Page - 202 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

202 | Christian Wessely www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 199–205 My OPiNiON What fascinates me so with Samorost 3 (and has done from the very first mo- ment) is the complete absence of text, written or spoken. in a sense Samorost 3 is a mute adventure. It contains noise effects that are very well made, interest- ing music, made with craftsmanship, and babbling sounds when someone is speaking, but nothing one actually understands. the communication is partly shifted to a highly symbolic level – icons appear in speech balloons, and riddles have to be solved in inserted subscreens (see fig. 2 and 4). And no lesser part is played by music: listening and repeating musical motives and manipulating various tokens, from ropes to bugs’ antennae (see fig. 5), to produce sound sequences are vital for the game to progress. On the surface Samorost 3 is non-violent. i was unable to provoke a killing. the player cannot die; if one is unable to solve a riddle, one simply gets stuck in the environment. however, death is somehow present: the wastelands on some planets speak of catastrophes that may have happened, and the antagonist and his creature have to be defeated in order to save this little universe, a task dele- gated, however, to the (mechanical) hero, whom the player has to awake. here is a wonderful example of the sacrificial process René Girard has described. So, in the end, for all its fascination Samorost 3 remains stuck in a scapegoat mecha- Fig. 4: When charmed by the horn, the plant answers.