---

I was originally going to just make a few changes to the original 2015 review and be done with it (the references to "screaming when playing a Flash game" was because I believe I was still on a 2010 MacBook at the time). In 2017 an updated version was released that made it DirectX-based rather than Flash-based, which is what I decided to play again. The new review recycles a few parts of the old review, so it's not necessary to read it.

I first played Machinarium back in 2011 with the Humble Indie Bundle (back when Humble Bundles were good and decently priced and not filled with itch.io trash), and I remember enjoying it. It was a graphic adventure game with some nice graphics and music (Flash based). The Robot (apparently named Josef, but never in-game, even instructions) often has thoughts that indicate what you should do next, his past, and his interactions with other characters, particularly two black-capped robots who by all indications are cruel bullies but evolve to full-blown terrorists before you finish even a third of the game. They place a bomb on a large tower, which has a payload of small purplish fruit (I guess the bomb itself would chemically change it into something less inert?)

The puzzles are good and closer to LucasArts than Sierra (nothing too weird, and no game overs, both real and lock-outs)...in one puzzle, you're in a prison cell. There's a sewer lid, a rusty pipe with a handle and a bit of slimy grass growing on the moisture, a light, a toilet, toilet paper, a hole too small to fit into, and a robot in need of a cigarette. What do you do? The solution is to remove the handle and the slimy grass, put the slimy grass on the light to dry it out, combine it with the toilet paper to make a cigarette to give it to the robot, and using his arm he lends you, extend it to a nearby cell to grab a broom, then use the broom and handle to escape through the sewers.

In my "update" run I went through a quarter of the game, escaping the prison and racking up a few achievements in the process but was reminded why some of the game gets a bit annoying. It's not all puzzle inventories, it's strange interfaces that make little sense (I stopped on the magnet controls part, which is just a jumping-arrows puzzle). In my old review I mentioned "trial-and-error/guesswork" which was not entirely true, one puzzle requires you to move a pole with one control doing X and Y coordinates (not that hard once you know how it works), the "crossing wires" puzzle was a little more obtuse since it required you to look at the wire colors actually were, and (in my initial run) one instance of a hair-pulling gomoku game that ruined the game for at least one person (of all the things in the game, that was one of the more frustrating puzzles that couldn't be fixed with a walkthrough). I noted that it wasn't as difficult or demoralizing as a memory game in Eric the Unready (a largely bad game that I've mostly purged from my memory) but the point remains and I think I've gotten an idea of how I was going to rate it. It was a great experience the first time but I remember liking Braid and VVVVVV a lot more, so it only gets a Solid (it could've gotten a GOOD but I don't want to go the modern review direction and put SOLID as "it kinda sucked"), and I still like the presentation (even if the 2017 update made it more "console-friendly", never a good sign). To compare, I kind of liked Osmos and And Yet It Moves but they were never able to pull through the end like Machinarium did.

FINAL RATING:   

Back...