“Samsara Room” by Rusty Lake, Maarten Looise, Robin Ras, Victor Butzelaar, Louise Åhslund, Ruben Aldenhoven, Jialing Geng, Meg Furihata, Ida Birk Glenert, Giovanni Guglielmo, Anh Ha, Nina Kavelar, Taylor Kim, Jena Lee, Germán Michelis, Jakub Novák, Rafat Nowak, Ayşegül Özol, Estela Peixoto, Ksenia Slavshchick & Nicolas Thf.
“You find yourself in a strange room. There is a telephone, a mirror, a grandfather clock and some other odd objects you [do not recognize]. It seems there is only one way to escape… [Become] enlightened.”
Saṃsāra is a core belief of many religions, Hinduism and Buddhism included. It is, generally speaking, the cyclic wandering between life and death, making it a theoretical fundament for the idea of reincarnations. For their fifth birthday, the game studio Rusty Lake published a free game with the fitting title “Samsara Room”. It is a polished version of the ‘prequel’ to their popular puzzle game series.
The leading motifs – time itself, the cyclic structure, life, death and transformation – always find their way into the puzzle design of “Samsara Room”. Once you have found the shrine in the first room, you can give it a temporary ‘sacrifice’, which allows you to go through a metamorphosis into a new form. An ordinary individual can become a fish in human shape, a reptoid, a worm creature, a feathered bird person or… If you were attentive while reading this article, you surely know where this is going. If you love creative, rewarding riddles that will bring your synapses near an explosion, then you should definitely give “Samsara Room” a try. [PLAY]
