Samorost 1 Review – A Short, Fascinating Point and Click Adventure With Few Words!

There’s a lot of things we convey to others through the use of body language and visual indicators. Explicit words are not always necessary. And it’s especially interesting when a game brings you into its world with very few words, but still has a vocabulary. Samorost 1 is a title that does this through the medium of a short point and click adventure game.

An abbreviated version of this review is also available on YouTube.

Premise and Story

In it, you are a little gnome living on your asteroid that looks like a mishmash of junk, just traveling through space, minding your own business. When all of a sudden, you look through your telescope and see another craft on a collision course to destroy your home! After flying to this other object, you seek to find your way to its control room and avoid collision.

Gameplay

This is done by clicking on the screen with your mouse cursor and choosing different objects to interact with until you can progress to the next screen. For all practical purposes, each location is a small puzzle where you have to figure out what you’re supposed to do, while usually not moving your character at all. The gameplay is essentially just moving your mouse cursor around and clicking on things whenever the indicator changes to the shape of a hand. It doesn’t matter if your character is close to that object or not, if you click on it, it will react to your presses in some way or another.

There are no items to pick up, no inventory, and no way to die. And if you play long enough, there’s no way to lose as long as you do what the game expects of you. It’s really kind of a fascinating experience because the game only “speaks” to you through its visual and audio design. There’s no text on the screen telling you what you’re supposed to do. Even when you begin the game at your little asteroid home, it doesn’t say “press start button.” You’re just there and you’re supposed to start playing.

Intriguing Visuals and Audio

And in some way, this is actually kind of incredible and impressive, with a very distinctive art style and an understated atmospheric sound presentation. The music is effective, but I don’t remember it, and much of the audio comes from ambient noises and sounds that are made when you click on different characters or objects. This conveys a couple of key concepts:

1. It’s like you’re exploring a world that you’ve never seen before and it’s fascinating to look at and see how it compares with our own. Much of it is bizarre, but also familiar.
2. The game does feel a little bit like a jumbled mess and a little aimless other than your primary goal.

To most people, I expect these two concepts will appear at odds with each other. Let me try to explain. Because of how weird the world is, my frame of reference for how things should be doesn’t make much sense. While playing, I had no prior knowledge of the little planetoid, so the scenes were kind of fascinating. On the other hand, the locations of animals, and where they went and why, was significantly different from our own world. Because of this, I didn’t know what to expect when I clicked on things, so the game also conveyed a sense of randomness as well. This latter aspect resulted in me realizing what I was doing as I played (moving the mouse around at everything and clicking). As such, Samorost 1 became a little less engaging as I went along.

Conclusion

Thankfully, that isn’t a deal breaker for this title. It is extremely short, and can be completed in 5 – 15 minutes while going at a comfortable pace. In a lot of ways, I consider it an experience worth having for point & click adventure fans and a great introduction to the game’s world. I really respect what the developers did with this game, and I’m impressed with what they were able to share in a small, bite-sized package. I especially recommend the game if you have a fondness for distinctive art design and world building through visuals and audio without the use of many words.

I hope to review the sequels someday!

Title: Samorost 1 (GOG Link)
Genre: Point & Click Adventure
Year Released: 2021 (original from 2003)
Developer: Amanita Design
Played On: GOG (also available on Steam)
Price Paid: Free

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid.