Haluz

Haluz escaped my radar when it was initally released in October 2006, and only came to my knowledge when I saw that a part 2 had been released. You'll see from the screenshot that Haluz is somewhat of a Samorost clone, but an excellent one at that.

As with the aforementioned Samorost, you control a little guy as he interacts with his surroundings in order to complete a bunch of tasks which will enable him to achieve his goal. But rather than avoiding an asteroid in the face, our hero is trying to get his satellite dish back from a pernicious bird.

The game is beautifully done, and the backgrounds are vivid and magnificent. The puzzles involve pulling, pushing and generally irritating the flora and fauna, as with Samorost, into giving you a hand up (or down). Some of the solutions are a little absurd, but this only adds to the charm of the game, as you can be one minute staring at an unfathomable predicament, and the next you will have solved it and be onto the next unfathomable predicament. All of this is accompanied by some great atmospheric music.

The graphics are heavly influenced by the designer's native country Slovakia, and the forests on display here act as a neat little advert for a country I must confess I have never considered as a holiday destination.

The game has more screens than Samorost's 6, although like the Czech game it is nicely lunchbreak-sized. The fact that the game is so heavily influenced by another series of games makes it hard to be too effusive (although I'm making a go of it), but it should be said that an army of Samorost clones of this quality would be most welcome.

In the absence of any new output from Amanita in a little while, Haluz is just the thing to keep this particular sub-genre ticking over. Play now.