Unassembled, Machinarium is a grandiose game. The narrative includes many sensational and evocative storylines: opportunistic kidnapping, soulless assault, arbitrary worship and hopeless institutionalism. But essentially, it’s just a game about one small and humble robot whose name is never mentioned.
Plot and gameplay
The robot hero is not trying to change the world. He only wants to regain his place in it after being scrapped. He has no discernible abilities, only the fairly simple skill of stretching out to full height or shrinking like a tin can. Such a skill allows you to perform some tasks, where you have to reach objects that are high or, conversely, curl up, so that the dimensions allow you to crawl into the right place.
The main task of the hero – to correct the injustice of his world. Depending on the location, he finds useful items, furniture and other robots. Rearrange them, exploit them for a specific purpose in order to achieve his goal. Despite some traditional mechanical action, the use of some objects is still quite original at times.
The use of objects is clearly intended to brighten up the “dull” world of the game. Essentially, if not engaged in rearranging and other such machinations, there is nothing for the hero to do but follow the cursor and pull-in. Tasks in the form of individual little games that are encountered along the way also have a positive effect. They complete the picture and make it a full-fledged quest, which is what Machinarium is.
Game Mechanics Machinarium
The method of interacting with the environment further focuses on clever level design and beautifully rendered visuals (which won the Visual Arts Excellence Award at the Independent Game Festival). An additional benefit of the game is the original soundtrack, including a background soundtrack with “subtle” in-game lines.
The world of Machinarium is set up in such a way that the hero always has only four or five single-screen locations to navigate and solve puzzles at once. This allows for deftly solving situational problems that require a chain of sequential actions. The optimised inventory also contributes to this. Cute Robot never carries more items than it needs. What’s more, he never needs to organise unnecessary supplies, which eliminates the burden of gameplay.
Machinarium game conclusion
Narrative puzzles provide moments of levity and visual entertainment. Nevertheless, it’s the logical challenges that really get the player’s mind working to its full potential. That said, finding clues isn’t everything. The significance of the buttons being pressed must also be kept in mind. Some tasks even require you to discard logic, and include pure ingenuity. Out-of-the-box thinking and minimalistic graphics are two key features of Machinarium.