Puzzles that live inside the world — Tonda Ros on eight years of design: "no intended solution" and the melancholy Myst left behind

Soundtrack: Machinarium — The arithmetic of loops that never go stale in a rusty world

The music Tomáš Dvořák (Floex) wrote for Amanita Design's dialogue-free, hand-drawn adventure Machinarium is a strange alloy: the body heat of piano and clarinet fused with a dirty analog synth and the clatter of scrap metal. In a game where you stare at the same screen for minutes on end, why do these loops keep living in your ear? Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through the lens of 'the mixing ratio of abstraction and melody.'