Click.

February 1, 2008 1:01 PM

Created by flash artist and graphic novelist Mateusz Skutnik, Submachine is one of the class acts of the point-and-click Web-game genre. Mesmerizing, layered and absorbing, the latest chapter in the series has just been released.

Play them all, in order:

• Submachine 1 (a rather different version)
• Submachine Zero: Ancient Adventure
• Submachine 2: The Lighthouse (The story to this one is bone-chilling, it's so good)
• Submachine 3: The Loop
• Submachine 4: The Lab
• ... and the just-released Submachine 5: The Root
Skutnik also built a cool game for the band Future Loop Foundation. He also has a two-part spy game, Covert Front, and a ton of platformers.

posted by jbickers (11 comments total)

Normally I stink at these so this one must have been easy because I managed to finish it.
posted by GuyZero at 1:18 PM on February 1, 2008

But I did enjoy it.
posted by GuyZero at 1:18 PM on February 1, 2008

Awesome, I just played through these a few days ago. I'm horrible at them, but slowly getting better.

If anyone wants to check out more point-and-click games (more specifically, this genre is usually referred to as "escape" games), I've been working my way through this tagged list and having a great time. Bonus: Most of the games have walkthroughs posted by the users on the site, just in case you get stuck!
posted by sarahsynonymous at 1:30 PM on February 1, 2008

I love games in this style -- they remind me of Myst, which was my first real game obsession.
posted by ourobouros at 1:49 PM on February 1, 2008

These games remind me of my first experiences on the internet, filtering through AOL's game libraries, looking for free games that weren't just your standard FPS clones or platformers. Good on him for keeping story-driven free ware alive.
posted by ignorantguru at 2:06 PM on February 1, 2008

My brother and I played this one together over the phone (he's in Boston, I'm in Kalamazoo). Absolutely fantastic stuff.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 2:20 PM on February 1, 2008

Aw, looks like the first link is borked, but the others are still working.
posted by spiderskull at 3:22 PM on February 1, 2008

I'm continually amazed by Skutnik's work – from an avid puzzler's perspective, I especially admire his ability to create innovative problem-solving mechanisms in his games (keys/coordinate systems/cipher card combinations, etc), making each Submachine completely different from each other and from every other point-and-click adventure out there. I'm so attracted to and haunted by his perfectly crafted immersive environments – the only comparison I have is to the occasional dream I have that plays out in a blurry network of mysterious rooms. One of my favourite moments in my personal history of interactive media is in the opening screens of Submachine 2 when the needle drops after you fix the record player, driving home the absolutely perfect scoring of this adventure.

I gotta say his work excites me more than any other artist out there online, in an OMG TWO MORE SLEEPS UNTIL HIS NEXT RELEASE sense. Submachine 5 was released late at night and I wasn't about to go to bed until I had finished it (and then I played through it a second time).

I feel like such a silly fangirl, lol.

I spent a big chunk of time investigating the point-and-click world this summer, playing nearly every game (regardless of language) in sarahsynonymous' link and in the lazylaces archives, and nothing ever topped the Submachines for me, but a few came close – serial_consign and I wrote about what we consider the crème de la crème of artistic point-and-click gaming here and here, if you crave additional gorgeous adventures in point-and-click.
posted by avocet at 3:53 PM on February 1, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's back up now (the first link, that is)
posted by jbickers at 3:53 PM on February 1, 2008

Some more escape gems (IMO): 1 2 3.
posted by juv3nal at 5:06 PM on February 1, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

3 more that I'd forgotten about:
Their servers were a bit hammered due to the recent releas of VISION last I checked, but the games here (RGB, Sphere, & VISION) are pretty good and very slickly produced. They let you save your progress which is a nice touch.
posted by juv3nal at 4:03 PM on February 7, 2008