SAMUDRA - Steam Game

SAMUDRA is a hand-illustrated fable, an adventure about a child during his journey accoss a polluted sea. Nice athmosfere and nice soundtrack. You will have a nice story game with some puzzles and unfortunately you will see a lot of garbage in the sea that we threw into it.

You will be moving through a garbage-filled sea, solving puzzles. The story is not told clearly, so it is fun to imagine many things, similar to games such as LIMBO or INSIDE. Cute characters and a mysterious world are reasons to recommend this game to many people. The soundtrack is excellent, especially the acoustic chill songs. However, I found the puzzles a bit difficult and sometimes required action game-like controls. And sometimes they require advanced controls, which I had a hard time with.

Falling to the bottom of the ocean, through the swirling debris of plastic bottles, face masks and carrier bags, you begin an adventure to return to the surface. Along the way you will witness the obsession with industry and how man has plagued the ocean with its treatment of marine life and filthy byproducts. I enjoyed SAMUDRA for its attempt at bringing environmental issues to the forefront. There are some nice graphical touches that emphasize the problem of pollution in our oceans, and the way this can have an effect on marine life. It’s not a serious game, and not trying to deliver a sermon about the issue, but the obvious signs are there and they make you think about it. The game is set underwater but it isn’t particularly realistic and I don’t think they were trying to be. There are some nice underwater sound effects and the main character often behaves like he is in water but there have been some obvious compromises to maintain the gameplays fluidity. For example, the character can run and perform movements in the water without any resistance. The puzzles are reasonably easy, apart from the optional puffer fish puzzles, which are difficult; These are only for achievements and don’t affect the story progress. The first quarter of the game is very easy, and I was worried that this would be the case throughout, but the difficulty and variety does improve with later chapters. Puzzles involve a lot of stealth mechanics which are imaginative in their execution but are far too easy to perform. The game is very trial and error. Respawn points are mostly quite generous and it is just a case of learning by your mistakes and trying again. There are other types of puzzles and arcade sequences which help to break up gameplay and these were enjoyable. I wouldn’t label SAMUDRA as a typical game in the puzzle genre. It is more of a story-based adventure with medium puzzle and stealth mechanics, sprinkled with some arcade moments and cut scenes. It is quite varied but it doesn’t offer too much of a challenge. The story has no voice acting or subtitles and any communication is relayed by very basic thought bubbles which hardly make any sense. I wasn’t quite sure where the character had come from and what his back story was. You are thrown into the game without much explanation and it doesn’t really clarify much more as you progress. It is another game where you have to interpret what is going on and make assumptions. It didn’t have the emotional effect I...

Very cute and very simple. A nice game for the casual gamer!