Samorost 2

N.B. this review applies to the GOG version purchased in Dec 2018. Unfortunately, the game doesn't run in its own standalone app, but in a window of Macromedia Flash Player. Worse yet, the game does not support any display resolutions, and runs in a small window that is unplayable. Macromedia Flash Player does support zooming in, but this setting resets whenever the screen changes (passing to another screen or completing an action). As a result, the game is unplayable in this version. I hope an update comes out soon to fix this; I would love to play the game.

What is a point and click adventure game without puzzles? Somorost 2. The core gameplay loop for this game is find a hotspot on the screen and click on the hotspot, your guy does something and progress is made. There's no puzzles, the most challenging thing about the game is trying to figure out what you can click on, and sometimes what order you should click on those things. Which would make a fine albeit super-casual game experience if some of the clickable spots weren't so frustrating to find. And even that wouldn't be so bad if it were trying to be a hidden object sort of game, but it tries to present itself as an adventure game. On one puzzle I kept interacting with the objects on screen that were doing things trying to get them to work together, but gave up to look at a walkthrough, only to find that I had missed a tiny spot where I had to click to move to another screen where I had to literally harvest farts. All this was made even more frustrating because your dude moves so slowly across the screen, leaving you with a bunch of downtime that ended up making this very short game feel much too long for what it was. There's even a part of the game where your guy backtracks themselves across 4 screens with absolutely no interaction from you. Now, I can appreciate a short, tight game. And I can appreciate some meandering in a long epic game. But when you've got a short game that feels like a lot of it should have been left cut out, then what do you have? A puzzle game without puzzles.

Samorost 2 was always a lovely little gem but the 2020 remaster makes the game even better. 1. Nicer graphics 2. No longer crappy Flash host 3. Smoother save system 4. Added voice Short but very sweet!

It's very short (about 1 hour) but the charm is there, despite the lack of actual gameplay (on every screen you just need to figure out which spots to click on and in what order). Buy it on sale and treat it as a short intro to (absolutely magnificent) Samorost 3 and you won't be disappointed :) P.S.: To enlarge the game window to fullscreen just click with your right mouse button and choose "Show All" - you need to do it repeatedly (about 10 times in total) which is little annoying but it was not a big deal for me.

Samorost 2, while neither particularly good or bad, it is very family friendly. Basically, you're a cute little gnome guy looking to save his little rocketship home. You visit a beautifully rendered fantasy planet and you do the puzzles and generally have a fun, relaxing time. Puzzles are fairly straightfoward, and can usually actually just be solved by clicking around and seeing what all the various background elements do. It's pretty short and can be beaten in one setting. I'd give it a 3/5 really, but it should hold value for somebody looking for a game with a complete lack of violence, or somebody who likes interactive adventute game landscapes with lots to click on. Definitely check out Samorost 1 for free on the web and maybe consider buying Samorost 3 as well, which provide more of the same.