Samorost 2, for all its strengths, still felt very much like an extension of Samorost 1. It was good, but with a little tweaking I could conceivably see it being fused into Samorost 1 and released as a single ambitious Flash game that I might've beaten over the course of several computer classes while procrastinating. Machinarium, however, represents Amanita firing on all cylinders and making something new that was also their biggest game yet. The result is pretty delightful, though I found it frustrating at times. With the power of hindsight I can see how younger, stupider me never beat it cause holy shit some of these puzzles are tough. I have no shame in saying I was forced to use a guide (which by the way I quite like the ingame guide, it has just as much care visually as everything else and it requires just a little skill by making you earn the solution with a short shoot em up minigame to access the walkthrough) several times throughout the game because I found it quite cryptic. There is also liberal uses of my worst enemy in puzzles: sliding tiles. I am dogshit at those and the game loves to throw different versions of the concept at you that I either brute forced by accident or looked up the answer cause otherwise I'd be there all day. Even with that the game took me a pretty respectable 7 ish hours to beat which is quite decent. Art wise, I fucking adore everything about it. Robots are always cool, but the ones on this game are insanely creative with a fuckload of fun designs. The dirty ass city all these toasters live on is fantastic and I took screenshots in like every room because I was loving it all. Just for the visuals alone this game is worth buying on a discount, full price maybe if you like this kind of game. The Amanita bundle I got this on actually comes with every soundtrack and art book for every game included, and as soon as I beat this I poured over that. It's a shame that to my knowledge there's no physical artbook that has ever been sold because I would've gotten it in a heartbeat. Still, the art book you can get digitally is actually pretty nice. It's not very elegant, with most of it seemingly being notes and sketches made on a notebook, but they give the art a very raw, dirty feel that really reflects the final look of the game. You can tell they had a solid idea for how they wanted the world to look, and they went on to execute flawlessly. Music is also pretty nice, goes really well with the game, and its mostly relaxing. Minus points in that department because on what's basically the last room of the game there's an incredibly annoying static sound that almost gave me a migraine. I will admit I'm not totally sure if that was a bug or somehow intended, however. Story was quite simple, but I respect how much it actually conveys without any dialogue. I hadn't thought much about it, but none of Amanita's games from the ones I've played yet have any actual dialogue, just animal crossing esque funny noises when characters speak and pantomime. Ending is satisfying enough, and overall I had a pretty decent time with this game. If the puzzles weren't so cryptic at times and there were less sliding tiles I'd be even more effusive about my praise, but I think this is a game worth trying regardless.