If David Lynch ever made a point-and-click puzzle game, it might feel a little like the second Gateway title from Cockroach Incorporated. You steer a gray robot through a 2.5D space, solving puzzles to unlock new rooms. You navigate the tortured memories of another robot who flits in and out of your view. It's your job to figure out what happened to her and then to help her overcome it. The game sustains an uneasy atmosphere, a darkness that seems at odds with its simple graphics and matte colors. But when you're drawn into the thick of the story, you'll release that deep human narratives can be told with the simplest of tools. 

Anders Gustafsson and Erik Zaring, the two Swedes behind Cockroach, design their titles with a stunning feel for art direction. The games follow the simple, tried and true mechanics of the point-and-click adventure genre while filling their short playtimes with a tremendous amount of atmosphere. The sound design of the Gateway series is possibly the best I've ever witnessed in a free online game. There are moments in Gateway II when I was genuinely frightened despite playing at a tiny resolution. Moments of inexplicable strangeness and gorgeous surrealism make Cockroach's games more than your average room-escape flash adventure. 

Even the studio's early, simple games complicate themselves with lofty concepts. There's one little flash ditty that plays like your classic "slide around and catch falling things" game. Except those falling things are suicidal jumpers and you're moving the hand of God. Whether you catch them or let them splatter on the pavement determines the level of faith in you. Cockroach weights simple gameplay with philosophy, creating sometimes uncomfortable but usually fascinating playing experiences. 

Their latest title remains a work-in-progress, but is their most ambitious yet. The Dream Machine is another point-and-click adventure along the lines of Gateway, but instead of rendering in in flash, Erik and Anders create every move of the characters with stop motion animation. Every room in the game was once a physical set built from cardboard and clay. Everything your character can do has to be molded and shot in the physical world. It's a rare technique in game design, although it's been used before in the classic but underrated vintage adventure title The Neverhood. To physically animate every move of a game represents a kind of loving care for craft that most developers don't demonstrate. It's one thing to render a character in Maya, but quite another to sculpt your protagonist from plasticine. Shooting claymation takes far longer than any digital construction, but it yields beautiful results. The Dream Machine features sets and characters lit by natural light, still bearing the fingerprints of their creators. 

The first two chapters of The Dream Machine are available to play online. The first chapter is free, but you'll need to register and pay a small fee in order to play the second. Cockroach is currently developing chapter three of five total planned installations. You can pre-order the entire game now in order to play it as it's released. The rest of Cockroach Inc.'s catalog can be played free either through their website or via Newgrounds or Kongregate.