Machinarium A wordless world of rusty machines

Nobody in Machinarium speaks. Josef and the other robots communicate through thought bubbles, gestures and comic-style symbols, so you read the story by watching: his little shrug, an eye-roll, a memory that plays out in pictures. It works surprisingly well. You always know what he wants and what stands in the way, even though not one line of dialogue is written down.

The plot is simple and sweet: Josef is thrown out into the scrapyard, works his way back into the city, deals with the thuggish robots of the Black Cap Brotherhood and tries to save his girlfriend Berta. The hand-drawn world carries it, warm and shabby at once, full of small robots going about their business in the corners of the screen.

Josef can stretch himself tall or squash down short, which matters, because you can only interact with what is within his reach. No clicking every pixel on screen hoping something happens; if you can reach it, it matters.

Some of it is genuinely tricky, and a couple of spots might boil your head. When you are truly stuck, a hint book shows a sketch of the solution, but only after you win a small mini-game to earn the page. Fair enough.

And then there is the five-in-a-row opponent in the bar, a robot who plays like the smartest machine in the city and laughs at you in a mechanical voice when you lose. It is exactly as infuriating as it sounds.