Unmechanical Game Info

 Unmechanical, an adventure-puzzle game about an adorable but indifferent robot's quest to find its way out of the innards of an underground beast, and to find out what happened and why.

Simple and intuitive mechanics make the game accessible to highly varying groups of people and the mysterious style and setting will tickle your curiosity. Puzzles range from simple to hard and satisfying!

Unmechanical's story is told entirely through the visual gameplay; there's no text, no dialogue, and very few symbol or pictogram cues. You play as a little robot with a propeller attached to its head, which allows you to fly around the game's levels at will. As the game progresses, you receive upgrades that give you new powers, generally allowing you to traverse new terrain (such as underwater) or interact with physics objects differently. 

For the most part, though, you have only one thing you can do: grab stuff. Using a short-range tractor beam, you can pick up rocks, steel girders, flaming balls of death, and mirrors, among other things. Most puzzles involve positioning these things in various ways to solve puzzles and open doors or receive power spheres. The power spheres are used to power Unmechanical's biomechanical devices (many of which look like human organs). Powering these devices unlocks new areas and more puzzles, and reveals, indirectly, the game's backstory. 

Unmechanical feels and plays a lot like a combination of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet and Machinarium, if you know those games. If you don’t, imagine a standard platformer, add a heavy dose of physics puzzles, take away any combat elements, and tell the story entirely with pictograms. Unfortunately, this last part is where Unmechanical stumbles. Often, the pictograms are confusing or outright unhelpful, and you're likely to find yourself at a loss--not because you can't figure out how to solve a puzzle, but because you simply don't know where to go next or what you're supposed to be doing. Eventually you'll get there by process of elimination, but some indicator arrows or other simplifiers would've reduced some frustration.

Unmechanical is a fun and clever game that treads familiar ground. And yet it's thoughtful enough to inspire your intellect and draw you into its world. You may not miss it once you leave it behind, but Unmechanical is a pleasant puzzler that keeps you busy for the few hours that it lasts.