Loving this game. Sandbox indeed! Level each town via scores and scores of quests, each region has 10-12 towns, dozens of regions. Hundreds and hundreds of hours available if you don't go overboard (cough) and get yourself bored with slightly repetitive actions.

Plus, the gulls and sharks look really cool.

Sandbox, eh? Can't wait for the DLC!

bookmarked

I gather there's no plot. Right?

I'm afraid you lost me there.

Correct. The regions on your map are generated randomly for your world (my first region in my first game was something like Region #63) and, while they differ greatly in geography, the questing is the same from region to region. Different factions that give XP for different aspects (questing, exploring, trading, fighting, etc.), so there is perhaps a flavor but there's no real story.

Children's toys for playing in an actual sandbox. Probably a dated reference these days.

You might want to click on your link. I am not sure it displays the image you intended (I see only "image hosted by tripod").

P.S. If I copy paste the link into my browser's URL box, I see the intended image, which indeed makes the reference obvious.

Off-topic, but related to my earlier post...

I should add to my above note about Windward that regions also have a difficulty level which progresses the further you get from your starting region, which is a key way that regions differ in each world. (Goods available for trading also change from region to region.)

There's also a cool setting that allows you to nerf your stats and equipment when at earlier levels to keep a semblance of challenge. (I haven't really needed to play with yet, though the pirates are dying pretty quickly and I should check it out soon.) "Challenge" isn't perhaps the best word to use. I have died several times, but usually when getting pounded by 4 or 5 pirate ships at a time. Combat isn't too stressful and I actually find sailing around the island chains questing/exploring/trading to be quite relaxing, even more so when getting out of my snowy northern starting climates (have started north in both of my worlds) and into the tropics.

Ah, they've got a hotlink blocker. Must've worked for me the first time since it was cached. I understand the confusion now.

From MaGog's logs for 7 July:

NOTE! CHANGED FILE DEFCON, downloadables, Windows installer, English (no change in name; Mon, 06 Jul 2015 14:19:53 GMT ***TO*** Tue, 07 Jul 2015 13:56:17 GMT; 75,396,336 ***TO*** 75,396,400)

[No flag, no changelog]

Seems Machinarium Collector's Edition got a Linux version/installer.

the update of machinarium is the linux version ,right?

erm correction , i just got a flag for this one :)

Nice. Now I finally can put it on my list of things to re-buy on GOG during a summer or insomnia sale.

(I've been trying to re-buy games I like from various bundles on GOG when they come on deep discount. So far, I own about 80% of GOG's catalogue on GOG itself but there are still things like Botanicula, FEZ, Waking Mars, Dust, Anodyne, Bastion, Beatbuddy, Shadowgrounds, etc. where I own them DRM-free on Humble but the devs haven't given GOG the Linux builds, so I'm not willing to re-buy yet.)