Does the robot have a heartbeat?? Can he play cards recklessly, can he play musical instruments and compose compositions himself?? Could his neighbor, who wants to relax in silence, not like this?? Will the robot take care of his friend, will he go to church on Sunday morning? And what will happen if one of the robots is sent to a landfill, thrown out of the city as unnecessary, destroyed and forgotten, and he tries to return to where soulless, gray machines rule?. Machines that have no heart. Big loving metal heart.

In the silent silence of the iron city

I immediately want to drive away the stupid “indie” console from the game. "Machinarium" the project, of course, is unconventional, but only in style; in essence, it is a classic quest with complex and sometimes far from obvious tasks. And with such puzzles that Eysenck with an IQ test he can smoke big Cuban cigars and not just envy, but burn with shame for his work.

"Machinarium" – this is the type of quest that people strive for "Petka" and others "Shtyrlitsy". Here you enter a location and look at it for about five minutes. What kind of bird is this on the wires, why does the butterfly fly for three minutes and then sit on the railing, why does the old woman think about infinity? Moreover, unlike the miserable Russian quests, in "Machinarium" there really is logic and common sense. That is, to make the car move, you don’t have to guess that you need to pick a cow’s nose, then snoop three times, and then spit into the exhaust pipe.

And, of course, there is style here. Moreover, it is solid, homogeneous and extremely unique. In the game, the robots will not say a word, and therefore the developers had to show everything by their appearance. Sadness, sadness, severity, peace. Even tasks are given to us exclusively in pictures. The old man in the wheelchair creaks, cannot get up, barely raises his arms, winces, sighs and hands us an empty oil can. Isn’t it clear what he wants?? Or a musician tries to play a saxophone solo, but his fingers fall into the holes where the buttons should be. So we need to find him some nuts that will fix everything.

But these are flowers, what really amazes is the general style of everything "Machinarium". The developers have created an uncomfortable little world, a kind of police state, where cheerful and capable robots sit in prisons, and they are ruled by soulless mechanisms. They are always strict, calm, unemotional. And the landscapes: gray streets, gray houses, gray skies. And silence, only the creak and rumble of the hero’s steps.

And against this background, sometimes characters appear with completely human habits. Our hero, for example, misses his beloved very much, the robot wrench is upset because his gramophone was taken away from him and he cannot dance. When the time comes, the old woman is baptized and enters the church, and the apathetic prisoner is ready to help us for a cigarette.

Even the animals here are metal. The cat sleeps on the roof, and when we try to catch it, it meows displeasedly and runs away. Rats scurry through landfills, birds fly overhead. World "Machinarium" very similar to ours, only robots live here instead of people and animals. And in everyone you can see a familiar type. In a cheerful musician and an evil bandit.

Robot https://fruity-vegas-casino.co.uk/ logic, human intuition

And at the same time, all the local splendor is created using flash technology. For those who are familiar with the studio’s work Amanita Design – this is not news. But it’s time for everyone else to be surprised, because the developers don’t use anything that makes “adult” quests beautiful.

Moreover, flash does not limit the game in any way. Remember any classic quest: “Siberia”, Broken Sword, even domestic monsters – all of them are technically in no way superior "Machinarium".

Moreover, there are even some completely innovative features here (and this is in a quest – the most conservative genre!). Our robot is capable of stretching itself upward, after which it becomes long, like a sausage, and terribly awkward; or maybe shrink like a flattened aluminum can. Many tasks will have to be solved in one of these two states. Either there is something hanging high on a rope – you have to reach it, then you have to crawl into the hole.

But the gameplay itself is quite reminiscent of classic quests, in which at each “ekarn” (level) several riddles await us, and until we figure them out, we will hardly be able to go further. It’s pretty simple at first. We pick up our body piece by piece and try to get back to the city. But they don’t let us through, the guard shows that there are enough of us like us here, and we don’t need more of them. Green light for police only. Therefore, we look at the classic representative of this caste – he is tall and with a blue striped hat. We have to pretend to be the same. This means we find paint, a cap, a brush, use the whole thing, paint it, add a little height and they already accept us as one of their own.

It seems simple, but more often the level turns into hell. You look at him and think: what do you want, you bastard??! We were solving a puzzle, and the bird ate one of the chips. She sits on a pole, looks at us, and you can’t catch her. There is no stick, I can’t throw anything, and my hands can’t reach it. We walk back and forth, and she still mocks us – she repeats after us. It also moves along an electrical wire and constantly watches what our robot is doing.

And the solution turns out to be ingeniously simple. The bird follows us? Yes, but will our actions be repeated?? We stretched out and she stood on tiptoes, we crouched down, she shrank. They got up again, she teases – repeats. And if we do this five times, the wire will break and the ugly thing will jump on the asphalt.

And these kinds of problems occur here all the time. You yourself don’t understand how you solve them, because there was not a single hint. This is how you know that the magnifying glass you received is needed in order to see the butterfly that landed on the railing. And all in order to then repeat her ornament on the rebus at the front door. You grab your head, stretch out your hands to the sky and ask: “Well, how do I know all this, when in every game insects are a decorative element?!».

But there are, of course, simpler problems when you just need to be smart. We approach the old lady, we see that she thinks about infinity. Nearby we find a piece of paper in which drawings from the city clock are indicated, as well as the same infinity sign. Using the lever, we set the desired time, the granny goes to the temple, and in its place there is a second piece of paper, there are different symbols there. We use them, a third robot is sent to duty, and during his absence we steal a loudspeaker from his house.

There are hundreds of such examples. But I don’t want to ruin the fun. Of course, you can reach most of them yourself. With obscenities through his teeth, with stunned eyes, when it suddenly turns out that this crazy combination of objects and this procedure opened the door. But if you can’t guess what’s going on, there are two types of clues:. First – the hero is simply thinking about how he could complete the level. He has a key event running through his head, but it does little to help you. The second type is the complete passage of the “screen”, but to get it, you need to win the arcade game, like a dandy. It’s a difficult dog, but if you can do it, you just need to repeat what’s shown in the pictures.

But, in fact, only together with the magnificent world the process of solving quests is truly enjoyable. After all, each new level, each character reveals a little, not just a secret, but simply the plot of the game. We start with an empty head – nothing is known. And then it turns out that the hero has a beloved, we learn about the plans of the bandits to destroy the city, we ourselves meet the villains. And it seems there is not a single dialogue here, no one utters a word, but we help the humiliated and insulted, look for a friend, learn the history of the world.

Defeat the system

But it’s one thing to solve quest problems and reveal the plot, another thing to sit through mini-games. It feels like the developers found all the harshest things in the world and stuck it in the city of robots.

It seems that you were moving through locations, combining objects correctly, guessing what to pull, what to pull, and then you ran into some kind of mechanism, and. Kill two or three hours playing checkers with a drunkard in a bar? Easily. He puts the bolts, you put the nuts. Whoever collects five chips in a line first wins. The enemy simply tears apart the newcomers, and after the victory he laughs delightfully.

Many of the games are purely logical. You have to guess the sequence, move the cursors correctly, calculate. A real test for humanists and girls. Killing a few hours on this is quite possible, and not at all an exaggeration.

And often we are simply exhausted after another riddle. However, sometimes they can surprise us in a kind way. For example, when the hero needs to get into the laboratory, but a huge robot fan doesn’t let him in. The blades are spinning, we can’t get through. And he, like the sphinx, asks us three riddles. We answer correctly, he slows down, and then falls asleep completely. But you still can’t get through – the fan is slow, but it works. We wake him up, he again gives three riddles. Then he falls asleep – and all over again. You guess five times, seven – and nothing. And then you accidentally make a mistake, and your opponent starts to get angry and puff. One more mistake, and the problem book trembles, almost explodes. And then it’s enough to choose the answer at random one last time, it’s torn apart, and the path is clear. Who would have thought that it would be solved like this?.

But this miracle will end very quickly. If you don’t rack your brains over puzzles for a long time, you can complete the game in two or three days. And you won’t want to return to it the second time; it, like almost any quest, is one-time only. However, the impressions that will remain after passing. No, they can no longer be forgotten. World "Machinarium" will be imprinted in our memory forever. And just as we remember Myst and “Siberia”, we will remember him too. Years later we will write that the games are no longer the same, but back in 2009 there was one project created in flash and with a cute name "Machinarium".

Pros: amazing style, panache; complex riddles that take a long time to puzzle over; general atmosphere.
Cons: you cannot use the right mouse button; brevity of the game.