Creaks

I've played and love all games Amanita, since Somorost 1 came out as a Flash game. But Creaks is an entirely different thing as it is a pure puzzle platformer - not an adventure - with only a barebone story and a very limited set of puzzle variation and the puzzles are rarely fun but feel tedious mostly. The fomer Amantia games encrouge you to try out things, even fail and you are rewarded with lots and lots of funny outcomes. In the entire game of Creak you a get handful of boring death animations and that's it. Gameplay is uttery boring and monotonous. All the creative interactive little bits from the former games are gone and are replaced with background art that is exceptional, true but never interactive and ther's nothing to explore. The only 'change' are some mini games that tell some very loosely related side stories but are boring also. If I still could, I would refund it. There is nothing here for me that I loved from the older Amantia games. So my advise: watch a gameplay video and see if you like it, because what you see in the first 10 minutes of gameplay is basically the entirety of gameplay you get is in Creaks.

Creaks has different mechanics than previous major Amanita Design titles. It's not a point and click adventure (it doesn't use mouse at all), it's a puzzle platformer played with either keyboard or a controller. Now this might feel little weird at first (especially if you're a fan of Machinarium, Samorost or Botanicula and you come looking for something in similar vein) but if you get over the bias of your expectations and allow yourself to get immersed into the world of Creaks, I promise you're in for a treat! While it plays differently, it still features all the usual Amanita Design trademarks - top notch hand drawn art, beautiful animations and hugely atmospheric soundtrack (Hidden Orchestra is one of my favourite bands so I was overjoyed to realize they composed the music for Creaks). The setting is little dark but the overall mood is much more one of a mystery rather than a horror, with many bright (and a some literally heartwarming) moments. It's simply charming! And I loved the puzzle design! The new mechanics are introduced at reasonable pace so that it's fairly easy to keep up with them while the puzzles itself strike a fine balance between being challenging enough so that solving them feels rewarding while risk of getting stuck and having to reach for a walkthrough is next to zero (if you're willing to put some effort in them of course :) personally I think I solved most rooms in under 10 minutes, with the hardest ones taking me around 30 - I finished the game without walkthrough in 2 days). P.S.: Some of the puzzles may look like you need to be fast to solve them - but that's actually never the case (timing is important sometimes but never to the point of forcing you to run from one switch to another as fast as you can without any margin for error) - if you feel like you're not fast enough than you probably haven't found the right solution yet ;)

It's pure artistry. Hand drawn graphics, ambient music (and sound effects), level design, clever puzzles and weird world (you feel mystery). Everything fits together perfectly. I'm sure it's the most laborious game from Amanita. Perhaps this is their opus manum. Hopefully not, but it won't be easy to do better work.

Fantastic game. It was somewhat boring and monotonous at the beginning, but then the second part of the game rewards you for going through it!

I bought it during winter sale I wanted something new and fun to play, but what really made me choose this game it`s unique art style. Game art-style is just amazing. Creaks is beautiful hand-drawn puzzle adventure game. While gameplay is mainly solving puzzles there are some platforming too. Puzzles are clever and often not that easy. For some levels you need to think hard how to approach and solve the puzzles so you can progress further. For me this game is absolutely amazing, the weird world, puzzles, environment everything is packed together so well and everything is hand-drawn... Just amazing...