Machinarium [$4.99]�is a treasure, judiciously and efficiently designed, with not a single pencil-drawn sprite out of place.

It was worthing playing on the PC two years ago, it will be worth playing on the PlayStation 3 later this year, and it's worthing playing on your iPad 2 right now.

The "story" of Machinarium � Amanita Design's first full-length effort � is unobtrusive and elegant, told entirely through the unnamed protagonist-bot's thought bubbles and context clues. There is no human speech to parse, no dialogue trees to navigate, no lengthy exposition to ignore � Jakub Dvorsky and his team have a laser-sighted focus on puzzle design.

And what puzzles they are! Machinarium features a mix of traditional logic problems and modern, multi-step inventory manipulation puzzles that, by and large, fall into the range where challenge and critical thinking intersect. The result is a game that feels organic and internally consistent, with none of the arbitrary, "guess-what-the-designer-wants" logic that so often plagues puzzle games.

If you do happen to get stuck � and that's ok! � there is a two-fold hint system that should give you a nudge in the right direction: a hint system, and a full-blown (and beautifully illustrated) in-game walkthrough. The rub: the hint system is generally pretty limited, and access to the walkthrough is blocked by an intentionally awful LCD-screen shmup, which is boring and time-consuming enough to discourage the mentally lazy. (One of the iPad 2 version's quirks is that it's, y'know, impossible to alt+tab to a walkthrough, adding yet another barrier for those inclined to cut corners.)

When touch screens became a viable input device for the games industry, the consensus was that point-and-click adventures would be a natural fit. This is particularly true for Machinarium: Amanita decided to limit players' range of motion to a few actionable hotspots in each area. In other words, Machinarium dispels the need for super-precision touch controls � the game is designed to require as little movement as necessary.

Machinarium, as a whole, is remarkably tidy. It begins with an unnamed protagonist being dumped, rather unceremoniously, on the outskirts of a city whose skyline is dominated by an ominous spire; it ends with a flashback of the events that set the game in motion in the first place. The puzzles employ a similar rolling structure: each puzzle is discrete and self-contained, but the game as a whole is tightly paced and given momentum by a set of smart, complementary design choices.

First: solving any given puzzle in Machinarium generally results in the acquisition of another inventory item that � unbeknownst to the player � will be critical to a later scenario. Secondly: though the town square acts as a hub for the gameworld, the bulk of Machinarium's puzzles take place inside individual rooms or buildings, i.e. on a single screen. The result is that players enter each area already armed with the necessary tools and aren't forced to travel very far to solve puzzles. Like a shark, Machinarium thrives because its design encourage progress, not stagnation � every step.

My only real hiccup with Machinarium's high-level dynamics is that the gameworld doesn't always do enough to inform or motivate the player. For example, an early puzzle tasks players with helping a group of musicians fix their instruments, but the player has no real reason to help them except that they happen to exist in the gameworld. The game's sparse narrative components are great when it comes to contextualized story telling, but they don't particularly account for the player's need to, say, fix someone's didgeridoo. Instead, it's design by tautology: Machinarium is a puzzle game, so it should include puzzles.

Everything else in the game is beautifully realized. The puzzles, full of circuitboards, waterworks, and mechanical tinkering; the protagonist's evocative animation; the mournful soundtrack � all of these things exist to sell the idea that a world populated entirely by robots could be plausible, and that this particular robot has something important to contribute to it. Nevertheless, there are several moments � even after you discover the game's central conflict � that are aren't necessarily tethered to any kind of narrative or in-game logic: puzzles are solved because they simply exist, not because it's clear that they somehow contribute to one robot's quest to save his city from … well, bullies.

Bullies, of all things. How quaint, right?

And maybe that's why we had to help those poor, broke musicians � because Amanita Design hopes that we're just nice people. That Machinarium is, give or take, a beautifully evocative story about playground bullying should indicate the kind of charming, understated game it is. Even the name, Machinarium, suggests a mysterious, whimsical place � I do hope you explore it.

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The Dark Meadow by Phosphor Games is an upcoming action adventurey horror game and despite heaps of excitement, we still don't know a whole lot about� Yet, anyway. Well, that's all going to change on October 6th, when the game is unleashed to the world, per a recent announcement from the developer.

Here's the trailer again, if you didn't catch it over the weekend:

Hopefully we'll be able to do some additional preview coverage before the 6th, but if you're looking for other similarly excited people to chat about the game with, head into our forums.

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So, a dog wrote and shot us a press release about a tangram game this morning. I mean, we're not stupid enough to think that one actually sent us an e-mail since everyone knows pooches can't stop slobbering long enough to form coherent sentences, but the studio framed its press release as if it was written by a dog and intended only for Eli's attention-starved mutt's flappy ears. We're not making this up.

In brief, the e-mail was about the impending release of Little White Bear Studios' "lite" version of its colorful puzzle game, TriZen HD [$2.99]. Set to hit this October 3, this free-to-play version of the normally $2.99 game will incorporate 500 levels and "hundreds of hints" for the wonderful price of $0. Hints in TriZen HD regular (and we're guessing "lite")�are essentially it's F2P currency � you pay for more after you've used all the available ones.

And, well, that's all our new dog friend had to say. What's next, a cat? Wait, wait, I want a garden snake to write ussssss next. Hey, you see what I did there? Zing!

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As we mentioned in our preview of Stardash [$1.99], developer Orange Pixel set out to make a game the way Nintendo would. The result? A lovingly-crafted tribute to Game Boy platformers of old. It may lack the polish Big N gives its games, but pulls off a challenge more common to a time when creators didn't worry about keeping the lowest common denominator up to speed.

Stardash is a simple game with a simple formula. It's divided into 40 levels over the course of 4 worlds, and each level can be completed in as little as 20 � 40 seconds. The levels don't call for much exploration � they're just series of platforms and baddies that do whatever it takes to bring you down. Unless you're a platforming superstar, they'll probably succeed. This game is made with equal measures of love and sadism.

Borrowing a page from games like Super Meat Boy, Stardash doesn't let your death drag you out of the action. You're not limited by lives, there's no lengthy loading sequence and the music never stops. This keeps death from being too frustrating, a a very good thing when you'll probably be dying a lot. The first few levels are forgiving, but as you progress you'll find a need for more and more precision � and more and more things that will straight up kill you if you don't already know what to expect.

The difficulty in Stardash can be cruelly high, but it rarely feels unfair. The controls are excellent, some of the best on-screen controls I've used. A few levels rely on your ability to jump as high or as far as possible with pixel-perfect precision, but most (thankfully) don't. Instead, the most difficult bits are all about speed, timing, and careful jumping. Dashing off an edge and jumping in midair will save you in many circumstances, and once you master that technique most levels will feel hard but fair.

If just completing the game's main levels isn't enough of a challenge for you, Stardash has plenty more to offer. Each level has two stars that can be earned: one for completing it under a tight time limit, and one for collecting all its stars. It's usually impossible to do both at once. Each level also has a hidden key that goes to opening one of the temples, a sealed level that's only available when you collect all of a world's 9 keys.

For the truly dedicated, there are also a selection of extremely difficult Game Center/OpenFeint achievements to earn. Oh, and your high score only maintains through levels if you don't die, so you'll need to work on your survivability to place on the leaderboard. Sounds easy enough, right?

Unfortunately my time with Stardash wasn't problem free, thanks to a number of technical glitches. The game didn't obey my mute switch. Music kept on playing even after I turned the screen off, too. Leaving a level from the pause menu would in that level becoming locked again if I'd just reached it. The level-selection menu didn't react consistently to input. And while I played on iPhone, our forum users report several issues with the controls on iPad and iCade. Its disconcerting to see bugs of this scale in a released game.

Still, nothing kept me from spending hours playing Stardash. I played until my hands cramped, running through some levels dozens of times. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then I completely lost my head over this game. It hits the sweet spot of difficulty, sometimes frustrating but never too frustrating. It's also perfectly wrapped in its Game Boy aesthetic, sound, visuals and all. This isn't a game for the easily defeated, but if you're willing to persevere then Stardash will leave you well rewarded.

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