As someone who grew up in a rich family, everything seemed to work out great for Samuel. But that came to a screeching halt when he was hit by a truck, with Samuel coming face-to-face with Death himself. The Grim Reaper is feeling generous, offering a deal: he can spend all of eternity in hell, or he can live through a day of his life “manually,” where basically everything is controlled by us as the player.
When I say everything is done manually in Manual Samuel, I mean everything. We take Samuel on an otherwise mundane journey, now heightened by these new stakes after a deal with Death. We don’t just walk Samuel around, we have to help him breathe and blink properly too. Simple actions and situations, like climbing up a set of stairs or driving a car – are experienced in a new and dramatic perspective of the calculated input effort that goes into them. We have to make sure to keep Samuel’s girlfriend and boss at work happy too, which might be a problem if it’s a challenge to make Samuel pee properly. You can play Samuel by yourself, or you can share the body responsibilities with a buddy in co-op mode. Think you can handle him like a pro? Try the Time Attack mode for an extra challenge.
“Making this game has been a real joy,” says Ozan Drøsdal of the development studio for the game, Perfectly ParaNormal. “But spending almost three years animating bodily fluids can make anyone go crazy, so I’m super pleased we’re finally shipping this thing. I am proud of how stupid it is. I hope everyone loves it.”
Manual Samuel arrives for PS4 on October 11th, and for Xbox One and PC on October 14th. To learn more about the game, check out the developer’s website, Twitter, and Facebook.
