Machine Yearning review: A brilliant puzzle game that makes me feel bad

Puzzle game accessibility has a long way to go

Tiny Little Keys

I love a good puzzle game, and the home of great puzzle games right now is mobile. That’s not the exclusive home for them, of course, but more often than not, if you hear about a good puzzle game, it’s going to be on mobile. Machine Yearning is one such puzzle game, and I’m pleased to say it’s very good. I’m less pleased to say that it feels laser targeted at exploiting my biggest weaknesses. 

Machine Yearning is a fascinating little game that explores language and symbols. It’ll present you with a word and a host of symbols, and then ask you to match a symbol to that word. The words are mostly nonsense, and the symbols aren’t far off from nonsense, so you’re effectively creating a new language to test yourself against. Once you’ve defined a symbol, you’ll then be tested on that symbol, showing it alongside other, often similar symbols and asking you to identify the one matching the word you defined. 

Once you’ve done that a few times, you’ll be asked to define another word using different symbols, and then that word and its associated symbol gets thrown into the mix for identifying it later. This continues until you’ve got a dozen or so symbols in the mix, and remembering them all is certainly a challenge. Throw in colors – also nonsense words that you have to define yourself – and you’ve got a very clever puzzle game that has you defining, remembering, and verifying a whole new language. I really like the gameplay loop, it’s clever and challenging in all the right ways. 

But it’s just not for me, and that’s absolutely no fault of the game. The game is incredible, but unfortunately my brain and eyes are just a little bit broken. I have ADHD, which means focusing and remembering things in the short term is difficult, often bordering on impossible — not great for a game that relies almost solely on memorization. I’m also colorblind, and asking me to recall a color after having previously defined it doesn’t work too well when the red receptors in my eyes are entirely absent. 

Again, I can’t fault the game for this — not entirely, at least. It’s not the first game to fall afoul of these problems, and it won’t be the last. When you’re making a puzzle game, you won’t always be able to put cognitive accessibility at the forefront of your design process, and while the lack of color accessibility is much less forgivable, it comes with the territory. I’d say about half of all modern puzzle games fail this test, so Machine Yearning is far from alone in this field. 

Because of this, I wasn’t able to actually play much of the game. There are a number of levels, each increasing in difficulty and complexity, but I couldn’t get past the seventh stage. There are other game modes too, including a timed mode in which you try to get the most points in a limited amount of time and an endless mode that sees you trying to survive for as long as possible, but my time with these was similarly cut short. 

Machine Yearning is a fantastic puzzle concept executed very well, held back only by its reliance on health requirements that I don’t meet. It’s an inspired idea that I can’t believe hasn’t been explored in the past, and for that I can only applaud it, I just wish it was a little more sensitive to accessibility. 

Score: 7/10 

Version tested: iOS