No moment in the game is more special than an instance of the finger stick. It’s a fairly precise term I’ve found for the exact point in time when something is clicked. You suddenly understand. Confused and difficult things become straightforward and easy to understand. The plane broke out of the clouds, and the sun filled the cabin.
Whatever it’s called, I suspect we’ve been chasing this moment our entire lives. A moment in the game is usually accompanied by the crunching and twisting of keys in locks, unseen gears moving, unseen parts turning and clicking into place. Well, welcome to Automatoys, which seems to give you this moment every few seconds that never seems cheap or unearned. Fingertip example? Here are the realms of fingertips, each of which counts.
Automatoys lets you get lost in a series of wonderful, complex and impossible machines. They’re figurines, really, characteristic towers made of thick plastic – I know the exact plastic, and you will after a few seconds of play – and the goal is always the same. Put a coin in to release the ball. Then move the ball from the starting point to the exit, wherever the starting point and exit are. How do you do this? You can do this by knowing what the machine does, which means in these cases, knowing what the machine is doing at the time.
This is because these machines do a lot of things. Let’s say you start low and the magnet will wiggle. You can attach yourself to a magnet, but so what? Hold on for too long and you’ll fall into the abyss. But maybe you can encourage something to bring you down sooner. Maybe you landed near some kind of Archimedes screw. Can you tilt the ground to let you slide in and then let the screws turn and lift you higher? And seesaw? Grasping hands? Fins on a pinball table? who knows.
Pinball stands out here, and it’s not just because of the immediacy, the dance of cause and effect of the Looney Tunes. This is because of complex results from simple inputs. I think the only input here is tapping the screen. This bounces the ball from point to point and tilts the maze panel and turns the Archimedes screw. Actually, tap and hold. I tilt the phone, but I think it’s just my idea of looking for more control. Click and hold. That’s all. Depending on where you are, something happens – it may move you forward, or it may push you back. Maybe spoil a few minutes of progress.
When I play, I’m very focused on a specific area of the machine where the ball is currently — the gear it’s currently in, the channel it might spill. I tap the screen lightly to see what happens, and then I try to figure out how that helps. I landed in a new place and wondered what that little colorful hammer up front might be doing – then I looked at it and understood exactly what it did.
Everything here is briskly mechanical – none of it feels fake. (Great sound design is very useful here, and really selfless, because it works, so you don’t notice how ingenious it is.) You can always see little plastic things pop up and force you off the ball The holes that have been settled go in, and you can imagine taking the machine apart to see the hidden parts beneath the visible parts. It all comes together to create endless comprehension skills. I get it! where am i now? what am i doing here? what! Ah, how brilliant.
When I watch someone play, I see that every click of the screen does anything – every part of the machine turns at the same time. Then that machine is finished, with new machines, new gimmicks, new ideas, new breakthroughs waiting for us to realize. Once a machine is done, the question arises – how fast can you do it now that you know it can do it? One, two, three stars fast? Going further – I think it’s a new way of learning.
Weirdly, it really reminds me of the old days of PS3 movie games like Uncharted, where you were told you were free, but you were actually transported to a world that was actually a well-built machine, which Can push you through it with maximum drama and maximum satisfaction – if you can get there. But Automatoys is more honest, I think, more transparent. You see this machine and you see the reality that you are just a ball bearing driven by the skill of the operator, of course, but mostly by the ingenuity of the people who created these magnificent things in the first place.
In a way, it made my view of those cinematic action-adventure games more intimate. I see the tricks the developers are trying to hide, and I can enjoy the gap between what they want to happen and what happens often. But it was a fleeting thought, really. Mainly when I play Automatoys, I think of Automatoys. I considered getting the ball out of the way from the start, and when one machine is done, I can’t wait to see the next one.
