As history must repeat itself – point-and-clicks should, by all accounts, make a comeback. Mind you, for me, they never went out of fashion – people just forgot that 2D art was socially acceptable and usually meant that the developers would focus on, oh I dunno, something important like gameplay and less about wowing their audience with OTT eye candy. Well pah to that as Machinarium's 2D and stunning!

Hey, I know perhaps I should have waited until I was out of the first paragraph before dropping that important fact on your laps. So, here's a little info the guys that have brought Machinarium to our doorsteps – or digital content providers more appropriately.

Jakub Dvorsky, a guy that heads up Amanita Design, who previously brought us the games Samrost and Samrost 2, is the guy behind bringing us Machinarium. He's the sort of man that if I were to cut off the top of his head and look inside I'd see an odd looking creature, smoking a cigar and asking me to solve a complex puzzle for a clue to the meaning of life. Hey, we've all been the better for it – all 3 games have been quirky, fun and intuitive outside the scope of what we usually consider “normal” gameplay... or in fact “normal” in any way.

This only grows more apparent when you start playing Machinarium and realise that the way you think won't always help you solve puzzles; “A” does not necessarily precede “B”. And for the most part, lateral thinking is only marginally helpful.

The storyline is simple. You're a robot that looks to have been kicked out of his city and dumped into the garbage, for what reasons we can only hope to find out. Once you've managed to assemble yourself again you'll soon get to grips with how to navigate around. Click to walk somewhere, hover over yourself and drag to stretch or shrink your body and click on useful objects to store them about your person. Additionally, these items of interest can sometimes be combined to create new objects to solve situations. Most of you who've played a point-and-click will get the general gist of it very quickly.

It amazes me to realise that the entire game has been constructed in Flash. From those annoying strobing green “You have no life and nothing better to do than believe you've one a million quid” adverts dotted everywhere, to this? Amazing. In saying that though, Adolf Lachman's artwork helped make the game look as stunning as it does. No wonder it won the excellence in visual art award at the Indie Games Festival. And it must be quite amazing for Lachman to see his artwork literally come to life.

Heh, it's been a while since I've wanted to harp on about the artwork in a game, but it doesn't stop there as the music's bloody good as well. The audio, provided by Thomas “Floex” Dvorak who's soundtrack not only compliments the world created by Lachman and Amanita but happens to be right up my street. If I were to cross Thomas Newman (Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty) with Ed Shearmur (K-PAX) you get around the ballpark. Good stuff.

It's strange to want to talk about the artwork and music particularly before really touching on any of the gameplay - but then I was instantly struck by how well the game was presented that I felt the need to convey this first before talking about what effectively is a point-and-click title.

Machinarium is about a series of challenges from one section to the next. On each section once getting a general vibe for what's going on it'll be over to you find out how to progress to the next part by completing whatever puzzle's required. Whether that's finding the location of Sunflower Oil, solving a puzzle to activate a lift or something completely random – each one can be solved if you put your mind to it, or sometimes through excessive clicking or blind luck. Luckily as Amanita spent so long on the immersion in Machinarium, while getting frustrated from time-to-time, you'll want to finish the damn puzzle to get the little guy home.

While there's technically no dialogue within the game; all intentions are made through thought bubbles and sounds, it transcends the language barrier by the characters and story conveying the emotion required helping you to relate to any given situation. As an example of this there's a group of bullies that pop up now and again. Usually when they do, someone in the scene will remember some way they were tormented, driving your animosity towards the bullies and keeping the storyline ticking over all the while – so when they turn out to be the bad guys in the game, you're hardly surprised and ready to put them in their place.

So in a nutshell we have a robot, chucked out of his city who makes his way back, stumbling across a group of bullies and uncovering an evil plot – oh, and there's a love interest. Not bad for a Flash game eh?

My personal preference for puzzles tends to revolve around the situational / environmental ones rather than the set-pieces. If you're a fan of these sorts of puzzles then you're in for a treat as there's certainly a greater number of them. That said, they're more enjoyable than not, it's perhaps the difficulty curve that progresses into a rather large spike by the end of the game. However, if you get stuck on any of the puzzles not only can you ask for a hint, which is effectively what the little guy wants to do at a particular part of the stage, or you can find out the “how” by playing a little side scrolling mini-game to get the full stage walkthrough – but only use this if you're really desperate. After all, it's your money and we here certainly know you can do it - so persevere!

I've told all my mates to go and get a copy as at £11 on Steam it was a bargain – fantastic, beautiful, puzzling puzzler.