Machinika Museum Mobile Game is Out Now!

The Room from Fireproof Games was a ground-breaking title when it was unconfined way back in 2012, with a complicated puzzle box that was a joy to plan and solve directly with your fingers through the touch screen.

Its achievement spawned ports to other platforms, several sequels, and of course innumerable copycats. Few could match the level of polish and intellectual design of the original The Room games, and even fewer could do so while bringing something new to the table.

While I won’t say it’s precisely groundbreaking, Littlefield Studio and Plug In Digital’s Machinika Museum suggest many enormously cool puzzle boxes to solve with an overarching story and a cool alien twirl, and I’ve found it to scratch my The Room itch even if it doesn’t quite reach the same heights of that series.

Storyline-wise, you work in the workshop of a museum keen on crazy futuristic artifacts. Your task is to take in the shipments of artifacts, then repair them up and get them into form to be displayed in the museum.

However, you’ve just been sent an unexplained batch of items with not much information to go along with them, as well as a scuttle order to work on them which is also out of the ordinary.

As you figure out the mysteries of these convoluted puzzle boxes, each more alien than the last, you’ll slowly discover the truth about what is going on. The truth… is out there!

The actual puzzle boxes in Machinika Museum aren’t always the toughest, but they are cleverly designed and filled with neat little touches that are pretty enchanting.

The story as well as all the little details and knowledge about the universe the game takes place in are also really cool. As I said, this isn’t an inventive experience or anything, but it’s very well done and engaging and that’s all I’m looking for in this sort of game.

The controls can be fastidious at times and some of the solutions to the puzzles feel a bit out there, and in general, it’s on the shorter side, but for the most part, this should satisfy if you have a yearning for some The Room-like puzzle-solving.

Unfortunately, Machinika Museum commences with a few game-stopping bugs that have already been fixed but that didn’t stop it from getting enormously hammered in the App Store ratings.

People are quick to air their grumble about a problem via the App Store rating system but most don’t ever go back to change their low score once the issue has been fixed.

Then there’s the irregular idiot who, because this is a free trial with a premium unlock pay model, rates the game 1 star because “you have to pay for it." Boy, that pulverizes my gears.

But, because it’s free to try, it’s easy to urge you to do so for yourself if you enjoy puzzle box games with visual graphics and a cool ambiance.