Machinarium (PC) (2009)

Overview: A point-and-click adventure where you're a robot trying to save his girlfriend.



20120801:
On 20160205, without looking at my screenshots, I was under the impression that I stopped playing Machinarium before figuring out how to cross the bridge.

However, upon finding my screenshot record, I discovered that I figured out how to cross the bridge and stopped playing immediately thereafter. It's instances like these which remind me that memories are frail.

Steam Game Time: 13 minutes

Near the beginning of the game

[20160205]

20160205:
While I started this game once before, I just went ahead and started over from the beginning, achieving my previous progress point in approximately 11 minutes, 2-3 minutes faster than previous.

Afterwards I continued playing and stopped when I managed to open the first two jail cells and was stuck trying to figure out how to open the third; I was quite sleepy.


Thus far the game is fun and the puzzles varied in difficulty from medium to difficult but clickable options are limited so the game essentially guides me in the right direction. In addition, the game provides one hint per area but I've yet to use any.

Steam Game Time: 88 minutes (total)
Thoughts:
Pros:
+ Attention to detail, great artwork
+ Great soundtrack
+ Character development


Neutral:
~ I'm not used to shrinking the robot back to normal to regain his normal movement speed. It's a bit annoying.

Recommendation:
Amanita Design has among the best point-and-click adventure games out there and Machinarium doesn't disappoint. If you like Amanita Design's other adventure games (e.g., Samorost (2003), Samorost 2 (2005), Botanicula (2012)), then you should check out Machinarium and vice versa.



20210903:
I thought there would be a save file on Steam Cloud but there wasn't. I decided to start from the beginning.

Gameplay Log:
I was stuck and started reading. I read about the following (spoiler):
"The player should then make Josef go tall and shrink and keep doing this for a time. The Bird will copy Josef and start to bounce up and down on the wire."
I fell asleep with the game on - about 1 hour I was later stuck again and in the bar I used the hint book (that requires a little mini-game to reveal). Via the hint book, I learned that the barrel can be obtained by catching and releasing flies. I thought the flies were to be collected using a lightbulb and so that had me searching. Eventually I randomly tried the weird object (maybe it's a fly trap) and it worked [yes, according to the wiki it is flypaper]
There's a mini-game where the player unlocks a gun and defeats 40 enemies. It's tedious, but that's not the worst. The worst part of the experience was there sounded as though sometimes both the mini-game music and the main game music were playing simultaneously. Other than this, the music in the game was great.

Steam Game Time: 7.0 hours* (session game time) / 8.5 hours* (total game time)
*Includes apprxomiately 1 hour spent sleeping
Machinarium (PC) (2009)

Relevant Links:
Machinarium Website (Demo Available)
Machinarium (Steam Store Page)
Machinarium (Wikipedia.org)

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