Game review: Samsara is a puzzle lover’s dream game

Ben Moore and I recently had the chance to play Samsara, a New Zealand made puzzle game.

Samsara is a beautiful and complex 2D indie puzzle game that offers hours of fun to fans of this genre.

The main goal for players is to guide Zee, the innocent player character, safely through the world.

The gameplay revolves around dropping and rotating blocks and creating a path for Zee to move forward upon.

This may seem like a simple premise, however, each one of your placement actions influences the world of echos, which was inspired by the upside down from Stranger Things.

This leads to some fairly complex puzzles involving gravity, redirection and teleportation.

Some of these puzzles may grind even the most experienced puzzle gamers to a halt for a while.

Simultaneously, it's a fairly accessible game, so most children and casual gamers would be able to find enjoyment here.

And though you may not expect a particularly exciting story from your puzzle game there is an interesting story to experience in Samsara.

Ben's Comments:

Samsara's learning curve is gentle and lets the player get their head around the physics of each type of block before throwing the nastier puzzles at them.

While this is generally positive, there are a few hand-holdy tutorials that veteran players will find disruptive to the flow of the game, although they are quick enough that this doesn't detract too much from the overall enjoyment.

The animations between levels are also short and sweet enough that they avoid that impatient hammering at the mouse buttons.

The music is not distracting or annoying, and makes an effective backdrop to the sound design as a whole, pulling you further into the game.

Overall Samsara is a very enjoyable game, and we would definitely recommend it if you're a fan of puzzle games.

You can watch the trailer for Samsara here: