When Machinarium was made available for download on Steam, I paid no heed to the steam punk like poster that promoted happy robots making their way through a post-apocalyptic world where robots have thrived similarly as how humans did.

Machinarium is beautiful. In its three years of development, you can clearly see how much love, detail and passion had been brought into a USD $1,000 budget game. Clearly, the vision of Machinarium was to create a beautiful world first full of characters, conflict and backstory and it just so happens to play itself out without the use of any words. The art direction is amazing. No, it’s beautiful.

In terms of difficulty, we’re not looking at a Myst-like learning curve, it can get tough (!!!) but the game definitely is challenging, especially when you approach the non-linear like puzzles of the latter chapters. Being a refreshing point and click game reminiscent of Sierra’s “Quest” series, our little robot hero with the stretching body can interact and combine highlighted objects within several points of interest around every scenario.

The beauty of Machinarium is its storytelling. There are no speaking lines in the game, and everything is played out through the stick figure memories of our robot hero, as he encounters past antagonists while he tries to unite with his true love.

Machinarium is definitely something players of my generation (and the new) should try out. At only USD $19.99 on Steam for PC, it is definitely something worth playing for the holidays or giving as a gift to friends. There are also Macintosh and Linux versions available for download on their website.

Still not convinced? Play the demo for free on your browser.