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In the same trend of grown-ups and growing up and growing down and childhood galore and what not, I remembered a game I have almost forgotten... There is a very fine line between light and darkness. A line that gets even feebler if you add the reality-fiction duality. And sometimes, this tense line shatters and dreams flow richly into reality, dissolving the shadows in the creamy, sunny contrast. That's when you have to face the world with lucidity, to let yourself dragged in the torrent of ideas, like the foamy shadows upon the surface of a black coffee. Dreams and reality are but facets of the same essential thing that matters in this life, the SELF.

This article first appeared on Eurogamer.ro, site which is no longer available. Machinarium is a very dear game to me, so I didn't want to lose my thoughts on it. You've surely all seen Wall-E, the Disney movie about the shy adorable robot who ceaselessly cleaned up planet Earth in wait of the return of the human beings. Until the end of it all, any sensible soul would have realised that Wall-E was a lot more human than those buckets of lard that he cleaned up after. And this is the same impression that Machinarium leaves you with. This tiny Flash game, which can be safely finished in a couple of hours by any outside-the-box thinker, is much more humane and full of flavour than all super-hero (read:hooters) games of 2009.

Botanicula could have easily been a five star game if only it had been advertised a bit differently. As I prize myself to be quite the hardcore adventure gamer and having come to love Amanita Design through its wonderful, rusty and melancholic Machinarium, I was expecting Botanicula to be a game in the same trend of witty puzzles and shaking emotion.