Spotlight on Games: Unmechanical

Unmechanical is a beautiful indie game available on Steam for ten dollars. As a a casual puzzle platformer, it can be beaten in about an hour. It uses Unreal engine combined with a unique art style to create a breathtaking gaming experience.

Plot
The plot is the weakest point of this otherwise excellent game. You play a small flying robot trapped in a vast underground complex. The main story line simply follows the escape of the protagonist. The story of the underground complex is murky at best. As the game progresses, the player finds that many similar flying robots are captured and harvested, but to what purpose is never fully explained. My best guess is that the complex is harvesting energy to keep itself running, but if the complex has any actual purpose is never revealed. The game also includes an antagonist "janitor" robot that happens to be kind of a jerk, sometimes hindering the progress of the player.

Graphics and Art

One of the main focus points of the game is its art style. The developers used the Unreal engine to its fullest extent creating an extensive underground world. The art style is primarily an eerie one, from the rusty janitor robot to the giant secretary robot, to the giant cyborg heart. The 3D environments in are incredibly detailed, creating a truly immersive environment, and adding a whole new layer to the experience. The textures are fairly high resolution, and suit the world well. The art style ranges from steampunk, to cyberpunk, and there is a noticeable progression of technology from gears and levers to cybernetics.

A quick word on Unreal engine; I'm so happy things like this exist. It allows indie developers to create beautiful looking games like Sanctum and Unmechanical. It's the perfect engine for almost any kind of game, and allows a huge range of unique games to reach the market.

Gameplay
As a puzzle game, the mechanics are hardly unique. In fact, many of the game mechanics are nearly identical to those of Portal 2. The game utilizes button-box mechanics, laser and bomb puzzles, and even momentum based portal puzzles. While there are several unique puzzles, such as weight puzzles, the similarity to Portal 2 puzzles can hardly be ignored. This, however does not make the puzzles any less challenging or interesting. Most of the puzzles are fairly self explanatory. There was only one puzzle that I had to consult a walkthrough for, and it turned out to be incredibly simple, and I was just over-thinking it. The game has very few glitches, only the usual places where you are able to trap yourself. The game solves those situations very simply by implementing an autosave feature that saves after every puzzle is solved. If they player ever finds themselves trapped, they need only load a save to reset the current puzzle without losing an annoying amount of progress.

Other Thoughts (Spoilers)
The game has a small philosophical choice at the end, you are allowed to either become the Janitor robot after he is killed or simply escape back to the overworld. The escape end implies that the entire facility will slowly shut down as things go wrong, as it seems the janitor robot was the only one that did any maintenance. The janitor ending gives the feeling of inevitability that there will always be evil down below, and eventually you become the very evil that you tried so hard to fight. The philosophy of the ending is very vague, and without a solid plot behind it, is not very meaningful.

Overall, I loved Unmechanical, the art style compensates for its lack of story, the the puzzle mechanics work very well with the other elements, matching the art style seamlessly. While the plot was limited by the lack of dialog, the developers could have done a little more to create a more coherent story line. I was very satisfied with Unmechanical as a game. It was worth the 5 dollars I paid for it, but there isn't enough gameplay for 10 dollars. If you do plan to get it, there's a demo available free on steam, or you can wait for another sale.