The Machine's Garden Reviews

I picked this up after finding it in the Hidden Gems category of the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase. I was initially drawn to the game because of its satisfying pixel art graphics and punchy animations. These are definitely a highlight. There's a real charm to the crisp, expressive pixel-y goodness. 😊 The mechanics are deceptively simple, but they manage to create a surprisingly wide range of interesting and engaging puzzles. A common issue I have with some puzzle games is that the increase in complexity (and difficulty) often just means larger levels with more elements. This usually results in a vast sea of possible moves that feels more tedious than interesting to explore. A few times during my playthrough of The Machine's Garden, I worried this might be the case. But each time, I was pleasantly surprised. The clever use of certain mechanics - especially the symmetry mechanic - helped to 'prune' possible routes early on, leading to dead ends before too much time was wasted. As a result, even complex levels allowed for the formulation of meaningful constraints and clear win conditions, which made solving them feel quite satisfying. A minor nitpick: I found the story logs that pop up after each level a bit intrusive. I didn’t mind the story itself (from, what I can tell written from the viewpoint of a reawakened AI) but having new text open automatically after every level, especially early on, felt too frequent. I ended up skipping them to get back to the puzzles. Overall, this is a great game and an absolute steal at its low price.