The awards ceremony at this year’s GDC was fun. At least, that’s what John told me from his seat in the crowd, where he saw the winners mount a stage some would consider too colourful for this planet. The Independent Games Festival Awards and subsequent Game Developer’s Choice Awards saw a range of trophy-grabbers, from indie students to adventure game veterans. Unfortunately for them, I was hiding backstage, skulking behind a black curtain and holding a voice recorder like a cudgel. I had one question to ask them all: If they had to give their award away, who would get it?
It’s like re-gifting, except you worked really hard for the gift and now you have to hand it over three minutes after your acceptance speech. Life is pain.
The wonderfully colourful and funny Chuchel, the new adventure game from Samorost and Botanicula makers Amanita Design, is now out. Our John gushed praise in his Chuchel review but who can remember as far back as yesterday? “A tour de force of animation”, he said. “Daft happiness at its purest, titrated into gaming”, he said. For a game this great, a reminder is warranted. Ah, I laugh just seeing this angry little squiggle. Look: Read the rest of this entry »
Chuchel is a tour de force of animation, every scene so vibrant and hilarious, colourful and manic, the slightest tweaks in character facial expressions eliciting guffaws. Every new scene is a glorious delight just to look at, before you even start playing with it. And then, as you click on every element on the screen, delightful, silly and gorgeous things happen. This is a game where I find myself trying to work out what is the correct solution to any given puzzle, just so I can avoid clicking on it before I’ve clicked on everything else. I exhaust every repeated joke until it loops, don’t mind when they do, and call people in from other rooms to see the funniest moments. Chuchel is, beyond belief, wonderful.
Chuchel, the next adorable adventure game from Samorost and Botanicula folks Amanita Design, is almost here. The eponymous tetchy fuzzball Chuchel will arrive on March 7, Amanita announced today, with a mission to simply get a cherry. He seems a wrong’un to me but I can’t help smiling every time I see his defeated little face. Bless. Here, point your peepers and lugholes at this new trailer: Read the rest of this entry »
Amanita Design have made some of the prettiest (and best-sounding) video games, from Samorost through Machinarium to Botanicula, and their next looks delightful too. Amanita today shared a look at Chuchel [official site], their comedy adventure game due in early 2018, and I’m well up for all this. Crank your sound and have a look: Read the rest of this entry »
John is our usual Amanita correspondent but he’s off on hollybobs so I get to poke about in the gorgeous world of Machinarium [official site] this time! The reason the eight-year-old game is back in our newsbox is because it’s swapping Adobe Flash for a custom engine. So far so technical. What does it actually mean?
WELL!
“It’s using DirectX and the game feels much smoother, but most importantly, Machinarium now plays in full screen, even on modern Full HD and 4K displays.”
The makers of Samorost,Botanicula and Machinarium have announced a new game. It’s called Chuchel [official site] and judging by these two teasers it looks in keeping with the studio’s tradition of odd games with even odder names. We don’t have much else to go on yet, however, just a couple of short trailers showing off what I’m guessing is the grumpy protagonist. Come and enjoy his garbled ranting. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s rather lovely when you learn of a tiny company consistently making splendid games is succeeding, rather than struggling to stay alive. Amanita Design, who RPS have championed for their witty, beautiful and smart adventure games since we launched, sent us some very interesting sales information about their robotic point-and-clicker, Machinarium [official site], after its four millionth sale.
From the team most famous for Machinarium, Aminita Design, comes the third game in the Samorost series. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of the first two – they were both tiny Flash games. Samorost 3 [official site] is a full-length, full-screen adventure that requires no prior knowledge. How does the adventure/puzzle game hold up at this scale? Here’s wot I think:
The journey of Samorost feels very much like the journey of designers Amanita. The first game in the series was a free quick-to-play web game built in Flash, but Samorost 3 [official site] – coming out on the 24th March – is a lengthy downloadable adventure following their astonishing Machinarium and Botanicula. From small beginnings, they’re now one of the most respected adventure teams around, and expectations are extremely high for the first full-length entry in the Samorost series. Expectations that looks rather likely to be met if the quality of the new trailer, below, is anything to go by.
Amanita Design make some of the prettiest dang games around, and their Samorost games are especially lovely. They look like delicate, glowing paintings based on diddy stop-motion sets metal of scrap and thread, pebble and moss. Perhaps my favourite Amanita gameplace yet is one they’re showing in a wee new video from the upcoming Samorost 3 [official site], a forest scene which oh my giddy aunt I want to live in look:
I’ll be danged if this new Samorost 3 [official site] trailer isn’t the most charming thing I’ve seen all week, and I see myself in the mirror every day (still single, ladies). We’ve been waiting so very long for the adventure game, and now we have this trailer to see and hear and news that it’ll launch in autumn or winter to know.
One might petulantly stomp their feet and pout that we’ve been longing for its loveliness for almost a decade now, but creators Amanita Design released Machinarium and Botanicula in that time so shhh settle down and enjoy the gentle exposition I wedged in with this paragraph.
Just as night follows day, just as dog follows rabbit, just as Shia LeBeouf follows Daniel Clowes from a safe distance, a nomination for the latest game from Amanita will, it seems, always follow the announcement of another Independent Games Festival. This year, the makers of Botanicula and Machinarium are taking their charmingly odd, experimental puzzle-adventure Samorost3 to the show, where it’s nominated for Excellence In Visual Art and Excellence in Audio. This is their fourth game to bag a nomination – will it join its three predecessors in winning a prize?
We shall see. In the meantime, let’s have a chat with Amanita’s lead Jakub Dvorský about how Samorost 3 is and isn’t like its much-loved forerunners, the role sound plays in their games, and their status as veterans of the much-changed indie landscape.
2015! That’s an insane release date for a videogame! There won’t even be PCs by then. We’ll all have Google Glass injected into our eyeballs and iPhones surgically implanted up our bums and Microsoft Surfaces built into our toilet seats. That’s definitely the future. Everyone will want closed, locked, tyrannical software ecosytems by then. Why, PC gaming has died 42 times this year alone, so God only knows how bad it’ll be in 18 months’ time.
Hopefully Machinarium and Botanicula developer Amanita Design will be able to port their long-awaited second sequel to lovely, gently psychedelic pointer-clicker Samorost to Smartwatches and curved televisions BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. Meantime, I’m going to watch Samorost 3’s first-ever trailer just before I take my PC to the dump. Read the rest of this entry »
An open letter has been written by indie developers Amanita Design, Colibri Games and Daedalic Entertainment, reporting some rather worrying claims about UK publisher Lace Mamba. The company, known for picking up digitally distributed indie projects and selling boxed versions, is alleged to have failed to pay and keep to the contracts made with the indies.
The power of the demo! It’s not that I didn’t notice John’s joyous effusions about Botanicula, heck, I had to fetch the mop and bucket from the cellar and clean up afterwards, but despite all of that I didn’t actually play the game. Today Amanita have made a demo available, played directly in your browser at the website, and now I have played it. I played until the demo was over and then I started playing the full game and now I don’t want to carry on writing things for people to read because that means I’m not playing Botanicula. It’s absolutely lovely. Try the demo and maybe you’ll agree.
The decision by Amanita to put out the stunning Botanicula as part of a Humble Bundle on the day of release sounds, at first, like a lovely idea. A brand new game in a pay what you want bundle? Amazing! Except of course for those who pre-ordered it at full price. Personally, I think the $10 it would have cost anyone is a bargain for a game as utterly lovely as this, and people who pre-ordered clearly believed it to be worth that much to them at the time. But I do understand the frustration of learning that others could be getting the game, along with two other Amanita classics, for as little as one cent. That’s galling. I caught up with Amanita’s main man, Jakub Dvorský, to ask him about the reaction, and he informs me that it was their mistake, and to make up for it everybody who pre-ordered the game will be receiving the fantastic soundtrack, an art book, and a copy of Machinarium, for free, tomorrow.
Amanita’s Botanicula is out in one hour, and you’re going to like it very, very much. But, er, we recommend your hold off on purchasing it until 6pm. All the pics in this review can be clicked on for full-size versions, which if you’ve any sense will be gracing your desktop immediately. I’ve played it through and fallen in love, and you can find out why via the magical process of my saying Wot I Think:
Playing the preview code of Botanicula made me so happy one of my legs fell off. So I’m delighted to report that everyone’s going to have a chance to squeeze off their limbs with excitement on the 19th April, when the full game comes out. To commemorate, a new trailer has appeared, which you can see below. You’ll likely lose a toe.
Less challenge, more weird and wonderful environments to discover. That was the message I took from our interview with Amanita Design’s Jakub Dvorský, at least as far as Samorost 3 is concerned. The previous games, which you can and should play right now (Samorost 1, Samorost 2) are tranquil and inventive, politely requesting that your brain pays attention to the beauty and strangeness of the environments rather than troubling itself too much with complex puzzles. The third game will be much larger and here are the first pictures showing a few of the places the space gnome will be visiting.
