Ratings by thorn969

I generally found it pretty simple and usually the number of options were pretty limited. It took me just under an hour to go through both the main game and the 2012 demo with occasional random clicking. There are some nice story concepts in there, although without any text or dialogue it is left kinda ambiguous. Some of the story concepts are a bit dark, but I don’t think they would be upsetting to a young child because I don’t think they would understand why it could be upsetting.

There was one timing-based puzzle that felt slightly tight to me (there were two other puzzles with timing elements but they felt super generous - the first one was still generous but I missed the timing once or twice while figuring it out).

Maybe I’m just too comfortable with these kinds of visual puzzles but this felt too straight-forward and minimally story-driven for me to really enjoy it or recommend it.

I found the walking animation quite stilted and the story, while pleasant, is a bit generic and predictable. Everything felt to me like it could use a bit more polish. The puzzles did get a bit repetitive, although I thought, especially in the first part, they were challenging without being frustrating. Once you got the hang of them, they became simple obstacles.

I thought it was a pleasant diversion for a few hours and might be something nice to do with a child.

The game did try for profundity and… I’m not sure it really achieved it. Could it achieve it in about 4 hours of playtime? The premise of the Risk Atlas and foreknowledge and time travel and its potential consequences were interesting… I definitely feel the game didn’t do enough to attach us to the characters for a PC adventure game. The ending was… I think unsatisfying for me. I think we should have been given more choices and more opportunity to consider potential consequences. Isn’t that what the game is all about?

The humor, as pointed out by the reviewer, probably more frequently missed the mark than hit the mark. There was some attempt to be feminist and culturally sensitive, although perhaps not enough… I thought the female did get better treatment than in The Curse of Monkey Island, as one of the primary characters, although there was plenty of misogynist talk from the male characters.

The story was generally satisfying, the characters were fun, the gameplay was good, the graphics nicely cartoony. A very solid effort.

But even with their patches, the game was very buggy. I experienced the stairs bug at the beginning, where Ann would go back down the stairs on her own. The cursor wasn’t animated and changed instantly, but inconsistently. With the graphics, it was very difficult to see hotspots and sometimes hotspots would activate the cursor incorrectly or not at all. The puzzles generally consistent of clicking all the available hotspots until you found the correct order. More or less. There were rarely hints from characters of what to do and lack of persistence in dialogue could fail to trigger a required change while too much persistence could prematurely trigger it and screw up sequences. It wasn’t really too challenging, but the gameplay was awful. Every site was an “unintended” maze because it was a challenge to find hotspots to move from screen to screen, movement across screens was inconsistent, and there were lots of strangely configured, empty screens. The panther sequences were, if anything, more poorly conceived.

The story wasn’t awful. But it was really dark and dreary without any light at the end of the tunnel. And we really didn’t get a ton of detail for all the dialogue.

The story… I found a bit depressing… I enjoyed the fantasy setting and I thought the final ending to the fantasy setting worked very well and was cute… and it does complement the actual ending well. I guess it felt a little flat because I didn’t really feel that involved in or connected to the characters. They were a bit two dimensional, especially in the real world… I think if they had more personality and we had more opportunity for idle chit-chat demonstrating unique, quirky personalities… that’s what this game needed.

It is a kinda nice tribute to Broken Sword… although the story is kept more simple and plausible. But the parallel stories and twists and turns keep it plenty exciting.

However, as an adventure game, it is generally pretty good. The puzzles tend toward the relatively logical and well-integrated into the world… there are some conversation puzzles that take either esoteric knowledge, outside research, or guessing and checking… there is a quicktime battle, timing punches and guards similar to that found in Sam & Max, but more difficult. And there is a frequent problem with difficulty finding hotspots… and also, hotspots will sometimes do nothing and other times do something… a lot of hotspots have to be clicked twice before there is an appropriate interaction. Sometimes one hotspot won’t work until you hit a different hotspot. Several items can only be combined at a certain place and time. These rules at least are generally logical.

The artwork is quite nice and the images pretty and the concept of the boy that sees in black and white is interesting… but the gameplay tends to be relatively simple and straightforward once you get past the problems and the focus is on the conversations and story which is difficult to follow with a repugnant philosophy that isn’t even all that well supported by the demonstrations in the game.

It is available for free on Android, iTunes, or the publisher’s website.

And so the repeated deaths in platforming elements, that sometimes had to be repeated in retracing steps, were annoying. And sometimes things that felt and looked like platforming challenges would turn out to be button presses. So is this game good for platform lovers?

Well… it has a few puzzles that require putting together pretty complicated, fiddly, and somewhat annoying bits of information. I don’t particularly like those puzzles in pure adventure games… I don’t think platform-players will want to be taking notes to solve puzzles.

So while it is beautiful and obviously crafted with love, I don’t feel like there is a good audience for this game.

And the paper design is beautiful. But it is a 60 minute flash game that should have been released for free. Selling it for $5.99 is highway robbery.

I would have appreciated dialogue… I think it would have strengthened the connection with the characters and the relationship between the brothers. The brothers really only interacted on a couple of puzzles and… it would have been nice to see them… at play a bit.

But the ending is devastatingly sad and you get a lot despite the lack of dialogue.

The graphics were nice enough… although… they lacked a bit of detail that I might expect from a 2016 game. It looks like it could be a decade old… they somehow reminded me of Portal. Not much lighting or shadow detail. They were beautiful and HD, but for some reason still left me unimpressed.

The controls were a bit clunky. Left-shift was for running, but that is never explained in the game and the walking speed is painfully slow. WASD is for navigation, but when you change rooms and change perspectives, the directions corresponding to the keys change… it’s a fixed 3D perspective. These controls are similar to those from Grim Fandango, just not a great implementation.

The puzzles… there are a few quick-time events… the most annoying to me was a circle you had to shoot red dots off of. This was a… code(?) to deactivate a machine. There was also a car chase, but it was relatively easy and forgiving. But none of the puzzles were particularly well-integrated into the world. They were almost all just artificial constructs to give the player a challenge or sense of involvement. One involves de-scrambling numbers to find a combination. Another involves recognizing musical notes.

Linearity… Some items can’t be clicked on or picked up until you need them. You can only converse with each individual once. You have up to four conversation choices, but if you pick one, you don’t get to hear the others so sometimes you miss bits of the story. Every area can’t be exited until you are done with that area and cannot be re-entered once it is exited. You never really have more than one choice of what to do or where to go.

But after this experience and my experience with Machinarium, I probably will not buy Samorost 3, despite all the great demos.

The game doesn’t really seem to be worth the price generally asked for it. I want to support the industry and it is nicely done… but it doesn’t quite seem to be directed at young children, but only seems able to provide a challenge for young children.

There was nothing really wrong with it… but it should have had more complexity or more story or something.

It was my introduction to humor in adventure games and cartoony graphics and I absolutely loved it.

I actually prefer the tank-mode controls to the camera-relative keyboard controls.

I do have to admit that, as others have said, there is frequently too little guidance for how to solve puzzles and all you can do is try everything a guess. Like… getting the metal detector from the litter box.

But there’s just so much to love about this game. An example of how adventure games should be made, even if the graphics look seriously dated.

The puzzles were generally mostly logical, once you figured out what was wanted from you. The problem was a lack of communication about goals and story driving the puzzles forward.

And for some reason, despite being an incredibly simple game, it would take about a minute to load between levels.

The only issue I have with this game is the ending. It is profoundly unsatisfying. Both the original ending and the silly ending for the American version don’t give much of a payoff. The original ending is marginally better, but depressing. But they don’t really fit a theme or give a lesson for the game.

Much better, in my opinion, than similar exploration games like Dear Esther and Gone Home, but I think it could still have used additional scripting.

But really… the story was good, the scenery beautiful… it was a great concept of an adventure game and I think it was essentially a proof of concept and the engine felt a bit lacking in development and some of the characters flat and… maybe a bit of a beta version… lacking polish. Still a solid game and worth paying for.

But it is impressive. The graphics are average for modern 3D adventure games, pretty, but somewhat blocky. But you have free movement over a large environment with lots of trails going every which way. I never had to backtrack on my first playthrough and I think it is set up to minimize backtracking. It feels like a real park that you can walk around freely. And not a dreamscape… the scale seems… realistic. Geography is believable. The pathing is amazing. And it is a lush world. A lot of parks I’ve been to have these trails that seem to go to nowhere, but they all circle back and connect with one another, ending at the same places. And my impression was the game does the same thing. It is very well executed.

However, it feels like a proof of concept. Like the whole game is just made to show the ability of the developers and their ability to build a world. An experiment in open, but linear gameplay. It doesn’t have any interactive elements. It doesn’t really make any attempt to involve you in the story. It’s very short and somewhat boring. It’s an impressive feat and I’d love to see how it gets applied to making a game. I’m sure this took a lot of work, but it seems like… demo of a mechanic. I hope the developers keep working on new games and make something with puzzles, better plot, more artwork, and perhaps character development.

But really, it was almost totally lacking in story. The cave narrates some things but I didn’t ever feel like I was discovering a story or exploring a world. There was a bit of a lesson forced on me with no real choice that I could find, but this felt like an experiment in a new form of gameplay with multiple characters and classical puzzle-solving in a platform-friendly environment. As a gameplay experiment, it worked but I don’t think it should be sold or marketed as a game on its own. The Cave is a great character and there’s so much potential, it is a shame the stories aren’t adequately developed in a natural fashion.