[Review] Where's Samantha? - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Respect Studios
Published By: ROKiT Games Limited 
Categories: Platformer 
Release Date: 08.19.21

What would you accurately describe as a game for children? Is it a game that’s targeted to them, or perhaps a game that is accessible to everyone and can be enjoyed by kids? I’ve always found the idea of targeted games a tad insulting, almost as if the audience isn’t respected or are being stereotyped, especially when it came to “Girl Games”. Where’s Samantha? doesn’t give me that vibe, but instead as game that is child friendly in almost every way and very well could be made for children, but also enjoyed by a otherwise older audience.

Where’s Samantha? stars George, a small piece of cloth. He’s trying to track down his love, Samantha. The story goes a bit deeper later on, but it’s mostly as simple as the story goes, but how the game presents itself is another thing entirely. Each level is a new page in a picture book, with a short narration of the story before you go inside. The art style is gorgeous, giving me flashbacks to Goodfeel’s Yoshi and Kirby games. Everything is a cloth of fabric textures, obstacles are things like pencils, nails, fans, and other real life objects. I love this, it always looks beautiful and I don’t think we see it near often enough. If it’s not that, the theme of being small and normal, regularly small objects being obstacles in a game has always been fascinating to me and very much up my alley.

On the audio front of this, there’s pleasant voice acting in that narration. There’s a lot of it too. I like the sound effects in the game too. However, I found that the music is really repetitive. Thankfully, this is one of my only gripes with Where’s Samantha.

Where’s Samantha is a 2D platformer, a rather simple one at that, with it being very much point A to point B. Each level has you collect letters, of which you’ll unlock the next level and the narration to go with it. This is not a hard game, but that’s ok. Not every platformer needs to be Super Meat Boy or Crash Bandicoot. Something to make this game stand out is how you can combine and separate for when the game needs.

In certain levels you’ll find new colors of cloth to combine with. These make you bigger, maybe heavier. You’ll see doors, switches, platforms that require a blue or purple addition. You’ll also run into different shaped clothes of different colors. See that more round cloth? Those make you less heavy and allow you to float a bit. This all depends on what your dominant cloth is as well, of which is the cloth you control when you combine. Puzzles will mostly be about what shape or color you have dominantly.

Where’s Samantha? was a great experience to go through. If you have a smaller child you want to get into videogames, this is the perfect one to get them in. It’s not too hard, it’s cute, but not saccharine, and it’s decent enough to be something anyone can play, instead of looking down on it’s playerbase.