The ghost in the machines.
No moment in games is quite as special as the instance of the fingerpost.
This is a rather precise term I once discovered for that exact point in time where something clicks.
You suddenly get it.
What was confused and difficult becomes immediate and comprehensible.
The airplane blasts out of the clouds and sunlight floods the cabin.
The instance of the fingerpost?
Here is a field of fingerposts, and each one of them matters.
Automatoys lets you lose on a selection of wonderful, complex, improbable machines.
Put the coin in to release the little ball.
Then move the ball from the start point to the exit, wherever start point and exit may be.
How do you do this?
This is because these machines do a lot of things.
You start down low, say, and a magnet swings by.
you’re free to attach yourself to the magnet, but what then?
Stay on too long and you’re knocked off into the abyss.
But maybe you’ve got the option to encourage something to knock you off earlier.
Maybe you land near a sort of Archimedes screw.
The flipper from a pinball table?
It’s because of complex results from simply inputs.
I think that the only input here is tapping the screen.
Tap and hold, actually.
I tilt the phone, but I think that’s just my mind looking for more control.
And depending on where you are, something happens - maybe moving you forward, maybe moving you back.
Maybe ruining a few minutes' progress.
Everything here is briskly mechanical - none of it feels faked.
This all comes together and creates that endless tip-tap of understanding.
Now where I am?
What am I meant to do here?
Ahh, how brilliant.
One, two, three stars fast?
And onwards - a new kind of learning, I think.
But Automatoys is more honest, I think, more transparent.
In a way, it makes me look on those cinematic action-adventure games a little more kindly.
But that’s a fleeting thought, really.
Mainly when I play Automatoys I think about Automatoys.
