I can't recommend it as its an unfinished game and the studio does not seem to have any plans of releasing the sequels. It really did feel like playing a prologue. Parts are well crafted and nicely made. Others are not. Overall, only get it if you have nothing else to play. It is good but feels like a waste of time.
The game is set in a subterranean castle filled with varied, fun and challenging puzzle rooms. Design and music are both very impressive. Often I was surprised at how they would meticulously draw tens and tens of background objects to use in a single room, simply because they wanted it to look as good and real as possible. The music is kind of unique. There is an entire little youtube documentary about it on their official channel. Every song consists of a set number layers that are constantly scrambled, creating randomly generated music. Depending on the situation, the music is scrambled together from different sources. For example when you just enter a room it can be mellow and ambient and slowly slowly as you progress through the puzzles in the room the music randomizer will start picking parts that are more energetic and cheerful. Really great to be honest. I didn't notice during playing but often wondered how they could have such long songs and such a varied soundtrack. Lots of secrets and funky mini games of intentionally dubious but amusing quality. I'd definitely give this a go.
Without spoiling too much. This is a card game that is intentionally made so that its easy to break. You can easily find broken combos and one turn wins. It doesnt take a lot of skill or imagination. What it does take is a bit of luck, in order to get the right cards, mix them (you can combine cards for higher power), power them up and finally draw them while in a battle. I really like the idea. It is a bit meta. Also, you can tell that a lot of love has gone into this game. There are many secrets etc and the game is deeper than it seems. The problems for me are that runs are often 1. extremely easy with multiple 1 turn win cards or 2. very difficult as you only have shit and your few good cards drown in shit cards that you don't want to draw. Its rare to have a game that feels fair and balanced. Usually its either winning no matter how shit you play or losing despite playing very well, simply because you did or did not get some broken card. I have played some card games before and don't mind randomness but this game takes it further than most. Its some kind of meta commentary on card games. Thats quirky and rofl and all but for me to really enjoy it, it should have been a bit less easy to break and balanced accordingly. Also, I don't get why so little information is shared in game. For example I combined two cards today. Usually when you power up cards they get stronger but this one got stuck at 0 power and there was no explanation as to why and no warning. There are many details like that. Instead of learning some valuable rule you have to learn bugs, as this is intentionally made to resemble a bug infested mess of a game. Worth trying because it is very different and parts of it has a nice atmosphere, but it is not as good as many say.
The amazing thing is how a game alternates between you being the human player and monsters. Whoever is human is constantly assailed by the other three players. When one of them lands a killing hit, the reward is to take over as human. You can only win when in human form. Also, when the human levels up, the monster players get xp to evolve their monsters, eventually getting really strong though ones. It's a dungeon crawler separated to different floors. On each floor there will be a shop with items that don't respawn (until next floor) and a portal to the final boss. These boss portals can only be activated from level 10 an up though. Basically you encounter monsters (other players) and gather money, xp etc. When you feel strong enough, give the boss a go. There are several different final bosses and which one you'll met is chosen on random each game. The player that first beats the boss wins and if five attempts are failed, no one wins. You can choose one of a number of gods to worship, granting you different bonuses and different monsters to play with when you are not the human. I think there are 11 gods in total and a few tweaks added. Lets say total 15 various options. And they play very differently. Not just stat differences like +2 str, -1 speed. Play it with a friend or two or three. Best multiplayer for a long time even though we were only two. Will try three soon. But its great with two players and AI or vs 3 AI.
The art is great and it is good to see it more up close. I noticed some details here and there that I had never seen before. While playing, the enemies especially are very small. Also there was some stuff that did not end up in the final product. Examples of enemies and stuff like that. I do wish that a few comments had been scattered here and there though. For example, the violin kid tries out various masks in the concept art. Some with a sharp triangular nose and one with no nose at all. It was kind of unclear why they ditched these earlier designs. With a few sencentces of text here and there, this DLC would be more enjoyable. It would have been interesting too to get to know why some of the enemy types were abandoned. No essays or anything, just some text here and there to add to the images. Glad I finally bought it though. Played this game 2 years ago and it has been on my mind since. Since I started a new game yesterday and the DLC was on sale, it felt like a good time to give it a go.
If anyone knows about Shelter 1 and 2, where you play as animals taking care of their young, this game is a bit like a combination of them, minus most of the charm. The gameplay revolves around taking care of your cubs, feeding and protecting them. One mistake and a cub could die. So the stakes are kind of high and you have very clear incentives. Problem: the gameplay is boring and tedious. While the design is great, the game feels empty and completely monotonous. Many of the design choices make no sense either. The way you hunt, for example. Fishes in a pond endlessly jumping up and down just waiting for you to stand next to them and press a button. If it should be this simple, you could just as well just let the fox catch the fish automatically. Biggest problems: Too much hysteria. Humans burn down forests because so evil brah. Humans make fox go extinct while ROFL brah. Its just retarded. The game claims to bring up contemporary environmental problems but feels more like a fever dream of young Greta. Even worse, the developers themselves try to make money from the hysteria. The "save the world" edition of this game costs about 10 euros more than the standard edition. You get some random stuff included to the base game and a tree planted. The organization that they work with charges 1 USD to plant a tree. This means that 90% of the "save the world" money stays with the game studio. I usually dont care about stuff like that. How some company starts being "green" to make more money. But keeping 90% of the "save the world" money is taking it to another level. Shameful.
There is a great documentary released by Amanita studios, where you can follow the games development. It has some spoilers in it, so I would not recommend to watch it until finishing the game. After finishing you should really give it a try though. It shows very clearly how much love and energy was put into this game. The designer of the environment for example says that while he would work some hours or a day on screens in Machinarium, for Samorost 3 he would sometimes spend more than a month on a single screen. As much effort seems to have been put into the rest of the game. Puzzles are very well designed and varied. The music is great. There are hidden little details everywhere. Even the story, while not taking up much space, is intriguing and told in a way that felt very fresh and interesting. The documentary Growing a Samorost can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W3kXEGy_GQ
The game consists of two parts. One is the repetitive and monotonous daily routine, where you time after time have to perform the same simple and tedious tasks. There are minor variations from day to day. Overall, however, it doesn't stay fresh even until day 2. The other part consists of the cringy and poorly narrated dreams dreamt between days. Typical gameplay during these dreams is listening to someone read the line "I took a sip of coffee" with a monotonous voice (because it is deep) and then pull the coffee cup to the protagonists mouth. Wow. Puzzle solved. Mentally challenged deluxe achievement won. I don't have much good to say about this game. If you loved the other games published by this developed, you could very well like this as well. I haven't played them. I probably wont after trying this as it discouraged me so. It feels like a Bergman movie for the mentally handicapped. With some added garbage puzzles for interactivity. They should have skipped the interactivity and complete garbage puzzles. Like when for example during a dream, the narrator says "the clouds were moving across the sky" and you have to manually pull them across the sky. Come on, who thinks that kind of stuff is fun or challenging? I respect that they tried (therefore 2/5) but the product is shit.
Have been working way too much the last two days. Over 30 hours! Today I felt kind of worn out and just wanted to recover in peace. The game really got me in a better mood with it's fun characters, beautiful artstyle and amazing and smoothly adapting music. I don't think of this as a puzzle game very much. Just walk around, enjoy the stuff that is going on and don't expect difficult puzzles as in many other point and click games. Most puzzles seem to have multiple solutions, so that it will be even easier to progress, and for the game to be more interactive and replayable.
Overall worth to play if you can get it during a sale. I'm impressed with what the developers wanted to create. The world is beautifully designed and comes alive with many neat details, such as overheard conversations through windows or stray NPCs with interesting dialogue. The game gives you many chances to make various choices that will impact the gameplay as well as the ending. The main problems are how poor the puzzle design is. Often the puzzles are so simple it's just boring. I'd prefer to once in a while have a challenging puzzle to have simple puzzles all over the place. Movement is far from flawless but as this is not a very platformy game it doesn't matter too much. Some parts are a bit drawn out or even cringy. First hour or so is a bit dull. It gets better eventually. Overall, good for relaxing a bit and enjoying the environments.
