I just made a noise like air being slowly released from a balloon.
It's been 17 years since the original Machinarium, a wordless tale of love in a crumbling city of robots. Amanita Design has put out some great games over that span—Botanicula, Chuchel, Creaks, Phonopolis—but hasn't breathed even a hint that more Machinarium might be on the way. So why now?
"We're not getting any younger, and the world seems to be ending, so if we were ever going to make Machinarium 2, now is the right time," Amanita CEO and designer Jakub Dvorský said—a bit dark, sure, but I can't find any factual fault in his reasoning. "We're also grateful to every player who waited patiently all these years. We couldn't have done it without them."
The new game picks up where Machinarium left off: Having escaped the city, Josef and Berta crash-land in a hidden valley populated by two robot tribes, one in the Elektrona monastery and the other in the city of Oilton—both of them facing a grim future as their power is slowly running out. While Machinarium 2 promises the same style of point-and-click puzzling as the original, Josef and Berta are both playable this time around, swappable at will, and will have to work together to solve the game's puzzles.
The distinctive visual style of Machinarium is back—perhaps a little sharper than the first game, although I think it still looks great—and importantly, so is Tomáš Dvořák, aka Floex, the composer whose soundtrack helped make Machinarium so distinctive and memorable.
As PC Gamer's Evan Lahti explained some years ago, music is one of the best parts of Amanita games, and Dvořák is responsible for much of it. Given his many years of collaborating with the studio on most of its games, it's not really surprising that he's back for Machinarium 2, but it is reassuring to have it confirmed.
"When I composed the first Machinarium soundtrack years ago, I never anticipated such a huge response," Dvořák told me. "I was simply trying to have fun and enjoy the creative process—and I believe that is the exact same approach I need for the sequel.
"Naturally, it’s a challenging task. It is easy to fall into the trap of comparing my new work to the original, and doubts occasionally creep in about whether it will be as engaging. However, I try to minimize those thoughts. Experience has taught me that the best way to create is to simply 'have fun'."
Interestingly, Dvořák said he didn't really think about Machinarium 2 as a sequel at all: Instead, it's more "a beautiful project [that] provides a great opportunity to create a specific kind of music ... the visuals have an incredible influence on the music universe I create. Machinarium is exactly the kind of environment where things grow very naturally for me."
The music in the Machinarium 2 trailer certainly has a familiar vibe, but Dvořák said he set a few specific goals for himself to differentiate it from the original: The soundtrack to be "more melodic and musical," something he aims to achieve with "more simplicity, which is actually the hardest part: Usually, unique organic details come from layering many sounds together."
And of course, the passage of time is a factor too: "I feel the new music is more mature," Dvořák said, "simply because I am older."
Aren't we all? Still great music, though.
As for the real reason Amanita Design opted to go back to Machinarium now, all these years later, it really was just a vibe situation. "I tend to make these kinds of decisions more intuitively than rationally. That’s just how I work," Dvorský, Amanita's CEO, told me in a separate chat.
"I guess I rely on some kind of instinct or feeling, so it’s actually quite hard for me to give you a clear, logical answer. I just had this feeling that the world of the robots was knocking on the door, asking to come out again. It seemed like a good idea, and little by little, I got really excited about it."
It's probably self-evident at this point, but I'm really excited about it too. Machinarium was Amanita Design's first full-length, standalone game, and it made me an immediate fan of the studio. Amanita's subsequent games have more than lived up to the high standard it set, but even so there's always been a very faint 'wish it was Machinarium' hanging in the background over every new release. Well, here we are—I guess now I can start quietly pining for Botanicula 2.
Machinarium 2 doesn't have a release date at this point, but it's up for wishlisting on Steam and GOG. For now, you can pick up Amanita's previous releases—including the original Machinarium—at some pretty sweet prices until October 15.
