Welcome to our review of Samsara, a fiendishly clever puzzle game that will make your head hurt!
While playing in the park, Zee follows a squirrel through a portal to a world of echoes, inhabited by a shadow child. Surrounded by the unknown and trapped in a series of realms both confusing and dangerous, the youngsters must avoid slipping into the pool between dimensions, embarking on a voyage of discovery and awakening they share with the player, up and down staircases, through light and dark, across the upside-down and the right-side-up to their eventual freedom.
Samsara is a completely new experience for me. We are ten days into the new year and I already want to nominate this game for Switch game of the year, Samsara plays incredibly well and it is incredibly ingenious.
As the game is based on a very simple principle, it will sound incredibly easy to go and pass a level. All you need to do is walk to the destination on the level.
Just place the blocks in the right place, let Zee walk and finish the level. Sure the blocks do not always match up and that is where this game becomes fiendishly smart. There is a reverse side to each level and the blocks are reversed to the above world.
Now imagine purposely placing your block in the reverse world in order to make a path appear in the above world!
This is how ingenious this game is.
I can not stress enough how amazingly fun this game is. It looks great as well, from a design point of view, it is nothing incredibly special, but the graphics just fit the entire idea behind this game.
And I know, my love for puzzle games is well known. I even gave one a perfect score last year and Samsara is not going to be any different. This game makes me think out of the box. Not a single puzzle is easy but none were so hard that I could not figure it out. The main idea behind this game is clearly to think in a new way.
If you are in the market for a smart puzzle game, grab Samsara and let me know what you felt when you first solved the initial five levels.
I know, just 5 levels will make you fall in love with this game but do not underestimate how seemingly hard some levels may be, I remember getting stuck in the second world on just the second level because I was missing the idea behind the level itself.
Finishing that level, it was a new kind of relief. I so love this game and I hope so will you.
#samsara
In conclusion, this may very well be my favorite game in ages, a perfect score for the perfect blend of evil and puzzle.
