Atari has sure had a rollercoaster of a history, hasn’t it? It got the whole video game ball rolling, dropped that ball, completely lost sight of the ball, got ran over by the ball, ended up on another continent from the ball, tried to sell ball crypto, and in the last couple of years has once again been tentatively trying to play with the ball again. Okay, I started another Atari review similarly recently, but it’s worth emphasizing that this is a name that was once synonymous with gaming that is now basically trying to rebuild from scratch.
The company has a lot of brands that still hold some familiarity, but they’re all quite long in the tooth and weren’t necessarily well-maintained over the decades. This latest incarnation of Atari is doing what it can with what it has, though. Retro re-releases, new twists on old favorites, and some full-on originals have carried the Atari name over the last several years. One might initially mistake Adventure of Samsara as something similar to Missile Command Delta, using a classic game as a jumping-off point for a new idea. That’s not exactly what this is, however.
Adventure of Samsara originally started as a game called Tower of Samsara, completely independent of Atari and its IPs. Atari must have spotted it during its development and liked what it saw, because Tower of Samsara found some duck-dragons and released as Adventure of Samsara. It’s easy to see this as a cynical move, and I suppose to some extent it is. The Adventure elements here feel fully shoe-horned in and superficial. Adventure has such a generic title that I’m not sure it’s going to help put attention on the game, but there it is. Even with the references being so obviously slapped on after the fact, I’m sure some will appreciate them.
Setting that business aside, let’s talk about the game proper. Adventure of Samsara is a Metroidvania-style game, a genre that we have no shortage of choices for on the Nintendo Switch. At first, this one doesn’t seem to stand out much. The pixel art style is distinctive, but it didn’t exactly wow me. The premise seemed fine, the controls worked well enough even if they’re a little on the stiffer side, and the game seemed to have all the usual things you expect to see in things of this sort. Oh, a parry. I’ll admit that for the first solid chunk of Adventure of Samsara, I was a little bored. It’s not like it was bad or anything, but I felt like I had played this game a hundred times before.
With that said, the more time I spent with Adventure of Samsara, the more I liked it. It’s a real slow burn, there’s no question of that. Until you get the first handful of upgrades, it can be a slog. You also have to accept that your main character is never going to be as nimble as some protagonists in this genre. Still, that pace is part of the game. There’s a real atmosphere to Samsara, and that’s expressed both in the presentation and how it plays. It makes it feel all the more significant when you start getting upgrades that at least help make the exploration smoother. I wish the combat had followed a similar arc, but I suppose there’s something to be said for the deliberate nature of battles in this game.
While I eventually came to appreciate the combat, it’s the exploration that is the star of the show in Adventure of Samsara. The map design in this game is quite good. Every Metroidvania-style game is ideally designing its world in an onion style, revealing layer after layer as players get access to new abilities and upgrades. Some games like to spread all of that out across a large surface, making use of various means to allow the player to quickly travel instead of hoofing it manually. That’s fine, but I appreciate games that are able to provide similar progression with a tighter world. That’s something Adventure of Samsara does very well. You’re going to be revisiting areas quite often with new abilities, and it’s impressive how much mileage it gets out of some spaces. There’s a real sense of place at work here, all while being a fun playground to romp around in.
There are a few technical issues here, though. The game can stutter at times, particularly when using certain abilities. I also ran into the occasional bug, some of them requiring me to restart the game. The developer has been patching the game here and there, and I imagine it will continue to do bug fixes where it can. The stuttering seems like it might be here to stay, so keep that in mind if you think it will be something that bothers you. I’m not terribly sensitive to it myself, so I was able to tolerate its sporadic appearances during the fifteen hours or so that it took me to fully complete the game.
Adventure of Samsara is a slightly bitter cup of tea, but I think it’s one worth finishing. The Adventure elements are nearly pointless, the gameplay can be a bit plodding early on, and there are some bugs and stuttering issues present even after some updates. Yet there is something to this game, with its strong mood and satisfying exploration. I don’t think it’s going to change anyone’s mind if they’re sick of Metroidvania-style games, particularly in light of its slow start, but if you enjoy the genre, you should check this one out.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review Copy Provided by Atari
