izigame.me

Holy heck why did nobody ever tell me about this!? Machinarium is one of the most unique click and point games I've ever played and a huge part of it has to deal with the art direction. Best way I can describe it is that it's like those old children's books your parents used to read you as a kid. Hand drawn, painted, and brought to life with fluid animation. The amount of effort put into every detail of the world, and making it sound believable thanks to good sound design is stunning. Soundtrack is lovely too and I like how they communicate the story through little imagined pictures without using a single word. I really love this game, but I probably wouldn't say it's for everyone. As neat as the art direction and presentation is it leads to a lot of obtuse puzzles. There's a hintbook to help you, but it contains a mini-game that is impossible to beat. So halfway through you're probably going to be consorting an online guide for help, which does remove a lot of the fun these games have. I didn't really care though. Machinarium is further proof of video games being art. I have a good feeling a decent chunk of the people who worked on this game are artists or worked on children books at some point. It's a game where the style is the substance, and I love it.