Machineers by developer Lohika Games is a construction puzzle game set in a world of robots. Previously only available on tablets, the two first of five planned episodes made their PC début last week.
The game takes inspiration from Machinarium in its design, and came about as part of a master thesis on learning through playing games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP8qXjSDpB4
About the game (Official)
Machineers is a construction puzzle game with quirky robots and wonderful machines. It is your job to repair broken objects and build your own mechanical inventions using gears, belts, cables and plenty of other tools.
Help out the town folks by repairing their machines, such as the DJ machine, a coin-operated crane, and a mechanical arcade machine. Get ready for your next challenge: build yourself a vehicle and drive it to River City!
Machineers will be released episodically. Five episodes, or “cities,” are planned, each city containing 12 puzzles. Every episode will teach the player to build a specific vehicle. Episode one is all about cars. From there, boats, hot air balloons, rocket ships, finally a teleporter.
My thoughts
I have played about an hour of the first chapter, and I'm enjoying it so far. Similar to classic adventure games, there is a story and you talk to other people by choosing options from a dialogue tree. The puzzles are various mechanical devices that needs fixing or constructing, and you solve them by arranging cogs, belts, wires and other machine parts freely. When the machine does what it's supposed to do, you've solved the puzzle. These puzzles feel well integrated into the story and world, since it's a world inhabited by robots. I also like that there's so much room to tinker freely when solving puzzles, since it gives you more of a sense of actually fixing machines than more constrained puzzles might have. Albeit the machines are fairly simplified ones.
The first episode is available from Steam, with the second episode available as DLC at the same price. Episode three should release this summer, but it's not yet clear when the last two episodes might be ready.
The game takes inspiration from Machinarium in its design, and came about as part of a master thesis on learning through playing games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP8qXjSDpB4
About the game (Official)
Machineers is a construction puzzle game with quirky robots and wonderful machines. It is your job to repair broken objects and build your own mechanical inventions using gears, belts, cables and plenty of other tools.
Help out the town folks by repairing their machines, such as the DJ machine, a coin-operated crane, and a mechanical arcade machine. Get ready for your next challenge: build yourself a vehicle and drive it to River City!
Machineers will be released episodically. Five episodes, or “cities,” are planned, each city containing 12 puzzles. Every episode will teach the player to build a specific vehicle. Episode one is all about cars. From there, boats, hot air balloons, rocket ships, finally a teleporter.
My thoughts
I have played about an hour of the first chapter, and I'm enjoying it so far. Similar to classic adventure games, there is a story and you talk to other people by choosing options from a dialogue tree. The puzzles are various mechanical devices that needs fixing or constructing, and you solve them by arranging cogs, belts, wires and other machine parts freely. When the machine does what it's supposed to do, you've solved the puzzle. These puzzles feel well integrated into the story and world, since it's a world inhabited by robots. I also like that there's so much room to tinker freely when solving puzzles, since it gives you more of a sense of actually fixing machines than more constrained puzzles might have. Albeit the machines are fairly simplified ones.
The first episode is available from Steam, with the second episode available as DLC at the same price. Episode three should release this summer, but it's not yet clear when the last two episodes might be ready.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
No comments yet!
I run the Hidden Linux Gems group on Steam, where we highlight good indie games for Linux that we feel deserve more attention.
See more from me