The Room from Fireproof Games was a groundbreaking title when it released way back in 2012, with an intricate puzzle box that was a joy to manipulate and solve directly with your fingers via the touchscreen. Its success spawned ports to other platforms, a number of sequels, and of course countless copycats. Few could match the level of polish and clever design of the original The Room games, and even fewer could do so while bringing something new to the table. While I won’t say it’s exactly groundbreaking, Littlefield Studio and Plug In Digital’s Machinika Museum offers a number of extremely cool puzzle boxes to solve with an overarching story and a cool alien twist, and I’ve found it to scratch my The Room itch even if it doesn’t quite reach the same heights of that series. Storyline-wise, you work in the workshop of a museum dedicated to crazy futuristic artifacts. Your job is to take in the shipments of artifacts, then fix them up and get them into shape to be displayed in the museum. However, you’ve just been sent a mysterious batch of items with not much information to go along with them, as well as a rush order to work on them which is also out of the ordinary. As you figure out the mysteries of these intricate puzzle boxes, each more alien than the last, you’ll slowly uncover the truth about what is going on. The truth? is out there!

The actual puzzle boxes in Machinika Museum aren’t always the most challenging, ...