Papetura

A reluctant thumbs up. This is a very short, very derivative, and very tedious (for its length) point-and-click adventure. So, why thumbs up? Because of its superb soundtrack and soundwork by Tomáš Dvořák (Floex) and its pretty and wonderfully weird artwork (mostly hand-drawn). Basically, it's pretty. :) A superficial thumbs up.

But first of all: play Papetura only if you've played all the games from Amanita Design and don't have patience waiting for their next one. This is so obviously an "inspired by" game and copies almost every art and gameplay and even storytelling device they introduced. And of course Floex is on board. So it's easy to mistake this for one of their games. But ... it at best would be like a very early game from them, or even a mere demo of one their games.

Sounds like harsh criticism? But so it goes: if you make a homage then you have to expect that you will be compared to your source, likely unfavorably.

As pretty as it is, the gameplay is below mediocre. The puzzles are uninspiring (and there are very few; it's a super short game). They can also be quite obtuse. There is a pretty cool in-game hint system, but unfortunately once it actually made things worse for me and I had to look up a solution online. The character moves very, very slowly, which is annoying due to the large amount of backtracking (well, again, as a percentage of the game's short length).

I hate to say this, but if you're a fan of Floex's music you might be better off just buying the soundtrack. (And if you do, please buy from him directly and not via Steam!)