Humble Bundle 2 Reviews - Machinarium

The Humble Bundle 2 is available for another couple of days (Total at time of writing over $1.5!) They have recently added Steam access to the games and thrown in the games from the original bundle free of charge so there is even more reason to grab a copy if you haven't already.

The second review in the series is Machinarium which is an old skool point and click adventure in the style of Monkey Island and the like.

The game tells the tale of a little robot called Josef who has been dumped in the wilderness by gangsters who have kidnapped his girlfriend. You have to traverse across several screens full of puzzles and quests to get her back and thwart the evil robots.  

Like Braid what sets this apart from the crowd is the spectacular artistic direction and story telling.  Everything from the little touches in the animation (Like the way Josef slides down banisters, or dreams about his girlfriend when you leave him to his own devices ) to the wonderful scribbley line drawings that take the place of dialogue screams attention to detail. 

The puzzles are tricky, but satisfying when you complete them and in a genius move a full guide is always available but each page can only be accessed by playing a time consuming mini game meaning you only ever look when you really need to, 

I straight up loved this game. It's fairly short (I finished it in a couple of evenings of casual play) and has zero replay value, but both as a narrative and as a lateral thinking puzzle it has been one of my favourite games of the year.