It is an internet-verifiable fact that robots make everything better. You can therefore imagine awesome it must be to play a robot in a robot city as he tries to save his robot girlfriend from robot terrorists. Machinarium is an adventure game that lives up to those expectations in almost every way.

Fans of graphic novels will have heard about the infinite canvas—the idea that comics on the web needn’t be saddled with the limitations of their paper counterparts. And Yet It Moves is the proof of concept that the same principle applies to video games, although in this case it’s more about the simulation of natural laws than simple space. It’s a game that capitalizes on the freedom inherent in simulated spaces, and the result is smart, lean, and topsy-turvy.

Geneforge came out in late 2001, so it might seem a little early to be doing a retro review. However, it offers a portal into state of the art RPG design circa 1988, so it’s fair game. Although fascinating as an historical artifact, the brutal difficulty, tremendous time investment, and spartan graphics and sound mean that Geneforge will appeal to a very narrow audience. That audience will probably fetishize it, though—it’s not like they make ‘em like this anymore.

We had a chance to chat with Ryan Clark, co-founder and CEO of Grubby Games and therefore of The Amazing Brain Train.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it’s a collection of fifteen brain-teaser minigames in the vein of Brain Age. Unlike most minigame collections however, The Amazing Brain Train is remarkably coherent, and all the games contribute to a single goal: fuelling the Brain train.

It gives the minigames a sense of purpose they might otherwise lack. As your train chugs around, you’ll meet various animals who need errands run–usually train-related errands. So whether you’re counting monkeys as they scurry among bushes, hopping on lily pads to do arithmetic, or dragging ropes to separate cats from dogs, your brainpower is piped into the train and helps make the world a better place. It’s cutesy and simple, but there is more structure than has ever really been given to a brain training game before, and the game’s presentation is remarkably polished. Add to that the fact that the game dynamically adjusts the difficulty of its scalable minigames to be consistently challenging based on player performance, and you have a solid game collection.

If you still need a little convincing to check out the demo, or you’re curious about the finer points of making an accessible puzzle game, it’s all after the jump.