Starting as tiny Flash games, both Samorost and its newly-updated sequel predate this site by a good few years. Considering their age, this week’s update is a welcome one, helping Samorost 2 feel more at home in 2020.
Arriving as part of the game’s 15th anniversary, Samorost 2 has been updated to support widescreen resolutions. Visual assets have been upscaled in kind, with the devs using a “custom trained AI” to increase the fidelity. It seems to have worked well enough, too - Samorost may be old, but it still boasts the studio’s wonderfully evocative mix of photo collage and hand-drawn characters. It’s not all visual, either. Sounds have been re-recorded, with your wee man now boasting “a wider range of vocal expressions”. Saves have been overhauled, with an honest-to-god autosave replacing the original’s level passwords. You can now zoom in on the environments, both the main menu and in-game UI have been overhauled, and the game now sports achievements and full Mac support. Both Samorost 1 and 2 are rather short games, mind. It wouldn’t be until the third game that our tiny space pal would get a full-length excursion, a “surprisingly difficult” game that John Walker (RPS-in-peace) nevertheless found bursting with delight in his Samorost 3 review. Even so, it’s nice to see Samorost 2 get some love, clearing it of the jank that might make it an awkward play in 2020. Samorost 2 is available on Steam and GOG for £4/€5/$5.
