(Some deductive thinking would suggest to the player that the lizards are preventing a denizen of another asteroid from having its meal in peace and ditching its remains out so as to attract a flying creature that would give Samorost a ride, but this series of events would only be clear in hindsight.) Some other weird things would happen, and after some more clicking (usually on new things that appear on-screen), Samorost would be whisked off somewhere. The player may also probably realize that he/she can solve most puzzles by just clicking on things with catchy visuals, upon being stumped on what to do next.įor example, after some clicking in a particular scene, a group of lizard-like creatures would appear to move across a region of the screen from one spot to another and disappear, and then repeat the process at least until the player clicks on all of them and have them drop off the screen. After the first few clicks, the player may soon come to the realization that he/she does not take on the role of Samorost, but rather some disembodied guardian angel (for lack of a better phrase to describe the player's actual role) that helps the rather lazy Samorost get from one screen to the next. However, there would be plenty of objects and characters on screen that would attract the player's attention, and very likely his/her mouse cursor.Ĭlicking on some more things would move things forward. In any screen after the first one, the player is not given any indicator at all. In fact, it gets even more eye-raising, such as something that resembles a tobacco field being worked on by farmers that utter "weh" when clicked on, with a cameo of someone who may or may not be the lead designer at the foreground smoking what is suggested to be hookah. Samorost's home is in peril, and he sets off to prevent a disaster that would not be described here because this would be a spoiler and it would be too bizarre to put into words. Speaking of consequences of clicks, the first click will set the premise for the game. Hovering the mouse cursor over said indicator will change its appearance, which would inform most players that they are supposed to interact with the game through mouse-clicks, and they will be doing so all the time when they are not watching the consequences of their clicks. The game designers appear to realize this, and starts the game with an arrow indicator over an object to catch the player's attention with and as a way to remind the player that he/she is playing a game. The user may well be left wondering whether he/she is looking at a surreal piece of contemporary art (which it is). There is even moss on said asteroid, which also looks like it is made of dead-grey wood and not space rock. Upon closer inspection, said asteroid would look like a typical asteroid, but has peculiar structures that are definitely not expected to be on an asteroid, but even these seem to blend quite well into it. Yet, the ludicrousness does not end there. The user is introduced to the titular character (which is not named in-game but has since been labelled by his creators as the namesake protagonist), which is a pajama-clad space gnome living blissfully in apparently air-filled outer space on an asteroid. (It also has to be mentioned here that Samorost is a cluster of free consecutive Flash apps on Amanita Design's website.)įrom the first screen alone, Samorost would give the impression that it has thrown logic right out of the window. However, if the user had hoped that Samorost would entertain and dispel any boredom, it very likely will. Therefore, the first of their games, Samorost, would appear to be little more than something that someone would have playing on their web browser when they are bored. It has to be mentioned here first that Amanita Design does not use terribly sophisticated development tools, which invariably leads to game software that needs to be packaged into a deployable and then placed into a user's computer through the usual busywork of installation, registration and such. It is a risk, but to those jaded veterans of adventure games, it would be a risk well worth it. The next adventure game might try to include some puzzles that try to be clever but might end up mind-boggling, or puzzles that are more logical but are bland and all-too-familiar.Īmanita Design, a Czech game-developing company, seeks to throw many adventure game conventions right out the window, by focusing on charm, the appeal of the bizarre and accessibility. By Gelugon_baat | Review Date: July 14, 2012Ī very old – or very tired – follower of the adventure genre would probably think that he/she has seen them all by the time of this game, which also happened to be around the time when the adventure genre starts to lose its influence in anywhere in the world but Europe.
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