2012 has been a fine year for video game music. The finest in recent memory, I'd argue. We've seen soundtracks of every shape, size and tonal color, compositional collections complementing games that have incorporated harmony and discord in ingenious, exciting ways.

Granted, my affinity for this year's music is at least in part because it was the year I started running Kotaku Melodic, and so my awareness of all things musical and video gamey has been at an all-time high.

But as the list below demonstrates, this year was something special any way you look at it. It was a year in which game design and music composition moved ever closer, where composers and instrumentalists played vital roles in development teams, and where game-makers demonstrated a greater than ever understanding of the many things video games and music have in common.

Here, in no particular order, are our picks for the best video game music of 2012.

I was expecting to like Gravity Rush, but I wasn't expecting its soundtrack to cast quite the spell it did. Sweeping and old-fashioned, Kohei Tanaka's score conjured old Hollywood in a way that few games even attempt. It mixed Django-esque gypsy jazz with rambunctious orchestral arrangements to build a tone all its own. I chose this tune, "Gravity Days," because it so well captures the soundtrack's charm. Though it was hard not to pick, "Pleasure Quarter," which marked the moment when I truly fell for Gravity Rush. The color palate switches; neons dot the night sky, the violin kicks in, and Kat takes flight.

Even among this heady list, the Hotline Miami soundtrack stands apart. Assembled by a collection of artists, it channeled the 80s-tinged, neon-drenched funk of the game perfectly, and is entirely listenable on its own merits. This track, "Miami" by Jasper Byrne (whose soundtrack to his game Lone Survivor is also outstanding), perhaps best captures the energy of the game. But other tracks from M.O.O.N., Perturbator, Sun Araw all elevate Hotline Miami to a level of deep, almost filthy glamor.

It's not an easy thing to make a turn-based game seem fraught and action-packed, but XCOM: Enemy Unknown managed it with energy to spare. Part of that is due to the game's brilliantly tense mission design, but some credit belongs to Michael McCann's brilliant score. McCann lent XCOM the same futuristic flair for the dramatic that he brought to last year's Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and his combat music gets me pumped like no other. Mix that with the eerie, keening sounds of a quiet ("too quiet") battlefield, and you've got one of the best strategy soundtracks in recent memory.

Few game soundtracks have ever charmed me like Botanicula's. When I first played the game, I described the it as weapons-grade joyfulness, and it hasn't lost an ounce of charm. And the soundtrack is a huge part of the game. Crafted by the Czech duo DVA (who make a surprise appearance in the game), the soundtrack relies on a combination of strange homemade instruments and human voices. DVA also created all of the sound effects in Botanicula, and the resulting soundscape blends sound design and music into a ramshackle jamboree of hums, whispers, grunts, bangs, clangs, and whistles.

I came to FTL a bit late. Though I'd been assured of its quality, I hadn't found time to play it until a few weeks ago. And Ben Prunty's cool, beautiful soundtrack grabbed me with a qucikness. The most remarkable thing about this track, "Civil," is how immediately iconic it becomes. Specifically, the chord progression at 1:38. The moment I first heard it, I thought "That right there is the core of this entire game." And so it is. The more I've played FTL, the more I've come to appreciate Prunty's range, but it always comes back to that moment in "Civil." His work invokes the best soundtracks of the past while conjuring something new, and it fits marvelously with the thoughtful, methodical pace of FTL.

I can only hope that Max Payne 3's soundtrack is the start of a trend. Rather than hiring a traditional film or game composer, Rockstar tapped the noise-rock band HEALTH to create the soundtrack for Max's return to glory. It would appear that after hiring the band, Rockstar got out of the way completely and let them do their thing. The result is one of the most uncompromising, exhilarating action game soundtracks I've ever heard. It's drenched in sweat, and at times feels like the music of Death Itself. It flattens the competition, a collection of compositions so distinctive that it enhances every moment of the game it accompanies.

Jason Schreier: I had some issues with Xenoblade Chronicles, the Monolith-developed RPG that came out back in April for Wii—yes, Wii!—but its soundtrack, composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura, Manami Kiyota, and ACE+, is undeniably stellar. From peppy jazz beats to gentle guitar strums, Xenoblade's music is eclectic, sweeping, and catchy as all hell.

The Mass Effect 3 soundtrack needed to achieve the impossible: Tie together one of the most heralded video game trilogies of the current generation (with one of the best series-wide soundtracks) and give us closure. And, somehow, composers Clint Mansell, Christopher Lennertz, Sam Hulick, Sascha Dikiciyan and Cris Velasco did just that.

It's fitting that a large number of musicians was required to tie Mass Effect room together: The series has seen a number of composers over its five-year run, voices that always managed to combine into a cohesive whole. Best of all, the Mass Effect 3 sound designers even managed to contribute, weaving the music from past games into the ambient sound of several scenes, knitting together a aural tapestry that transcended backing tracks. This piece, "An End Once and For All," was the only one I could choose as emblematic of the Mass Effect 3 soundtrack. It's the rare piece of video game music that sounds exactly as grandiose as its title claims, and it achieves that not with the synths for which the series became known, but with a solo piano, eventually augmented by an orchestra. We'll miss you, Commander.

Sound Shapes is an odd duck for this list, since it doesn't have a "proper" soundtrack per se; the game is its own soundtrack. But the game's levels, which essentially re-imagine sequencer nomenclature as level design, are laid out in a way that lines up with today's remix/mashup culture and allows players just enough control to put their own spin on things without undermining the compositional intent of the musicians. This track, "Cities" by Beck, is the most well-known from the game, but all of them—crafted by musicians like Jim Guthrie and Deadmau5, stand on their own. It's a soundtrack you have to play, and for that alone, it's worthy of mention. The fact that the music is great on its own merits only sweetens the deal.

Dyad is another game inextricably linked with its soundtrack. Part chaotic racer, part simulated drug trip (or, accompaniment to actual drug trip), David Kanaga's score dips and dives, accelerates and drops out, all in line with the motion on screen. By the end of the game, play and music have blended together into a kaleidoscopic, occasionally nightmarish, entirely unforgettable experience.

I found Polytron's Fez to be a pleasant surprise—the game had been hyped for so long that I wasn't sure what to expect. But when I finally played it, I found that the colorful, dreamily nostalgic game was both smaller and more specific than I'd been expecting. Rich "Disasterpeace" Vreeland's soundtrack was a big part of that, a lush and consonant blend of synths and plinky electronic drums that conjured wide spaces, bright skies, and was surprisingly naturalistic for a synthesized soundtrack. And that the audio tracks are laced with hidden symbols and secrets of their own is a bonus of the best sort.

Okay, yes, Persona 4 is really a game from 2008, and doesn't quite fall under the purview of this list. But 2012's PSVita "remix" Persona 4 Golden features several new tunes from series composer Shōji Meguro, and it's all so damned good that I felt like I couldn't leave it off. Persona 4's mix of complex jazz, triumphant pop, and weirdo ambient music feels more hip and present than most any game soundtrack. By the end of my first time through the game, I was entirely in love with the whole thing. Honestly, these songs are Inaba to me. This track, "Make History," is the new battle music for Golden, and alternates with the original theme to keep things fresh. I have fought hundreds of battles in P4, and this music feels as fresh now as it did the first time I heard it.

What more can be said about Austin Wintory's Journey score? I know I said up top that these are in no particular order. But. Wintory's achingly beautiful work sets a new standard for the emotional heights video game soundtracks can achieve. Journey wound up being a profound experience for me more times than once. Wintory's music is a large part of why.

Journey's score has been widely celebrated, and is the first game soundtrack nominated for a Grammy award. Every accolade it gets is deserved, not simply because the music is good (it is), but because it's uniquely informed by ThatGameCompany's design, and as a result stands as Journey's beating heart. Noble cello themes and resonant alto flute melodies evoke the seemingly endless loneliness of the desert; our slack-jawed wonder at the sheer scope of this endless basin of life. Soundtracks like this come along once in a great while; we may not hear its equal any time soon. But that's okay. These compositions aren't going anywhere, and thanks to them, Journey will remain a classic for many years to come.

So there you have them: Kotaku's picks for the best video game music of 2012. Of course, we may have left off your favorite, so I hope you'll all share your favorite tunes from the year in the comments. (I thought we had a great collection in our reader's choice post last week.)

For now, let's just take a moment to plug in some headphones and reflect on a fantastic year in music.

Hopefully by now, you've played Amanita Design's marvelous point-and-click adventure/exploration/music-time story-thing Botanicula. But I'm entirely open to the idea that you have not—and so is Amanita, who have now made the first section of the game playable for free through their website.

You may recall that earlier this year I said Botanicula so charming that it stole Julia Roberts away from Pretty Woman-era Richard Gere. That about sums it up. You really should play this game: It's got a great sense of humor, beautiful art, and one of the best and most distinctive soundtracks of the year.

Don't take it from me! Head on over to Amanita's site and play the game for free. And bear in mind that there's much more to the full game than the bit in the demo; all sorts of hidden joys and fun digressions. You'll see. Go play.

Botanicula Demo [Main Page]

The bleeps, bloops, and grinds of chiptune music have evolved from a technical necessity to an aesthetic choice. Musicians like Jim Guthrie and Anamanaguchi have spent recent years repurposing vintage digital sounds to create beautiful, human-sounding work.

While the contemporary video game soundscape is a wonderland of lovely synthetic sounds, it's easy to forget that the human side of audio—human beings recorded with microphones—can feel vital, beautiful and timeless.

Anyone who played SimCity 2000 remembers the bizarre, charming music. I bet you also remember that "zzt" sound effect that played every time you planted a new power line. It was the weirdest sound effect, even at the time, because it's clearly just a dude saying "zzt" in to a microphone. "zzt." "zzt." "zzt." That hilarious monotone, until you forgot about it and it became part of the game's unique sound.

I asked SimCity creator Will Wright about that sound, and he told me that in fact, it's his voice.

"I remember that well," he told me in an email. "That was actually just a recording of me making the sound with my voice. I recall that it was intended to be temporary but later we tried some other sounds and everyone liked how funny the first one was, so I kept it in."

I love that story, at least in part because I've seen that very thing happen so many times—what was intended to be a temporary track winds up making it to the final version because it captured something special and unrepeatable. That one sound effect ties Wright to the game in a personal, almost physical way. Every time you lay down a power line, you hear Will.

"Zzt." "Zzt."

I admire and welcome that type of real, human sound in video games. The clapping of hands, the cheering of voices; the air moving around live instruments, the human's breath hitting a microphone pop-filter.

It seems fitting that Fez and Botanicula came out so close to one another. Rich Vreeland's Fez soundtrack is a lovely digital creation, a synthesis of synth tones that creates a warm, dream-like atmosphere.

The soundtrack to Amanita Design's wonderful Botanicula, while equally lovely, almost stands as a perfect inverse of Vreeland's Fez soundtrack. That's because the music and all of Botanicula's sound effects were created by real instruments and human voices. Two specific humans, actually.

The soundtrack was recorded by the Czech band DVA. In slavic languages, DVA means "Two," which reflects the band's personell: Bára Kratochvílová plays saxophone, clarinet, and is lead singer, while Jan Kratochvil plays guitar and controls loops. The soundtrack, which you can listen to here, doesn't really sound like any video game soundtrack before it. It's lovely. Listen to the embedded music below and ask yourself: Does this sound like the soundtrack to any video game I've ever played?

In addition to a good amount of vocal work, "We used one czech banjo (it sounds like banjo, looks like banjo, but the system and numbers of strings is the same as guitar), saxophone, guitar, clarinet, bass clarinet, melodica, lot of pots from the kitchen, toy piano, and one old a little bit out of tune piano" to record the game's soundtrack, Kratochvílová and Kratochvil told me in an email.

90% of the sound effects in the game were recorded by DVA themselves (a whole bunch are created entirely with their voices), and 9.9% are bird and nature sounds recorded up in the mountains near Prague where they work. (They didn't elaborate on what the remaining 0.1% of the sounds are.) The process sounded simple enough: Botanicula animator and designer Jaroslav Plachy would send them the animations from the game, and they'd record the audio over them and and send them back.

"Music in the game works like lego(s)," Bára and Jan wrote. "You have motherboard – for example in the 2nd level, pure sounds of nature. In some situations after a click, you start to play bigger "lego cube" - music, and after the next click you've started to build something like a "Lego sound tower."

That's not particularly different than the sound design of any other video game, but for that one crucial thing—most of these sounds are human voices layering on top of one another.

Amanita's Jakub Dvorsky echoed Jan and Bará's laid-back post-mortem. "There was no [explicit] decision to make the sound effects human-generated," he told me in an email, "and we didn't tell the musicians how they should create all the sounds and music. They had complete freedom and we were absolutely happy with what they created. Sometimes it's better to let things take its natural course."

As I speak with more and more video game sound designers, I keep noticing that the most interesting sound effects are the ones that they've concocted in the most personal ways. So many games use complex digital processes to build massive, cinematic, or retro-sounding game soundtracks.

Hearing DVA's work on Botanicula was a sharp, almost bracing breath of fresh air. I immediately thought of Will Wright's "Zzt," which remains one of SimCity's most iconic sound effects nearly 20 years after SimCity 2000 came out.

I hope to hear more game soundtracks embrace the human, living side of audio. The worlds that game designers create are limited only by imagination. So too are their soundtracks. Technology makes all sorts of fantastic sound design possible, but let's not forget that the human voice is capable of a great many wonders all on its own.

"Zzt."

"Zzt."

"Zzzzzzzzzt."

UEFA Euro 2012

Released: April 24
Critic: Frazzi (Metacritic).

• "Lets also ignore the fact that Metacritic user reviews are often avenues for trolling."

• "Be smarter than me and not waste your money on this absolutely cynical release from EA. "
Score: 3.

Critic: uk_friday (Metacritic).

• "EA clearly have committed suicide with this product and heads should roll."

• "Players disappear from your squad during the tournament and new players arrive ... Did they miss the plane? Did they just go home and sulk?"
Score: 1.

Prototype 2

Released: April 24
Critic: Prototype 2 (Metacritic).
• "As I learned from Mass Effect 3's review, the ending is everything, have you seen this game's ending? the ending was terrible!!!"

• "It all builds up to a Final Epic Battle of simple quick-time events"
Score: 1.

Botanicula

Released: April 20
Critic: eastrazor (Metacritic).

• "**** **** **** ! Boring"

• "**** for kids !"

• "I fought that it will be funn or even hard but this is game for not too smart kids."
Score: 0.

I think that Botanicula, the new game from Machinarium indies Amanita Design, is freakin' wonderful. I already wrote about why I like it, so read that if you're wondering about the game. Short verzh: If you have a heart and like lovely and funny things, you should play it.

Botanicula comes out today, and as part of a promotion, the Humble Bundle guys just let us know that they have created a special bundle just for the game. They also sent this goofy-ass video to promote it. Heh.

You can pay whatever price you want (!!), and if you do, you'll get Botanicula as well as Aminata's other two games, Machinarium and Samorost 2, both of which are great in their own right. You'll also get the soundtracks for all three games, which are all so good that they're pretty much worth the price of admission on their own.

If you pay more than the average price, you'll also get the (probably weird and delightful) Czech film Kooky, with art direction by Amanita's Jakub Dvorsky, as well as Windowsill, another point-and-click game from Vectorpark.

The kicker is that not only will you feel good about yourself for getting a bunch of great games for basically no money, but you can also pat yourself on the back for saving the planet—you'll have the option of donating a portion of your purchase price to the World Land Trust.

So what are you still sitting here for? Go do this thing. Play Botanicula!

Humble Bontanicula Debut [Humblebundle.com]

The Splendid Botanicula Overflows With Weapons-Grade Joyfulness

Joy is a terribly underrated commodity in video games. Most of the games I play inspire all kinds of feelings-stress, tension, exhilaration, frustration, even less-celebrated but still mentionable sensations like "comforting routine" and "empowering murder-fantasy."
There aren't all that many... More »

There aren't all that many games that make me feel really, truly joyful. Botanicula is one of them.

Argh, this game. This game! It's basically a government-created smartbomb designed to deliver a payload of exuberant joie de vivre from your hard drive straight to your brain. Except it wasn't made in some government lab—it was made by actual people who put their actual selves into it. The result is a gorgeous, hilarious, endlessly creative, warm-hearted thing.

Botanicula, which comes out tomorrow and costs $10, is basically a point-and-click adventure game for PC, Mac or Linux. You'll be able to get it from Steam, the Mac App store, from GOG.com or direct from the developers.

In it, players control a group of five little nature-dudes who live in harmony on a giant tree. I call them "five little nature-dudes" since each one is different and it's not entirely clear just what they are. There's the little one-winger dragonfly dude, the little branch dude, the little(ish) fungus dude, little mushroom dude, and little glowing nut-dude.

Uh oh! Some scary black spider-things that more or less represent "evil" arrive and start sucking the life out of the tree. The head little nature-dude, (glowing nut-dude if you're keeping track) sees a vision and decides to get his little dude-friends and set out to stop them.

This is all conveyed without words—just like Machinarum, there's no talking in Botanicula, just goofy sorta-speak from various characters as well as visual representations of text that play like little cartoons.

Botanicula comes to us from Amanita Design, an independent Czech game development studio headed up by Jakub Dvorsky and Tomas Dvorak. Amanita is probably best known for their fabulous and too-often-overlooked adventure/puzzle game Machinarium. Have you played Machinarium? Good god, what are you doing with your life, etc. Go play it, etc. It's on like every platform known to man.

Where Machinarium relied on ingenious (if at times very difficult) puzzles roadblocking your progress, Botanicula is much more exploration-focused and, perhaps, approachable. I've been moseying through it and while all of its puzzles require brainpower and creativity, they're nothing close to the difficulty of Machinarium. They are fantastically creative, though—the game found a splendid number of ways to use my Macbook's trackpad, backing up Tim's notion that the apple trackpad is the best game controller yet made.

Botanicula feels designed to draw you into its world and, once it's got you there, to delight the living shit out of you. The world is organic and real-feeling from the first moment of the game. The art and colors are vibrant, soft, and lush. The puzzles and sequences themselves are all unique and memorable—you'll never repeat a single action, and each each new area and challenge arrives at new creative heights.

This game has been realized down to its tiniest details—many of the best gags are easter eggs that have no effect on the game whatsoever. (Watch out for the penguins, is what I'm saying.) The character animations are so good, so funny, that they recall Pixar's best and most charismatic silent beings—say, the robots of Wall-E. Each character was animated with flawless comedic timing—a pause here, a beat there—that makes every tiny movement a pleasure to watch.

On top of all that, Botanicula is possessed of one of the most creative and endearing soundtracks I've heard in ages. And that's not just my well-documented bass clarinet bias talking.

All of the sound effects and music in the game were created by the band DVA, who for the bulk of their sound rely not on instruments or samples but on human voices. Almost every humming insect, growing flower, and plunking, crashing sound effect was created by a human voice. It gives the game a loopy, child-like energy that in this age of (don't-get-me-wrong-lovely) chiptunes and electronically augmented sample libraries. It feels damn near sweded.

Friendly John Walker at Rock, Paper Shotgun observed that the soundtrack recalls the (hip! good! worth checking out!) band The Books, and he's spot on—from the moment the game started, I felt as though I was playing a video game version of The Lemon of Pink.

Curses. I don't want to get sidetracked on the soundtrack just yet. For now, just… the soundtrack to Botanicula is pleasing, hilarious, winning, touching, and flat-out gorgeous. It sounds entirely unlike every single other thing ever.

To sum up, here are some 100% true facts about Botanicula:

• Botanicula is so adorable that it can only be controlled by picking up a puppy and moving its puppy paws on your computer's trackpad.
• Botanicula is so funny that after they played it, the cast of Parks & Recreation said, "Wow, that's pretty damned funny."
• Botanicula's music is so good that the people who wrote the theme song to Parks & Recreation said, "Wow, that is some damned good music."
• Botanicula's sound effects are so good that you won't even notice that a lot of them involve a dude making chewing sounds in close proximity to a microphone. You'll even think it sounds cute.
• Botanicula is only on PC but feels destined for the iPad, so you should play it so that in six months when all the iPad people are freaking out you can be all hipster about it.
• Botanicula is so charming that it stole Julia Roberts away from Pretty Woman-era Richard Gere. He was pretty pissed but reported that he "couldn't stay mad at [Botanicula]".
• Botanicula is so organic that it won't deign to be sold in Whole Foods. It is so organic it lets out a quiet-but-not-that-quiet snicker every time someone brings up The Omnivore's Dilemma at a dinner party.
• Botanicula is so clever that it snuck up behind the raptor that snuck up on Muldoon in Jurassic Park. "Clever game," said the raptor.
• Botanicula is so damned good that it probably won't even wind up on Metacritic.

And so okay, yes, it won't be to everyone's taste. It's not exactly that difficult and there's not as much "game" to it as there is to many other games.

Vampires and Republicans probably won't like it. It'll probably go over the heads of most babies, and Vulcans won't see the appeal. Ditto serial killers and dead-but-actually-secretly-comatose soap-opera characters and people who paid to see Stan Helsing in theaters.

But whatever, I'm not talking to those people. I'm talking to you.

Botanicula is so good. You should play it.

Man, I want to play Botanicula. Amanita Design won me over forever with their splendid adventure game Machinarium, and I've been looking forward to its follow-up Botanicula ever since I first heard about it.

Today, Amanita announced that Botanicula will be released for Windows, Mac and Linux on April 19th. No word on an iOS release.

Take a look at this trailer and you'll see what I'm talking about. Can't wait for this one.

Hey, why should indie game developers get to have all the bundling fun? Game composers should get to experience the joy of bundling too. I'm glad to see that they finally are.

The folks behind the recent first-ever Indie Game Music Bundle are back with… can you guess the name?… the Indie Game Music Bundle 2! This one has five truly great soundtracks, which you can download for any price you'd like to pay.

You'll get the music from Aquaria, To The Moon, Jamestown, the bloody fantastic music from Machinarium, and even Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, which you'll recall was my favorite game soundtrack of all of last year. Jim Guthrie's work in that game is a big part of why I put it in as a contender for our Game of the Year award.

In keeping with the bundle tradition, if you drop $10 on those five soundtracks, you'll get even more soundtracks, with a lot of albums that I actually haven't hear, as well as some as-yet-unrevealed bonuses that will be unlocked if they sell enough copies.

Hmm. Unlocked as they sell more copies? That smells like gamification to me. It would seem that the musicians have indeed learned a thing or two from their game-developer brethren.

Well played, video game composers. Well played.

Indie Game Music Bundle 2 [Official Page]

You like Machinarium? Then you may like Osada, the newest game from Machinarium's developers, Amanita Design. It's free, and you can play it right now.

While we're on the subject, Amanita have also recently done some amazing work on both the puppet film Kooky and its book. You can - and should - check that out on their site.

Machinarium creator Jakub Dvorský was at this weekend's GameCityNights event, announcing not one, not five, but three new games to come from Amanita Design. We (read: Kotaku's favorite Englishmen at Rock Paper Shotgun) dispatched monocled investigator Brendan Caldwell to track him down and find out everything possible. Dvorský tells us how he plans to rescue the adventure genre, his views on piracy, and what we can expect to see in the new projects. You, and anyone else you know, can read about the new games, and see their chat, below.

Remember that Samorost? Of course you do. Remember that Machinarium? Of course you do. You're a man and/or lady of prolific memorisation skills, unspecified reader. Plus, it had robots in it. Nothing sticks in the mind like robots. They're mnemonic. Or pneumatic. Or some other awkward word that's spelled nothing like it is said aloud. Oh, I don't know. You remember it. That's the important bit.

Jakub Dvorský of Amanita Design, the Czech developers behind Machinarium, has just announced three new games. Aye, you heard right. Three. Then he showed them off during a presentation at this month's GameCityNights event in Nottingham. It's nice in that Nottingham. I've been there. It's got caves in.

The first game is called Osada and will be available to play on Anamita's website within a couple of weeks. Jakub admits it isn't so much a game as it is an "interactive music video." The player is taken through several screens of delightfully twisted Monty Pythonesque animations set in the Wild West. Clicking on different objects and characters determines the musical instruments or sounds, ranging from tinny guitar to whistling bottles to a chorus of Native Americans. It's all deliciously surreal.

The second game announced is called Botanicula. It is more characteristic of Amanita's style. The player controls a band of five plant and fungus-like creatures as they wander around their home in a big ol' tree, trying to find the last seed in order to save their home from parasitic beasts. "So it is a simple story," Jakub says. "With a lot of exploration and a long journey." You progress in very much the same way as in Samorost. There is pointing. Also, there is clicking. And plenty of Amanita's typical part-bizarre, part-logic puzzles.

"For example, here we are trying to put together a chicken," says Jakub. "It's not easy."

Chickens are important, we are told. They power a giant engine within the tree. Of course they do.

The animation looks encouraging. But then you will have come to expect this from Amanita. As I have already said, unspecified reader, you have an elephantine memory of these things. Of course, I don't need to remind you of that. Sorry.

The third game looks even more characteristic of Amanita's visual trademarks. This is possibly because it is a sequel – Samorost 3. Yes! The little white guy is back. What is that little white guy anyway, you ask? "Uh… a white… nameless… space gnome," says Jakub. There we are folks. Mystery solved. A space gnome.

Right now Samorost 3 is still in the early design stages. But Amanita know that they want it to be set in the same kind of world, only much bigger, so that the story can be fleshed out. No prizes for guessing what genre of game it will be. Okay, one prize. Answers to my email. Winner gets a big stamp on their forehead. It will read: "I know a thing."

Knowing things isn't so important though. Amanita wants Samorost 3 to be a more welcoming puzzle game. "We want it to be more accessible. We just want to change the approach of the whole game. The goal shouldn't be to defeat it and solve all of the puzzles as quickly as possible. The player should enjoy it. So we are thinking of it as an interactive toy."

Jakub laments what he calls a lack of replayability in the adventure genre. "We want to approach it like a music record. You hear it once, but it still has value the second time, the third time."

His presentation ended here, just after Jakub showed us a change to the main character's design. He will be more ninja-like, able to jump around and move more fluidly. So there we are. A white, nameless, ninja space gnome. What do you make of that?

But more questions must be asked. Questions are important. They help us learn.

RPS: So. Botanicula. What does that mean exactly?

Dvorský: Oh, it's nothing in particular. The whole game takes place on a tree, so. We're probably just trying to create a new word so that when you Google it and you get the first result – it's your game. It's worked so far with Samorost and Machinarium.

RPS: With Botanicula and Samorost 3 you've said you want to change the way the games play slightly, from what you had before with Machinarium. How are going about that?

Dvorský: We want to make it more accessible and more playful. So, it should be really relaxing experience. You shouldn't be trying to think too hard or need any special skills to play the game. You should just enjoy playing it because it's easy and it's fun. Basically it should be fun. We want to achieve that by having an interesting world which is fun to explore, by having interactive things that are fun to play with. I was showing earlier our interactive music video Osada, which is not a game at all… to call it a game… it's too easy, too simple. You're really just switching on and off different tracks. But still it's fun to play it. And try it, you will realise it's quite fun to just click on it and to play with the sounds and with the music. So this is the way we want to go. That it should basically be fun to play with.

RPS: Some developers have said for a while that the point and click adventure genre is broken, that it doesn't really work any more.

Dvorský: And they were right. There was some golden era of adventure games which were great and then later the games started to be more and more difficult and you had to [handle] tens or even hundreds of items at the same time in your inventory and there was no logic involved in places. And there were endless dialogues which were sometimes really boring. Sometimes the dialogues were funny but it's not playing a game. It's reading a book. So, it started to be quite annoying to play adventure games. I want to change it, make it more streamlined, more fun to play, more accessible. Of course we want some hard puzzles but still it should be in some boundaries of possibility. To solve it on your own, without help.

RPS: Machinarium was still quite hard at times though. You still had to use trial and error at times.

Dvorský: I believe it's possible to find out the solutions by logic only. But sometimes I must admit it's really hard. This is why we integrated the help system there. It's just different. We want to change this approach a bit.

RPS: When you talk about dialogue being very long, in Machinarium you used speech bubbles with simple pictures in them to keep the narrative going. Is that something you're going to continue for Samorost 3 and Botanicula?

Dvorský: Oh yeah. I'm always saying that I am a bad writer and I can't write meaningful dialogues or funny dialogues. But anyway, I always hated the dialogues in adventure games. But some communication is needed for telling the story and for broader reasons. I just believe that these comic bubbles are communication by animation, which is much more fun to look at.

RPS: And your games do put an emphasis on their visual impact. How are you going to develop that in the new titles?

Dvorský: We want to make the visual style of Samorost 3 a little different. It was me who created all the backgrounds in Samorost 1 and 2 but this one will be created by our graphic artist Adolf Lachman, who created Machinarium. So it will definitely change because of this. But we are actually trying to find a new look for it – a new technique for this game. And we do that every time we are starting a new project. We are first thinking about the world where it takes place, then trying to invent the proper graphic style. So, we are now trying to find it. It's not easy.

RPS: Machinarium took three years to make and it was never meant to take that long. Now that you are planning two titles basically at the same time, is the pressure on?

Dvorský: No. We are making two titles but at the moment we are in fact two separate teams inside the studio. It's just Jaromír Plachý who is creating Botanicula and one programmer and the musicians. The other team members are just speaking to him and I do a little bit of game design for it. Samorost 3 is our main project so all the members will be involved in it. Our main music composer, Tomáš Dvořák, isn't involved in Botanicula. So in fact those are two separate teams so we are quite free and we are not under pressure when in development. And because of the success of Machinarium we are also quite all right with money and everything's fine so we're not under pressure at all.

RPS: It's very popular in Russia, apparently.

Dvorský: Not only in Russia! It's doing well everywhere, so…

RPS: Would you contribute some of that success to deals like the Humble Indie Bundle? How much do things like that help?

Dvorský: It did help a lot. It was a big success. The game was already more than a year old and then we created the Humble Bundle with the Wolfire guys who are really nice and it worked so well. More than 230,000 people bought it in fourteen days, which is great. So it helped.

RPS: Were there any points during those three years of development when you felt it was going to fall apart?

Dvorský: I never believed that it was going to fall apart but there were some moments when it was really dark. We had to change the main artist, the main painter of the backgrounds in the early stage of development. The guy who started working on it was great and talented and everything but he wasn't really passionate about it. I think he didn't believe that it would be a good game or a successful game so he wasn't working really hard. So we kicked him off at some point. Or rather he just stopped working so we had to find another [artist] and we were very, very lucky to find Václav, whose really professional and a really nice guy and talented. So there were moments, sure, when we got depressed. It's always like that.

RPS: Considering the piracy that hit you guys, is that something that riles you up?

Dvorský: Despite the piracy of the game and other games too being really high, there is also a huge amount of people who are willing to pay for it. Even some pirates. Even some pirates who downloaded it for free somewhere realised that they really enjoyed the game and pay for it afterwards. Or at least they spread the word. So, they are part of our free marketing efforts. So that's not so bad with pirates. Definitely we don't believe in any piracy protections because finally any protection can be cracked or overcome.

RPS: Not a fan of DRM then.

Dvorský: No. In the end it's always an annoying thing for paying customers so we don't believe in it. However, I don't have any examples of it, just our guess that it wouldn't help.

RPS: What brought that interactive music video about?

Dvorský: It's our side project. It's developed by one of us, just by animator Václav Blín, the second animator, or the main one from Machinarium. And he developed it with an external musician, who's also not our member – he's not part of Anamita. He created it in his spare time, he's also hard working. Only our programmer helped him. I was helping him very little with design in places. Basically it's a one man project.

RPS: Where did the inspiration for the scratchy animation style originate?

Dvorský: I don't know. Maybe from illustrations or older animated movies. We definitely wanted to achieve a warm feeling for this cold robotic world, so we decided for a hand drawn style. And I also wanted to make it with some more free handed drawings. I can't explain this well but our graphic artist created everything very precisely and it wasn't ‘it' so I was pushing him to work more freely. And in the end he found out that it was much better to draw it with his left hand because he is right-handed. When he was drawing it with his left hand it was perfect. It was more loose or not so precise. So he created all the backgrounds with this left hand. But the problem was that in the end he started to be very skilful even with his left hand.

RPS: You should make him draw with his feet.

Dvorský: Next time.

RPS: Or his mouth.

Dvorský: Or his ear. But it could hurt.

RPS: You say you took inspiration from old animated movies. Now that you've actually worked on Kooky, what's it like going from designing an interactive medium to puppets in a movie?

Dvorský: It was quite a pleasant experience and very refreshing. Because when I am doing games I am the director of the team, I am the game designer, I am partly art director and I am also the businessperson, the marketing person, the PR person. And responsible for everything. So it was really nice to be a small part of the big team for a while. It's nothing that I want to do all the time but it nice to be just the designer of the puppets and the props on the film. It was quite a nice experience.

RPS: This indie scene has kicked off over here quite a bit. Is it the same in Eastern Europe?

Dvorský: I would say the situation is quite similar to the UK or America but we are just much smaller in number obviously, so the scene is smaller. But I would say the scene is quite strong. In our country there's lots of big studios. Well, not lots. There's two of them. But really big. And many small developers and beginners. I would say it's okay. Quite a similar situation to the UK.

RPS: Finally, any release dates set for Samorost 3 and Botanicula? Any time schedule set for yourself?

Dvorský: We want to finish Botanicula maybe in the end of this year, or the beginning of next. For Samorost three we don't really know. We don't want to promise anything yet. It's really at the early stages. So, we will see.

RPS: Thanks for your time.

Brendan Caldwell originally wrote this for Rock Paper Shotgun, one of the world's best sites for PC gaming news. Consult with him via e-mail.

Republished with permission.

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