Machinarium

As an adventure, Machinarium can’t live up to its impossible visual benchmark, but it gives it a damn good try. If you have played the Gobliiins series (presumably in an attempt to atone for sins committed in a past life) or Samorost, you will get this gist instantly. You control an adorable, nervous little robot thrown on the scrapheap. He has the ability tp pick up items, stretch and squat down, and activate things.

These simple abilities lead to a splendid range of puzzles, and in many cases, ones that just wouldn’t work in another game. Normally, it’d be frustrating to find that, say, a spanner was randomly hidden in a Venus flytrap monster, or that the Key to an elevator’s cupboard was in a service tunnel next to a totally different look.

Here, they generally work because of the exploratory style. This isn’t a game when you solve problems by looking at the screen and working out a big battle plan, but rather by poking and prodding at everything, and combining the results. This makes the game (very slow, at times, especially with the amount of retreading it makes you do) but one with lots of variety, everything from the beating the computer at 5-In-A-Row to SpaceInvaders and actively failing a challenge just to get the challenger angry.