Developed by Amanita Design, Machinarium is a soon to be released, independently developed puzzle adventure. A point and click interactive title, Machinarium looks like an indy game that reverts to the tried and true of the old gaming days, while stirring a bit of new-age flair into the mix.

Today we’ll be previewing the game and having a look at its recently released demo, which features three out of thirty maps that pleasantly tested patience, logic and guile.

The demo starts you off at a shot overlooking a desolate, cartoon wasteland, among which the most obvious feature is a towering mechanical city made of scrap metal. It is a clear motive of the developers to ensure a lost, yet childish feel to Machinarium, as all visuals are 2D hand-drawn, with the usual animation works for the interactive dimension. Suffice to say this presentation -- resembling the kind of simplicity you’d expect to see in a web game -- boasts charm and dedication.

Machinarium’s demo lets you play a little nameless robot (nameless as far as the demo is concerned, at least). It turns out the little guy has been tossed into the scrap yard of the city. The game’s website and Steam page flesh out the story a tad more than the demo tends to, stating that: “You will have to get rid of wicked robots from the Black Cap Brotherhood and save the head of the city and also your robot-girl friend”. Moving on into the demo, your robot protagonist happens to be missing a few body parts. For sake of not ruining the puzzle elements of the game, we won’t go into any details about how the player must work their way out of the scrap heap.

Machinarium’s mechanics are simple: the robot can be stretched upwards or shrunk downwards using the cursor in order to interact with otherwise out of reach items. When all his arms and legs are once again intact, the robot can be made to walk around by simply clicking to a location. He will interact with objects that the player must collect in order to solve the game’s puzzles with a simple click. Objects will immediately go up to an inventory bar at the top of the screen, where the character can combine them, wear them, attach them to another object in the world, and utilize them in other various ways.

The second stage of the demo sees the robot scamper over to the looming city. He sees a large, intimidating robot talk to a gatekeeper up on a small tower, and watches on as the gatekeeper lowers the bridge leading into the city. It is shown clearly here that characters in Machinarium won’t be communicating through dialogue; rather, they will understand each other through large speech bubbles featuring a rough sketch of what they’re interested in. The robot passes through and the bridge is raised. It is clear the player’s goal is to somehow find a way into the city in order to rescue his better half.

In the third section, our robot friend finds himself having fallen off the bridge into the city and down near the tracks of a mining cart. This was doubtlessly the most engrossing of all three sections, and had the robot desperately looking for a way to utilize the mining cart (which could be sent rattling down the tracks via a switch in the wall) to his advantage in order to progress further. It took some deep thinking and analysing of the map to work out exactly what to do in order to have everything in place to escape this particular dilemma. Machinarium’s demo made clear that it’s not a game of quick wits and sharp reflexes; it’s more of a fairly good brain work-out.

It’s also revealed that when a player gets stuck, they are allowed one hint in each stage which will nudge them in the right direction in terms of what to do. This is easily done by clicking a large light bulb at the top right corner of the screen. Next to this light bulb, we also found a little icon which led to a small mini-game. The mini-game resembled the old arcade Gameboy graphics, with a little pixelated space ship progressing through a linear level, shooting spiders that leaped up and down on webs.  

Machinarium has plenty of potential, but at the same time,  well, it's not exactly a competitor for this blockbuster winter. That being said, it certainly might make a name for itself. Coming from the developers of popular web games Samorost and Samorost 2, the demo of this upcoming title shows thought and personality, although it remains to be seen how the game’s slow and steady approach is received by gamers who are more and more preferring action packed thrill-rides in the day of next-gen consoles. With a completely original soundtrack (which wasn’t too prominent in the demo), Machinarium releases for online download on October 17^th for $20 on the PC and Mac, and can be pre-ordered on Steam and via the game’s official website.