July 26, 2023 - Day 207 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 226
Game: Samudra
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 29, 2021
Library Date: Mar 14, 2023
Unplayed: 134d (4m12d)
Playtime: 21m
Samudra is a sideways scrolling platformer-puzzler set in an underwater world that's riven by pollution.
As the game opens, a young child dressed in a Kruegeresque oversized jumper, shorts, sneakers, and... a diving bell... is sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The further they fall, the worse the pollution becomes, until they finally hit the seabed.
This is a gorgeous game. The graphics look hand-drawn. The lighting effects are wonderful.
Unfortunately, Samudra is beautifully boring with a side-order of frustrating.
The controls are simple: WASD (or controller thumbstick), and space (or button A) for actions.
As you slowly run across the ocean floor -because you're underwater, wearing a diving bell, without any oxygen hose- you will encounter things that trigger a speech bubble containing an icon above your head. There are literally no instructions. Even the "Controls" in the menu says "You have one button. This action button."
Your job is to work out exactly what the hell you're supposed to do, and how... because most of the time, the action button does *nothing*. Until it does. There's no real indication that it's become usable, so I spent a lot of time just mashing it hoping it might suddenly do something.
You can't jump... unless you can. You can't interact with things... unless you can. The game is rendered in a lot of dark, underseas tones, with much of the junk littering the ocean floor rendered in various shades of white.
It turns out there are indicators built into the environment for when actions are available... and they're also white.
Unless they're not available yet, in which case they're a slightly different shade of white.
But it's a 2D sideways-scrolling platformer, so at least that's not confusing. Except when it is.
I found myself standing on top of a crate; jumping down from the crate triggers a quick time event. You have to jump down. There's nowhere else to go. As you land on top of the slope built out of shipping containers, one hurtles down the slope towards you from the right of the screen.
You can't outrun it. You can't jump out of the way. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat. I couldn't find any way to avoid it. In frustration I alt-tabbed out to find a walkthrough.
It turns out that you need to run *towards* the shipping container, and then use the action button to step into a shadowed nook... in the Z axis.
I have no idea what I'm meant to be doing, but worse still, no idea why. Unfortunately, the beautiful atmosphere and look of this game does not compensate for the lack of fun.
Samudra is:
2: Meh
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