Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Yet Another Video Game Review

I'm sorry I haven't gotten on and blogged lately. You can blame my new videogame obsession.

See, the newest Humble Bundle came out, and with it came the premiere of Amanita Designs' newest game, Botanicula.



I would say this is my favorite game that Amanita has produced to date.

Botanicula is a puzzle/adventure game about a group of plant friends who are on a mission to save the last star tree in the world (I honestly don't know what to call it. The problem with all of Amanita's games is that none of the characters use actual words) from these evil spider creatures that suck the life out of everything around them. While they do this, they attempt to right as many of the spiders' wrongs as they can along the way.

Typically of Amanita Designs, the game is visually stunning. Amanita almost seems to be attempting to blur the line between video games and art. Here are a couple screen shots from Botanicula:



Look at those. They are art, plain and simple. When you add in the beautiful music, Botanicula is much more than just a piece of entertainment. And the beauty of Botanicula is that the game is almost magical.

But that's just it, though. These sorts of visually beautiful games are not limited to one of Amanita Designs' games. This is actually quite typical of them. Here's a shot from Machinarium:


Here's one from Samarost:


And here's one from Windowsill.


The fact is, everything they do is remarkably beautiful. Even if it isn't detailed, the game play is smooth,  intuitive, and fluid. I recommend just about everything they've put out. The four I've mentioned here are only a few of the games Amanita Designs has produced.

The visuals aren't the only thing that's inherently beautiful about the design. In every game I keep hoping for a soundtrack that I can listen to when I'm walking around. They have fit the music to the scene perfectly.

You can currently get Machinarium, Botanicula, Samarost 2, and Windowsill with the Humble Bundle.

Special thanks to gamrReview for the screenshots I used. 

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Help, The Stash is Attacking! When Yarn, Knitting and Growing Up Go Terribly Awry by Kimberly Lewis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at thestashattacked.blogspot.com.