I don't buy video game merch, and if I did buy video game merch I wouldn't buy statues, and yet... my heart melts looking at Machinarium's hot new merch drop. Amanita are selling a limited run of bronze statuettes of the adventure game's adorable scrap robot star, Josef, and I love him. 405 grams of bronze might sound cold to hold but I know he'd warm my heart.
]]>Australia is still burning, but over the last couple of days they've actually had some rain! While this is a big help to certain areas, there are still 83 fires blazing around the country, and there's a lot of people and wildlife still in trouble. It's good job then that there are even more game devs, companies, and communities banding together to help out our friends down under.
A new Humble Bundle, a donation from the makers of Warframe, and a charity initiative run by Eve Online players are just three more ways the games industry is raising money, and you can get involved to show your support too.
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>John is our usual Amanita correspondent but he's off on hollybobs so I get to poke about in the gorgeous world of Machinarium [official site] this time! The reason the eight-year-old game is back in our newsbox is because it's swapping Adobe Flash for a custom engine. So far so technical. What does it actually mean?
WELL!
"It's using DirectX and the game feels much smoother, but most importantly, Machinarium now plays in full screen, even on modern Full HD and 4K displays."
This sounds DELICIOUS.
]]>The makers of Samorost, Botanicula and Machinarium have announced a new game. It’s called Chuchel [official site] and judging by these two teasers it looks in keeping with the studio's tradition of odd games with even odder names. We don’t have much else to go on yet, however, just a couple of short trailers showing off what I’m guessing is the grumpy protagonist. Come and enjoy his garbled ranting.
]]>It's rather lovely when you learn of a tiny company consistently making splendid games is succeeding, rather than struggling to stay alive. Amanita Design, who RPS have championed for their witty, beautiful and smart adventure games since we launched, sent us some very interesting sales information about their robotic point-and-clicker, Machinarium [official site], after its four millionth sale.
]]>From the team most famous for Machinarium, Aminita Design, comes the third game in the Samorost series. Don't worry if you've never heard of the first two - they were both tiny Flash games. Samorost 3 [official site] is a full-length, full-screen adventure that requires no prior knowledge. How does the adventure/puzzle game hold up at this scale? Here's wot I think:
]]>You know that there are adventure games, and you know that some of those adventure games are better than others. But do you know which one is best, and which one is twenty-fifth best? Well, at last you can find out, with our definitive, unimpeachable breakdown of adventure gaming's best moments.
]]>Papetura [official site] is one of the prettiest handcrafted games I've played. It's an adventure game, as these things often are, starring a paper curl of a chap and his little... cat? on strange travels through a magical paper world with the most beautiful spotlighting making everything glow. A short (short!) demo is up for download on its site or playable in your browser, starting you off being swallowed by a paper whale, and developers Petums are trying the crowdfunding lark.
]]>2015! That's an insane release date for a videogame! There won't even be PCs by then. We'll all have Google Glass injected into our eyeballs and iPhones surgically implanted up our bums and Microsoft Surfaces built into our toilet seats. That's definitely the future. Everyone will want closed, locked, tyrannical software ecosytems by then. Why, PC gaming has died 42 times this year alone, so God only knows how bad it'll be in 18 months' time.
Hopefully Machinarium and Botanicula developer Amanita Design will be able to port their long-awaited second sequel to lovely, gently psychedelic pointer-clicker Samorost to Smartwatches and curved televisions BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE. Meantime, I'm going to watch Samorost 3's first-ever trailer just before I take my PC to the dump.
]]>Aw, basically. This is the first teaser for a 'point and click exploration game' due from Amanita Design (they of Samorost and Machinarium) in conjunction with animator and sometime collaborator Jára Plachý, and it's really quite adorable. Also visually and sonically nuts, as is the Amanita modus operandi.
]]>The first of the promised three new games from Samarost and Machinarium devs Amanita Design has arrived and it's, uh... Well, it's not really a game. Not really. Maybe a bit. But not really. It does, however, share the familiarly wacked-out Amanita art and anti-logic, so you'll find much to make you smile in this 'interactive music video.' It's a Western. It's not really a Western. Maybe a bit. But not really.
]]>Non-gaming news now, gamers. Ish. You're probably aware of Samorost and Machinarium, the gorgeous (and gorgeously strange) point and click adventures known for reducing grown men to tears. (Well, Walker. But then you can also do that by mentioning puppy dogs with itchy ears to him.) If you were holding out for Machinarium 2 or Samorost 3, you'll need to hold out a fair bit longer, because Czech developer Jakub 'Amanita' Dvorský has now turned his attention to a movie instead. This is far from sad news, as he's bringing his distinctive twisted-beauty character design ethos to the upcoming semi-stop-motion animation Kooky's Revenge. It looks spectacular, as you'll see below...
]]>We mentioned this new download service before Christmas, when it could only offer a cheap Serious Sam HD, but now it's up and running for proper, and we're hoping it will be good place to get lower profile and PC indie games. It already has an indie games pack to kick off with, which is a Trine, Machinarium and Eufloria bundle. I suppose that might not be the best bundle to point you lot at, because you're bound to have one of these games already, but anyway, it's £29.95 for all three titles together, which is a reasonable way to catch three of the best indies from last year. I'm sure Lewie will keep an eye on this to point out any future bargainous recommendations.
]]>Chances are if you played the wonderful Machinarium, you fell in love with the amazing soundtrack by Tomas Dvorak. If you bought the game directly from Amanita you'll have got the soundtrack with it. If not, you can buy it from here. But if you did, you might have noticed a couple of favourite tracks from the game weren't on it. The dancier stuff (apart from the breathtakingly beautiful By The Wall), including the all-important song the robot band plays, and the dubstep the pipe wrench listens to, for instance. Now you can get those five as well, along with EP artwork, for free from Amanita. And if you haven't played the game at all, good grief, what's wrong with you? You can get it from here for $20. Check out our review, and indeed those of a dozen others, if you need convincing.
]]>The long awaited adventure Machinarium is finally available today. After staring in wonder at the artwork and trailers for months I was able to play through a finished version this week in order that I could tell you Wot I Think.
]]>Oh, what a beautiful thing this is shaping up to be. You can now play the first three levels of Machinarium, and find out for yourself why Amanita Design's latest hand drawn adventure is filling us with so much hope. The demo is available from here or here, and the full game is due to be released on the 16th October via Steam, Direct 2 Drive, Impulse and so on. Most of those places are taking pre-orders now, and while I've not played the finished game it's a pre-order I feel fairly certain will be well invested. There's also a new trailer below.
]]>Another of 2009's Unknown Pleasures inches ever closer. Samorost's creator's commercial adventure will debut on October 16th via all the digital channels you can imagine, including Steam and Impulse. If you want to pre-order you can do it from their site for a mere seventeen - count 'em! - dollars. Which saves you three whole dollars over the release price. I'm not particularly interested in the pure adventure genre any more, but this really has be intrigued. Here's the latest short video...
]]>A new extended trailer of game footage has emerged for Jakub Dvorský and Amanita Design's gorgeous-looking Machinarium. The full-length adventure from the creator of astonishing-o-games Samorost 1 and 2, and the lovely edumacational Questionaut, is looking pretty fantastic. We've had a play of an early build, and will have a preview of it for you next week. A quick advanced preview of the preview: it's rather good. You can pre-order it at a discounted $17 from here, should you feel the urge.
]]>Yippee! A new trailer for Machinarium, and a garden full of snow. What more could a man ask for? Don't forget we spoke to Amanita Design about the game just a short while back. This time we get to see some of the puzzling in action, including exciting stretchy robot techniques! Plus there's a few new scenes that haven't been shown before, each breathtakingly detailed and pretty. It's below.
]]>Amanita Design have quietly made gentle adventure games for a few years. As well as the gorgeous Samorost games, they've also produced equally charming Flash games for the BBC, Nike and The Polyphonic Spree. Machinarium is their first full-length project, hand drawn and meticulously animated, about a city populated by robots. We spoke to front man, Jakub Dvorský, to find out more.
]]>I'm so very excited to see that progress on Machinarium continues apace, with the first gameplay video emerging. The utterly gorgeous screenshots that preceded this have had me slavering to play it. Now seeing the endless charm of Jakub Dvorsky's designs can be seen in their latest motions. Tis below.
]]>Two of my very favourite web games would be Samorost, and Samorost 2. Created by Amanita Design, which consists of founder Jakub Dvorsky with Vaclav Blin, both games are serene, beautiful experiences. Ostensibly point-and-click games, they are more about exploring the locations and experiencing the techno-natural environments. There are puzzles, but they are gentle, and usually are solved by experimentation rather than ingenuity. The news (it's not news, but we're writing about it today) that they are working on a full-scale adventure is met with a happy heart.
Machinarium is due in the second half of this year, and as yet very little is known so far. So check out the two screenshots available here (and they are screenshots, not concept art).
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.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")
