Adventure of Samsara

„Adventure of Samsara“ ist ein schönes Pixel-Metroidvania mit toller Atmosphäre, spannenden Bosskämpfen und vielen Geheimnissen. Es ist aber recht schwer und kann manchmal frustrierend sein. Empfehlenswert für Fans von klassischen, herausfordernden Spielen.

Dreadful experience. Primarily due to really poor control inputs. The game looks fine, but really tries to pretend it is old and controls are laggy... which was a bug in the old days, not a feature. The worst offender is that button presses are missed about every 1 in 4 or 5 times. Just input not registered. But even that aside, the really strange lag between an input and the action on screen is unpleasant. Add to that strange decisions like making RT a dash key while also making it a "hold" key to grab ledges leads to really awkward misfires. Jumping is slow and floaty as well. The game I think tries to be "old school" but misses the mark quite a bit and ends up laggy and unresponsive. I couldn't enjoy the feel of playing it.

The game feels like Out of This World and Prince of Persia mixed together to form a great metroidvania! The game definitely has trade offs; clunky jump/hanging from bars but no damage from projectiles sometimes when finishing climbing animation. So you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have Adventure of Samsara! Seriously, if you're looking for a fun, challenging metroidvania that doesn't break the bank and will give you hours of fun, this is the game your'e looking for.

Fun little game that fulfilled my metrodvania craving after playing Silksong. Beautiful mysterious pixelated-art world Movements are a little clunky, but you get used to it and adds to the oldchool charm. I enjoyed the world design, exploring the map and finding all secrets. The more upgrade you find the easier it is to navigate the world. Bosses have good design and ideas, but are mostly very easy. The only difficulty comes from the clunkiness trying to avoid attacks. The last few bosses were deceptively easy when you are fully upgraded. Overall cool game that I managed to finish, there was a little something that made me wanna complete it!

This is a tough one for me to review. So much potential here that it hurts to think of what this game could've been with a little more polish. As-is, I can still recommend this flawed beauty of a game, but with several caveats. First the things that worked: Absolutely stunning pixel art and enemy sprite design. This makes the world a real wonder to explore. Coupled with an awesome synthy soundtrack (crank the music volume to 100 btw, it's set to like 60 by default for some reason), and you've got your atmosphere established in spades. Something about the small character sprite I find very charming as well, although that may be a personal preference thing. I've seen some negative comments regarding the controls being stiff. While that's true, I never found it to be an issue and it seems like a clear design choice that I thought worked well to differentiate this a bit from the more fluid movement that's more the norm these days. What didn't work: My main issue with the game is around the combat. Once you get the ranged weapon, there's little incentive to use the melee options when you can just snipe things from a safe distance. So it essentially trivializes the combat. Similarly, there are a bunch of spells and equipment but you won't have much reason to experiment with the majority of them, so there's not much excitement in finding them beyond scratching the completionist itch. I found the game to be way too easy from about the halfway point on. The draw of exploration (which again is a credit to the world design) led me to get all the power ups along the way, so maybe that had something to do with it (although I imagine I won't be the only one to play the game that way). It got to the point where enemies were just minor nuisances and even the last few bosses I was basically able to cheese in a hugely disappointing manner. Also, there are no consequences for dying other than having to start back at the save point (you retain all pickups and activated environmental triggers). While some players may appreciate that, I found it to remove any tension that may have helped compensate for the lack of difficulty. So to summarize, with better combat and more balanced difficulty this would easily be a top tier Metroidvania for me. As-is, I can still call it a fun experience that I have no regrets playing, but it's hard to see such potential not fully realized.

Mystery, method, and classic innovation. Many may find it slow, but it's fun.

awesome game! the mystery draws you into a different world that meshes scifi and fantasy pretty well. its more casual then it looks, very nice game to load up when your done for the day. my only gripe is i wish the enemy animations were a tad bit smoother, but maybe thats on purpose to capture the retro feel.