Wonderful point-and-click adventure Machinarium has been rebuilt with hi-res support and more

Machinarium, the point-and-click adventure about a bug-eyed robot named Josef and his girlfriend Berta, was originally released in 2009 and is very good—in fact, it was the game that hooked me on Amanita Design's later work, including Botanicula and Samorost 3. But it hasn't aged particularly well, mainly because it was built using Adobe Flash. So Amanita has updated it with a completely redone "Definitive Version" that's now available on Steam

"We’ve reprogrammed Machinarium from the scratch. The game is now using a custom made DirectX engine instead of Flash which has become quite old-fashioned in recent years," Amanita wrote. "Therefore you can finally enjoy Machinarium even on modern high resolution screens. And thanks to added gamepad support, the game works perfectly in Steam Big Picture." 

The updated version also features 12 Steam achievements, Steam Cloud saves, and even leaderboards for "Quickest Win" and "Explorer," which measures total distance traveled. It's also been localized with 14 different languages, and the studio said that Steam trading cards are also planned, hopefully in the summer. 

The Definitive Version update is free for existing owners of Machinarium, and it makes a tremendous difference: It looks fantastic at high resolution, and runs like butter. Machinarium is also currently on sale for $2.50/£2/€2.50 as part of the Steam Summer Sale, which runs until July 5. 

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.