Let’s Play Machinarium #08: Games Within Games
162This is a blind playthrough. Kindly avoid posting spoilers in the comments or solutions to puzzles either in this video or future ones so as not to spoil the experience for me or those that haven’t seen the game before.
Many are the ways in which point and click adventure games cleverly conceal their puzzles. Some have you figuring out how to make a contraption work by switching wires, changing the position of gears or deducing the code for starting it up. Others have you pitted against an opponent in a game in a game of wits. Sometimes, however, a game manages to be ingenuously self aware by having you play a video game within a video game.
Often your reward for completing the video game is either information on where to go next or an item required to complete a puzzle and while sometimes this is only done in bonus content – La Mulana is an example of that – many others make playing and completing the game essential to victory. Maniac Mansion has it as a requirement for one of its many endings and Space Quest III is an even greater example, for doing so is critical to knowing where to progress in the plot. It should be noted that Space Quest IV does a fantastic job of subverting the expectations of those who played the previous game by making doing that a trap, though those with any experience playing that series will suspect that’s the case.
You may be wondering why I’m talking about games within games. One look at the thumbnail should answer that question for you. Whether I’m any good at those games is another question entirely.
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