Machinarium is a point and click adventure game by the guys who made the Samorost series. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of experiencing these titles, they are quirky little timewasters that drop you into an alien world and have you running around to complete little logic puzzles to progress the plot. While they weren't terribly difficult, the main part of their attraction lay in the unique art style, which looked like a cross between collage and hand-drawn pencil graphics.

Machinarium is rendered in the same style. One look, and you immediately know that this was not a game crafted in America. There's an aesthetic to the experience that points out its otherness. Ostensibly, the story in Machinarium centers around a little robot on a quest to do ... something. The demo just starts with the action in place, and there's no lead-in to any kind of a story. It's hoped that the full version will explain things in more detail.

But even if it doesn't, there's something compelling about wandering around these evocative landscapes and interacting with its quirky characters. The creatures you meet in your travels don't speak aloud; rather they display a dialogue balloon next to them in the manner of comic books that explains in pictorial form what it is they're thinking about or want. That's the only clue you'll get as to what your objective is meant to be.

The challenges seem to be screen-based; that is to say, once you've figured out how to progress to the next screen, that's it -- there are no carry-over items between screens. Everything you'll need to solve the screen's puzzle is contained in the environment. This can be a little frustrating to those who are familiar with the point and click genre of games, who might be used to searching other areas to find the items they need, or it can be liberating, as you know you're not necessarily missing something.

At the same time, however, Machinarium is quite a bit like all the other point and click adventures I've ever played, in that the leaps of logic required to progress to each new area don't always feel like standard thinking. There is a bit of item combination involved, but items don't always fit together in ways that you'd expect them to, and that can be annoying.

All in all, however, the all-too-brief demo did make me want to play more of it, just to see what else is waiting around the corner of this inventive and creative world. You can grab the Machinarium demo right here on Big Download for both Mac and PC.