – unique visitors are what advertisers tend to go by. The reason we do multi-page reviews is simply to avoid mega-stretches of white space down the right hand side. We’re a bit OCD like that. :-)
It’s oh so tempting to buy this now, with a penchant to ‘arty’ games, the visuals alone have me sold. Once Lucidity and Axel and Pixel are done with then this will likely jump to the top of my list.
Haven’t I been saying that this is 2009’s World of Goo? I think I have been proven right :D
If it is even half as pleasurable as Samorost is then this game should win every prize going. Except maybe Best Mac Game… Why isn’t there a Mac version!?!??!?!
There is, I believe.
Oh yes! Laptop gaming, here I come!
In revealing the existence of a Mac version, Denby makes another dream come true!
Quality review, and also a heartfelt appraisal of the game. I’ve just got to a part where, through a myriad of spoiler-laden reasons, the little robot did a groovy dance. It was wonderful.
I really like it, but it could be faster, u take sooooooo long simply to push a button ou move from on side to other. I’m not talking about the puzzles, it’s about the animations.
[...] But even this doesn’t justify the omission of a plot – one only has to look as far as Machinarium to see that a gripping story can be carried off with aplomb despite the absence of speech. The [...]
This game totally RULEZ!!! 10/10
[...] (9/10) resolution-magazine.co.uk [...]
Hello,
those of you who enjoyed Machinarium soundtrack might be interested in hearing that Machinarium 14 song soundtrack will be released in February by Minority
Records (www.minorityrecords.com) in an edition of 555 hand-numbered LPs, 405 copies on black and 150 on clear yellow copies. Minor changes have been made in the track list: in comparsion to the official OST, there is new song “By the Wall” included, and the samba song (Prague radio) was left out.
Each copy is signed by the author himself and contains three art reproductions by Adolf Lachman and coupon with a code to download both FLAC and MP3 versions of the songs, including the bonus EP.
You can pre-order your copy now at Minority Records website (http://www.minorityrecords.com) and your copy will ship on February 20th.