Machineers is set in a robotic world in which you play Zola. She’s a new apprentice Machineer at Hayden’s repair shop. As you guide her in building and repairing various machines what you may not realize is that you’re being trained in the basics of programming.
That’s not to say that after having played through Machineers you’ll be able to sit down and program anything. But a large part of the programmer’s role is to use logic to approach problems and eventually solve them. It’s this kind of thinking that Machineers trains you in. It’s just that it’s presented as a friendly adventure game.
In each of the game’s puzzles, you manipulate and fiddle with gears, belts, cogs, and wires to fix the machines they’re a part of. The first episode starts you off with simple challenges involving a DJ machine, a coin-operated crane, and a mechanical arcade machine. There’s also a sandbox mode that gives you a little more of a chance to be creative, and in this first episode that effort goes towards making a car.
There are to be five episodes of Machineers altogether that gradually get more challenging as they advance you towards getting the foundations of a programmer’s brain. On May 15th, the second episode of Machineers was released on Steam, the App Store, and Google Play. This time the sandbox puzzle focuses on boats as you move on to the waterside town of River City. There are new characters to meet, dark secrets to discover, and puzzles that span fixing a ping pong arcade, a chain ferry, and a sparkling fountain.
The following three episodes will push you on to creating hot air balloons, rocket ships, and then a teleporter to finish up. Of course, the puzzles in the main game of each episode will prepare you for this. You can find out more about Machineers on its website.
