Machinarium

A classic adventure game that paved the path to many others. Machinarium was one of those flash games that had higher quality than 99% of flash games in the 2000s. It's also tied to most of the same issues as other flash games, the infamous right click menu is there and some weird hotspot detection. It's one of those games with no dialogue at all, everything is conveyed by comic like bubbles showing concepts, requests, or issues the characters have. You are Josef, a small robot thrown into a junkyard, your first task is assemble yourself by finding your robotic body parts. Your actions, apart from the typical adventure inventory, are stretching up or down. A cool mechanic for maximizing game area. Once you move on, the main plot is about a group of bad robots who want to blow up the main city tower. It's a short game, but there's a lot of back and forth. The main area is composed of various screens where there's quite a good number of fetch quests. The character moves slowly and there's set points where you can walk to. It's a little cumbersome around midgame where the game opens up a bit and the puzzles are not that easy. Music and sound effects are great, perfectly fitting with the cute visuals. There's also a system of hints that forces you to play a minigame before actually giving you any leads. It's interesting for the first time, but the minigame is just not fun. It was spectacular and fresh to see it when it was released. Nowadays, it's slow, sluggish and one of the puzzles involving an elevator is problematic in modern hardware. It's a game that should only be bought under a huge discount.