I found myself turned off from puzzle-adventures ever since Myst wracked my brain with puzzles designed to be as obtuse and confusing as possible, usually because they ran on moon-logic understood only to the Kobolds of Ghorblak 5.

However, after playing Samorost 3 for a couple of hours I could feel that childlike wonder and glee return to me in full force as I explored strange new worlds inhabited by space turtles, singing lizards and flying mangoes. While I'm not yet ready to do a full review, I want to bring Samorost 3 to your attention, starting with its trailer:

The story premise in Samorost 3 is simple, albeit slightly insane. It all begins when a magical flute crashes from the heavens and prompts our protagonist to ditch the shackles of the earth below in order to construct a space-faring mushroom with which he can explore the various oddly shaped planets, asteroids and seemingly sentient mangoes.

None of that makes any sense, but that's exactly the point as Samorost 3 features a profoundly weird, yet thrilling world to explore. With the entire premise of normality thrown away there's plenty of unique areas to visit, puzzles to solve and characters to interact with.

That is a planet, though I suspect it might be edible

Since there is no dialogue in Samorost 3, the majority of your conversations will be done through the use of the magical flute which has the power to summon the spirit of whomever you're playing it to. At one point I even summoned a bunch of mushroom spirits which were so roused by my performance that they decided to bring new life to the grove they were hanging around on, right before they got plucked by what seemed to be a space hermit.

When the majority of the gameplay is spent alongside some sort of sound its important to ask if its any good? To which the answer is a resounding yes as the soundtrack perfectly embodies that cheerful, yet strange atmosphere, and the characters themselves are well voice acted, if you can call squeaks, exclamations and squeals as voice acting.

And yet this isn't even in the top 5 strangest things I've seen

Around ~1hr in to Samorost 3 you will come upon a couple of singing lizards whose voices and frequencies you can manipulate by messing around with reeds (don't question it). This has so far been my absolute favorite moment of Samorost 3 as you can completely ignore the puzzle in favor of creating your own gecko opera, which coincidentally can sound extremely good if you position the reeds just right.

As far as puzzles are concerned I'd say that they are decently challenging, but completely fair, and most importantly hilarious. Some of them can be a bit obtuse, but in general I was done with each one within 10 minutes, a respectable amount as anything higher than that would've made me itchy to explore the various hairy worlds that inhabit the skies of Samorost 3.

The top secret space-mushroom plans, plz no steal!

I plan to write a more in depth review of Samorost 3 once I can finally finish it and let the space mangoes settle in my mind, but as of right now I can tell you that its a worthy successor to Machinarium and well worth playing if you enjoy exploring strange and stunningly beautiful worlds that defy all logic and reason, yet remain exciting and approachable.

You can grab Samorost 3 on Steam or preferably from the developers themselves.