Samorost 3

A point-and-click adventure world, where the game screen appears not as a static background but as a vibrant, dynamic work of art.

Wild cosmic joyride where you dive headfirst into a world of quirky space critters and mind-bending puzzles. It's like the game designers decided to mash up a fairytale with a splash of alien madness—totally off the charts! The visuals are so trippy!

8/10 I really enjoyed the music puzzles. Some of the puzzles were not well made, especially the totem pole puzzle. Worth playing through if you get it at a steep discount.

I played Samorost way back in the Kongregate days and thought it looked neat but there wasn't much game there. I think my sister bought me Samorost 2 here on Steam, though I may be wrong about that, but regardless, I didn't really care for that. it was very short for a premium game and the art was about the same as Samorost 1. In neither case were the puzzles worth mentioning since there were all click on everything that is clickable then find out if you progress. But THIS GAME is GREAT. It has so much more to show than Samorost 2 and the puzzles finally feel more like puzzles. Part of why this is possible now, is because the game does more to tell you what the goal of the area is rather than just let you find out when it happens. The environments have a lot more diversity and detail too. I like the universe which at times reminds me of The Little Prince or Fantastic Planet (La Planete Sauvage) and even a bit of the works of my favorite animator, Jan Svankmajer, I say it reminds me of these things, but it is still very much it's own thing.
After a kind of neat first game, and a disappointing second game, finally there's one that's highly recommended. And I probably wouldn't have found this out if the developers hadn't been supporters of Ukraine. I bought the game because it was on a sale where they gave all the profits to a humanitarian aid charity for Ukraine.

PROS:
+ magical atmosphere
+ sweet story
+ great soundtrack
+ good hint system
+ great on Steam Deck
CONS:
- super reliant on sense of hearing/tone
- resetting the flower puzzle
Comment:
Nothing else like it visually, just like the previous games in the series. But this time it expands on the art style which helps to tell a fun and sweet story. You really get to experience the artists imagination and ideas. This is coupled with a minimalist UI that communicates via symbols and so does not need any translations.
Another huge, if not even bigger, element of the game is the fantastic soundtrack. This is not just ambiance, you actively NEED to listen to various parts of the world(s) as they engage with the puzzles or collectibles. Though, I myself had a problem with the fact the you need to have a keen ear for tone and rhythm. It is similar to the devs previous games but turned up quite a bit. Trial and error works too though. So I just brute forced what I could and went for the guide book where I couldn't guess.
Guide book / hint system via puzzle codes is actually charming. It prevents you from getting stuck but doesn't just GIVE you the whole answer right away. This also means that you (probably) do not need to look up any guides and thus avoid spoilers. And exploration is the main attraction here. It fills you up with child-like wonder when you try to interact with things and they react in fun ways. There are plenty of secrets so look around in every scene in case one is hidden there.
Puzzles reset when you leave the screen, even finished ones, so make sure to finish up so you don't have to re-do them. Ironically, one puzzle I would have loved to reset is the flower one (you will know once you get there) but this one was VERY tricky to reset and I needed to do that for a collectible. Probably the only time I got stuck.
This has truly become my favourite Amanita Design game. And I liked their games already. The right combination of relaxing and engaging, nice to look at but visually unique. Definitely recommended!
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Beautiful - Puzzles are just right - Never stuck wondering what to do next - Cute, endearing characters - Absolutely gorgeous soundtrack. Overwhelming recommend if you're at all into adventure games or puzzle games.

Note that my irl playtime is about an hour less than recorded. I unfortunately had to spend quite a bit of time troubleshooting a bug where achievements weren't popping, despite them being acknowledged in-game. Turns out that the fix was as simple as whitelisting the game in your antivirus, if you have a similar issue to mine, but it's unfortunate that after all that I ended up putting this game on the backburner for as long as I did.
The Samorost series is consistently a delight: beautiful artwork and sound design, just generally very wholesome with a direction that gives off a whimsical fantasy feel. The first game is free and 15mins of your time. The next game a little longer where I clocked in at about an hour, and this one, with all my fumbling and completionist-brained secret-finding, took 6x that time. There were even some events that were post-game, which is a great touch to add in this genre. You'll most likely need a guide or two, but that's the only complaint that I can imagine.