I think play is very important in my work, and often I learn a lot and discover very interesting things when I allow myself time for it. My brother, who has the same passion for games, has discovered a very appealing one: Machinarium.

A flash game created by Amanita Design, Machinarium is a simple point-and-click adventure. Back in the 90s, this was the classic way to play a game on your computer. I grew up with these types of games, and I find them fascinating and a lot of fun. Machinarium is a puzzle game, which will leave you sitting in front of your computer screen for hours, until you find the right mechanism to solve it.

This used to be a very popular genre of games, but today there are not many developers left working on these sorts of immersive puzzles, so I'm grateful for the work done by Jakub Dvorsky and the other Amanita Design guys. They have managed to revive a very funny and especially instructive game. And because Machinarium is designed so meticulously, it has just won the award for "Excellence in Visual Art" at this year's Independent Game Festival. It's really a beautiful game of vast visual imagination and an immersive and perfect soundtrack provided by Thomas "Floex" Dvorak.
 
However, I don't want write a review of Machinarium, and will instead focus on interaction and UI within this type of interface.

The illustrations are all done by the incredible illustrator Adolf Lachman; to see his work literally come to life, is just amazing.
Machinarium is a robot story, so the illustrations match perfectly with the genre: dirty style, mechanical, soft colors, obvious steam-punk influences; they are well made, cleverly done and the messages communicated are all completely clear.

All interactions take place through bubbles, pictographs, storyboards and sounds. There are no words at all! The spoken language throughout the game is nonsensical, and the story unfolds through symbols and emotions of the characters. Through this animation, the characters express emotions that help the player to solve puzzles.

It's really interesting how a simple pictogram as well as the use of common symbols, are able to communicate so much.

After all, what is a word? A word communicates a direct message accurately, which we understand because we read every single letter and then compose the full message. And what is a letter if not a symbol? A pictogram or an icon has the same function, but only using a single unique representation.
 
Since the birth of computers years ago, man has evolved and improved the way we interact with technology: today everyone is used to interacting with their technological devices through and interface made up of icons. These icons allow you to navigate within this virtual space, through a forest of functions that the medium offers.

In Machinarium, icons are more connected to the real life-style: they are more material than abstract. This representation becomes clear to everyone who plays the game, especially thanks to the environment created around them.

I found in these screens a strong link with the ancient symbolism, back when our language was purely visual and pictorial, not literate (so not really "written"). Thousands of years ago, the scribes of the alphabet systems in Mesopotamia or Maya relied on hieroglyphs: the writing was visually explicit in their language and culture. For modern interface designers, the convergence of technologies between computers and communication can only be an implicit visual language. So, to communicate words, sounds and images through a shared icon becomes important, like a new language.
 

We are all constantly surrounded by symbols and icons--are we at the beginning of a new revolution of language? How important is the written word? Are Icons the new alphabet of the future? Are we returning to a visual language? From paper to a virtual world online... from writing to iconic symbols. What is old is new again.