Atari launched its own Metroidvania on the same day as Silksong, but it’s only hit 12 concurrent players on Steam
Adventure of Samsara has received positive reviews from those who’ve played it
Atari’s decision to release its own Metroidvania game on the same day as Hollow Knight: Silksong appears to have seriously harmed its initial momentum.
Adventure of Samsara is a modern reboot of Adventure, the 1980 action-adventure title credited as one of the most influential games of all time.
The game, which is developed by Brazilian studio Ilex Games and published by Atari, makes use of pixel art and “combines classic gameplay, a deeply connected world, and a heady, twisting narrative of death, rebirth and memory”.
However, Atari decided to release Adventure of Samsara on September 4, the same day as the hugely anticipated Hollow Knight: Silksong.
Most publishers will have sought to avoid releasing their game on the same day as such a massively hyped game regardless of its genre, but to actually release a Metroidvania on the same day as one of the most eagerly awaited Metroidvania games ever appears to have been a miscalculation.
According to SteamDB, Adventure of Samsara has only managed to hit a concurrent player count of 12 players on Steam since its release. Rough estimates on the site calculate that the number of people who bought the game on Steam ranges from around 190 to 360.
The game is also available on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, so it’s not yet clear how well it’s sold across all formats.
Despite its apparent very slow start, Adventure of Samsara appears to at least have won over those who actually did buy it. At the time of writing the game has 14 reviews on Steam and has a 100% positive rating.
“I bought this because I loved the demo and I respect the dev’s cajones in launching with that other game that released today,” reviewer TooshFatoosh said on Steam. “Awesome audio design, beautiful visuals, and fun gameplay. This one has a lot going for it.”
“It’s a really cool game, the visuals are just insane and it’s atmosphere is very good,” added reviewer Quibao, who has currently played the game for 6 hours since its release. “I highly recommend it. Kudos to everyone at Ilex Games, great work! I hope it gains the traction it deserves.”
In a recent interview with VGC, Atari’s Wade Rosen cited the game as one of Atari’s attempts to introduce its older IP to modern players, something that’s harder for a company whose most influential games are essentially primitive by today’s standards.
“The challenge for making original work at Atari is it’s not quite like Sega,” Rosen told us. “Sega’s bringing back some of their classics. Amazing. I’m really looking forward to Jet Set Radio. But that conceptually is the same game, it’s updated but you’re not conceptually changing it.
“But what is Adventure today? You know, we take swings – Adventure of Samsara is a really good game, it’s got this esoteric bizarreness that the original Adventure has, mixed with Prince of Persia and Shadow of the Colossus.
“But you’re still having to get pretty far from what you did, because the original is – everything built on that, first of all, so to make a sequel that’s just like the original is really to make nothing, because everything kind of was built on the shoulders of that.
“And the second thing is, anything you do is naturally going to be more abstract from it. So it’s tough to make games that are original enough to attract new gamers and still get the old gamers. And we try. We try and we’re making – like, I think Adventure of Samsara is a really good game.”
Further reading
The original Adventure, which was released on Atari 2600 in 1980, is credited as being one of the first major video games to have a hidden easter egg, and the first to have it described as such.
The game features a secret room with programmer Warren Robinett’s name in it, created by Robinett as a protest at Atari’s decision not to allow its programmers to credit themselves in games.
Instead of disciplining Robinett, Atari’s director of software development Steve Wright suggested that future games should also have hidden secrets in them, coining the term “easter eggs” to describe them.
