After purchasing the Humble Indie Bundle, I've played all the games a little bit, and the selection is quite good. I'll be focusing on two of the games in particular, as you may gather from the title.
First off, I finished Machinarium today, and I felt it was quite good. I'm a sucker for getting stuck, so I found myself asking for a hint more often than I'd like to admit. However, the hint system is a mini-game each and every time you open the book. Even if you just looked at it 1 minute ago. I like it!
That said, if you've thought about getting it, do so!
Now, onto Braid. I haven't finished it yet, and I'm really enjoying it. However, playing it the first few times was quite annoying as it took me a while to understand that time manipulation is a core part of gameplay. D'oh! Even with that knowledge, the game is hard without actually being hard.
The puzzles seemed to be designed very logically, but some (quite a few actually) require a certain direction of logic that perfectly fits its world, but the player might not think about it. It's like taking the steps in game design that players think of, and going back to its roots and starting over, making the player start learning again. I love it. To figure out one of these tricky spots is gratifying, something I haven't felt in puzzle games since Portal (but I didn't feel as much then).
Anyways, back to the games I go!
