![]() Any jerkiness or inelegance you might expect from this technique is negated not only by the fact that all characters are robotic, but also by the array of smoothing, motion blur, and distortion effects used by the animators to create a seamless, cohesive world. This is, of course, a rather drastic over-simplification. To animate the characters, these picture-pieces are moved like paper dolls to achieve motion. Graphics are two-dimensional, and created primarily from hand-drawn sketches using a soft, moody palette of de-saturated colours. The game’s distinctive style of art and animation is evident from the opening cutscene. These living pictograms are beautifully rendered, very funny, and one of many highlights in a game that is almost an embarrassment of visual riches. The characters converse telepathically, with scratchily animated thought bubbles for the benefit of the player. There's even a love plot, in which the robot hero must rescue his girlfriend from servitude at the hands of the criminals. Players eventually learn all about who runs the robot city and why our protagonist was in the crash in the first place, plus solve plenty of problems for the city’s inhabitants, a lot of them caused by the thuggish criminal ring. He then must make his way back inside the robot enclave, where he uncovers a heinous plot by a gang of criminals to bomb the tallest tower in the city.ĭespite being entirely wordless, the story achieves a surprising degree of complexity and is never confusing. Our nameless mechanical hero is first seen crashing in the outskirts of the city, expelled for reasons unknown, and starts the game looking for his stray pieces and putting himself back together. Despite the scrappy aesthetic, every decaying detail is carefully orchestrated and designed, resulting in a surreal, beautiful world inhabited by a cast of automatons that make it feel like a robot fairy-tale. The game is set in a city made of pipes, tubes, and rusting metal edifices. Amanita Design, however, grasp this fact instinctually, as displayed by Machinarium, their latest miniature masterpiece which is overflowing with dozens of delightful little robotic characters. I don't know why this scenario generates such a response in us – maybe anthropologists or geneticists have a theory. Robots behaving like humans are cute and funny.
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