A Review of Pythagoras’ Perpetual Motion Machine

I can’t say I’m particularly well-versed in puzzle games. It’s not a genre I actively seek out most of the time, and I’ve played a bunch that I’ve bounced off of after a while. But every now and then I’ll be curious enough to give one a look, and sometimes it’ll turn out to be something special that clicks with me much more than I expected. Pythagoras’ Perpetual Motion Machine was one of those games for me.

Developed by doujin game developer Maru Dice, alongside level designer Puzzler K, Pythagoras’ Perpetual Motion Machine is a block puzzler that starts out simple, but gains a degree of freedom to its movement early on that makes you think about the puzzles in an entirely different light. Basically, every level is just built around arranging turns and setting pathways for balls to roll over, with the end goal being to direct them in a full loop back through their spawner in order to activate the floor’s lift.

Early on, this is simple, but as the game progresses it starts to emphasize your own ability to navigate areas, finding methods to get yourself into place to arrange blocks without cutting off some of your own paths. Sometimes this results in simple repetition, but there are plenty of levels that make you think about your own course of movement, how to get around some bits of the environment to get where you need to go, and figuring out what path you need to take in those levels is really satisfying.

The main way that the game emphasizes this is through your ability to curl up into a ball, a mechanic introduced around ten floors into the game. Rolling into a ball gives you the same physics as the huge stone balls you’re directing around the level, which means you can make use of launchers, catapults, and even roll off of platforms and over small gaps.

The standard length of the game, at least for me, was an hour and thirty minutes, and that’s having gotten stuck on one particular floor for about a half hour. The good news, though, is that the EX floors, despite only being another fifteen levels or so, are some of the most tricky levels in the entire game, and some of them can easily take you a couple hours to figure out, and there’s even a cute reward for finishing all of them.

Without the EX floors, the $10 price point would be a bit dicier, but with them I think the game’s playtime is enough that you can have a fun time burning through the initial levels and then come away satisfied biting your teeth on the EX floors for a while longer.

As for the microtransactions themselves, from what I can tell they’re purely for optional hints and level skips, neither of which I’d say you’ll ever really need, save for the very last few EX floors? The hints just show a general outline of the course you need the balls to take, which generally isn’t the most helpful thing in some levels. Still, it’s a good game and if you’re playing it for free on Android, it’s a way to toss some money the devs’ way. On PC, of course, they’re unlocked free from the start.

I mentioned the story earlier, but really, there isn’t a whole lot of it, which is why it’s pretty surprising how effective it is. Most floors have a slab where you can read your characters’ current thoughts, with additional backstory provided by collectible pieces of illustrations depicting their childhood.

These illustrations are really cute. They’re a charming way to communicate the story of the mysterious adventuring girl you control without interrupting the game too much.

The ending of the game is especially strong. Given the minimalist nature of the story, though, I don’t want to spoil it. I’ll just say that it’s a much more touching and encouraging message than I expected going in, and it’s definitely going to be one of the things I remember the strongest about Pythagoras’ Perpetual Motion Machine in the future.

I hope I’ve been able to do the game justice with this review, because I really liked it but I’m admittedly not very good at talking about puzzle games. I’d just really like to give this game a bit of attention, because it surprised me, and for the $10 price point on PC I’d recommend picking it up if you’re in the mood for something on the shorter side. You can buy it on Steam, or if you want to go with a different storefront, it’s available on dlsite’s english storefront. Alternatively, if you want to play on Android or iPhone, it’s available on the Google Play store or iTunes respectively.

I’m looking forward to whatever the developers make next!

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