It’s time to settle an ancient feud! Irreverend Opinions brings you a review of Darkarta: A Broken Heart’s Quest!

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Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 8/10
Total: 9/10

Darkarta: A Broken Heart’s Quest is a fantasy puzzle-solving game produced extremely well by Kerala-based Tuttifrutti Interactive[www.tuttifrutti.in], an authentic-feeling tale of revenge and betrayal that uses puzzle mechanics and storytelling with equal skill.

+ Entertaining and challenging puzzles
+ Highly emotive art that matches the setting well
+ Innovative, interesting story
+ Wide range of scenery with great music

- Some minor art issues
- Two puzzles are a little ‘grindy’
- On rare occasion, denied item use breaks immersion


Gameplay: Darkarta uses the environment well to have the player solve puzzles in their quest. Hidden object puzzles dominate, with jigsaws, pattern-matching puzzles, symbol-matching puzzles, tile matching puzzles, path tracing puzzles, and even maze minigames throughout.

The main gameplay is a click-and-solve mystery adventure, requiring you to collect and use items that you find to progress through the game play, ranging from escaping a deadly pursuit to ending ancient curses.

On top of that, ‘hidden’ minigames are laced throughout, asking the player to find hidden, shape-changing items and memorabilia.

The puzzles are challenging and enjoyable, with the option to “swap out” various minigames for tile-matching games instead. Puzzles are designed well, requiring thought and recognition to solve; only on two occasions were the mechanics marred by the controls.

On a few occasions, the immersion of the main quest was broken by being denied the use of items that would work “well enough” in a real situation, because they aren’t the item that the quest is specifically looking for - such as waiting for a specific pole to knock down a high item, or a specific tool when you have others that can also do the job. It’s an inherent drawback in click-and-solve adventures, however, so the only complaint is that it sharply brings the player’s attention back to that they are playing a game, rather than being immersed in the gameplay.

Story: Taking a casual pace with the puzzles, the game completed in about six hours, with a good portion of achievements and a feeling of game satiation. Gameplay is paced well, and maintains emotional intensity throughout.

Characters retain depth, even when they reflect tropes that are standard in mythical tales. While twists can be anticipated in advance, they flow well and meet expectations the player has for the characters when they occur.

Reading the Collector’s Edition comic prior to gameplay will give more background to the story without causing spoilers.

Graphics: Distinct and evocative, the artwork ranges from the fantastical to the mysterious. The art team at Tuttifrutti blend fantasy elements from a number of cultural tales to elicit the appropriate mood for the act the player is in.

Puzzles generally have well-drawn items, that are hidden and obscured by a good understanding of how humans interact with scenery, taking advantage of negative space and colour contrast to help hide objects. Pieces that are separated from puzzles lay about in different angles, but are clearly meant to fit into where they socket.

The only complaint would be faces; though while unfortunately some of the characters have features that enter the “uncanny valley”, it is not so bad as to be offputting nor distracting from the emotion of the scene.

Audio: Simple, clean, and expressive, the music of Darkarta matches the mood of the moment, and distinctly capturing an Indian cultural feel.

UI interactions are suited to what you would expect to hear, with a cinematic approach during cutscenes. The general “click” sound is a touch loud, but not jarringly so.

Voice acting is emotive and clear, theatrical in feel and genuinely capturing a “story read at bedtime” essence.

Game was reviewed on Microsoft Windows 10 on an Intel Core i7-4770 with 32Gb DDR3 RAM and two AMD Radeon R9 200 cards. The game was no strain at all, and I can see no reason for a simpler system to have trouble.

• Some ‘broken’ cells in animation can be remedied.
  
• Slight adjustments to click-and-solve tools or dialogue around them to offset suspension break.
  
• Larger “margin of error” correction on some shape-alignment puzzles to offset “grindiness”.

An amazing game that deserves better following. Definitely looking forward to their next title.

Irreverend Opinions and staff do not know the staff at, nor hold any conflicting interest in Tuttifrutti Interactive, and there is no financial benefit to this review. A key was provided free of charge to allow the review.

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I, a robot?

Adventure is only a point-and-click away as Irreverend Opinions reviews Machinarium!

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A puzzle adventure in a stylised world of robots and amazing music. A robot that has been abandoned by his city in pieces must pull himself together and return to not only confront some rather bad robots, but save his robot girlfriend in the process.


The first thing I noticed about Machinarium, as a first impression, is the music. The soundtrack by Czech composer Tomáš Dvořák[floex.cz] really stands out in the task of impressing a strange new world without alienating the player from what they are engaged in.

Graphically, the art style for Machinarium is quite striking, with hand-drawn animation hauntingly evocative of works by surrealist Jan Švankmajer, and seeming to be another achievement for Dvorský that fans of Amatina Design will be encouraged to see. With their pencil-and-paper 'living comic' art style, the organic appearance of the background and characters helps to round out the artificial world with a warm and almost human sense, which helps the player to get involved with the characters quite readily.

For an adventure game without dialogue at all, the plot is quite memorable and involving, with the characters having both impact and personality. By removing dialogue from the game, the designers also allow the game to be accessible to players who do not speak English, using thought bubbles and pictures, authentic instruments and short beeps or buzzes to illustrate what characters are thinking or asking.

Puzzles throughout the game are both thought-provoking and challenging, sometimes requiring the player to think outside the box to complete tasks without pushing for weird feats of skewed logic present in some games of the genre. Should the game prove to be too much of a bother, an in-built 'hint' system allows players to get some suggestions to how they can complete the task.


For some players, the puzzles will be a bit too challenging, though thankfully a short minigame can help to unlock the puzzles if you are more of a mind to do a reflexive shooter than a point-and-click puzzle solve.

Some players have reported having issues with transferring the game from fullscreen to windowed mode, though this seems to be more of a UI confusion than a bug issue.


None to speak of.


Turn out the lights and enjoy the immersive, imaginative world.


Well deserving of the awards it has recieved, Machinarium is a beautiful game with something special for art and music lovers, as well as fans of the point-and-click puzzle genre. 10/10.

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