Samorost 3
Amanita design have a short but incredibly strong history – after the first Samorost game being freeware and the second one modestly being half-free, they came out big with Machinarium after having sustained themselves on contract work. While Samorost and Samorost 2 were good games somewhat hindered by their small scope, Machinarium was a confident adventure that proved Amanita design could build longer games. Botanicula was a slight return to form for them in terms of puzzle complexity, but with it came the announcement of a full-length sequel to the Samorost games, one that was released a couple of months ago.
Like the other games before it, Samorost 3 is beautiful. Amanita have made a point of raising the bar with every game they release, each new game sounds better, has more beautiful environments and more vivid characters and animations than the previous ones. For a game that has no dialogue and takes place in truly alien settings, communicating character and intent clearly is no small task but Amanita pulls it off with grace. The larger scope of the game is immediately apparent – every screen is filled with objects that all have their own personality, all have different reactions when you interact with them.
… Which is something of a problem, since Samorost takes an approach to puzzles that is more similar to the other games in the series than to the more traditional puzzles of Machinarium. Objects in Samorost will require you to click, click repeatedly, drag, wait for or interact with the environment in various ways – most of the time, the puzzles themselves are trivial but figuring out how to interact with them is very difficult – especially since there are so many objects in every scene that will react to you without being a part of the puzzle. Much like Machinarium, Samorost has a hint-system to help you when you get stuck, but it’s difficult to escape the feeling that there’s really not much else to the gameplay if you rely too much on it.
In short, the puzzles are more about red herrings than interesting problems. Knowing Amanita can be clever if they want to it is a bit of a disappointment, but Samorost 3 is well worth playing for the art and music alone.