A Thinker in Space

For more information about this series, please see the introductory article here.

This adventure through my childhood has led me through an incredibly challenging series of puzzles – how to get games to work on modern hardware that have become obsolete. So far, with the exception of one game (Barbie Detective 2: Vacation Mystery, the bane of my playing-old-games-today existence), I have been wholly successful. However, some have now been rereleased on Steam, which has been a boon for people like me who are constantly seeking to chase that nostalgia high. The Humongous Entertainment point-and-click games were released on Steam back in 2014 and have had multiple Humble Bundles, one of which I picked up to snag the entire collection. Because of this, the inaugural Pajama Sam game is probably one of the most mainstream Deep Cuts on this list, but it is still obscure enough that many have never heard of it.

Growing up, I have extremely potent memories of these games. One of the oldest video games in my childhood memory was Putt-Putt Travels Through Time, with a theme song that gets constantly stuck in my head. I will be reviewing the Putt-Putt games later, likely multiple at once, but Pajama Sam deserves a full article dedicated to it. This series was one that stayed with me in the background throughout my childhood and adult life – I have incredibly fond memories of working through this game, and remember playing Pajama Sam 2 and 3 at the houses of other children who owned it, never actually going through them myself. I am very much looking forward to experiencing them for the first time as I write this series of articles!

I likely have such fond memories of Pajama Sam because of its theming – its dark and bizarre world is intriguing and was a little intimidating to me as a child. But I would sit down and play through the game again and again, enjoying its puzzles repeatedly, and it was a joy to replay this one as an adult.

The Game (Spoiler-Free)

This game released in 1996 – 6 years after one of the most famous games in this genre: The Secret of Monkey Island. After the Monkey Island series began, multiple point-and-click games became available to the public, some using the LucasArts engine (or a similar one), and some using their own unique take on the model. The Humongous Entertainment point-and-click games decided to take this concept, and boil it down to its base components. They asked the question: can we make these types of games accessible for kids? And using that model, they successfully created a significant number of video games between four series – Putt-Putt, Freddie Fish, Spy Fox, and of course, Pajama Sam. I got my start with these types of games here, and moved up into Nancy Drew (definitely reviews of these coming down the line), then to Myst, and beyond, having played many of these over the years.

The point-and-click formula is relatively simple. You have a problem you are trying to solve. There are characters in the game who can help, but they need you to find things or help them in some way in order to give you the information/item you need. By going from person to person, you can fulfill tasks and grab needed items, solving logical puzzles along the way. Of course, in more complicated games using this formula, there are plenty of challenging puzzles in the way of your success, some with varying degrees of logic, and some that take a major leap in order to figure out (Secret of Monkey Island, Deponia, and Day of the Tentacle are all fun games that definitely have this issue at one point or another).

Going into the closet to fight Darkness (Sam’s fear of the dark personified), you arrive in a strange and spooky land: Darkness’s realm. In order to escape, you need to find three objects – your mask, flashlight, and lunchbox. The problem is that these items are not currently accessible for you – you need to solve puzzles in order to find them and use them to go and vanquish Darkness.

Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It’s Dark Outside has you playing a light blue kid named Sam, who is frightened of the dark. In order to go to sleep, he needs to face the darkness and trap him in his lunchbox with his flashlight. Logical? No, but it’s not supposed to be. You are in the mind of a child who is thinking about the world irrationally and metaphorically, and that mindset makes the game’s story quite charming.

One of the cool things about these Humongous Entertainment games is that they have a built-in randomizer. Playthroughs might vary slightly, as the locations of your hidden items change depending on what seed you roll. Replaying it recently, there were some rooms and locations that seemed completely useless to us, because the game seed we were playing didn’t make them necessary. This system gives these games more replayability than most others in the genre.

The gameplay functions just like any other game in this style – move from one location to another, talk to the people there, interact with the location and the objects on the screen, and solve puzzles. Humongous Entertainment uses a common aspect of this era of kid’s game – the ability to click on objects and have random things happen. These were a ton of fun – kids can spend quite a while just clicking on every item in the frame.

Does it hold up? (Spoiler-Free)

So. In a world awash with games like this, does Pajama Sam hold up? Is it still worth buying and playing even in this oversaturated market? The answer is absolutely and unequivocally yes. One thing about video games – the good ones endure for a reason. Pajama Sam is still selling because Pajama Sam is still a good game, 28(wow) years after its release. If you are buying it and are expecting a brilliantly laced-together Point-and-Click adventure, you are not buying it for the right reasons (go buy Thimbleweed Park, which is an excellent example of the type of game you are looking for).

But if you’re looking for a simple and accessible game for younger players or to introduce the genre, Pajama Sam is definitely for you! This game is still relevant because of the same reason it was relevant on release – it teaches kids how to play puzzle games in ways that engage and excite them. The logic puzzles are fun and engaging, with clever solutions to be discovered that take some time and thought to work through if you are brand new to the genre. This game stands well on its own because of this, and is notably better than the Putt-Putt and Freddie Fish games I have played by a significant margin (we’ll talk about those another time [I’ve never played Spy Fox so I don’t have a comparison point here]), because there is more of a game here rather than just “go here talk to him do his task go there talk to her get her item go back to him give him the item get the item etc.” This has its place, and Putt-Putt primes you for this game as much as this game primes you for more challenging point-and-click games, but its complexities and theming put it at the top of the HE games I’ve played.

No Need to Hide was a ton of fun to replay, even though its target audience is younger players. Don’t expect to get a ton of playtime out of it – it is built for kids to spend a long time working through puzzles that you might cruise through. But expect a charming and fun adventure that is memorable and engaging.

Additional Comments (Spoilers)

Skip down to Accessibility to avoid spoilers!

I wanted to talk a bit about this game as a whole, theming-wise. One of the reasons I recommend this game so much for younger players is that its story is actually much more meaningful than I remember. This is a story about irrational fear – Sam fears the dark, so he copes with it by putting on the gear from the superhero comics he loves. He then goes in to his closet, where Darkness lives, to chase it away. Of course, he is unsuccessful, and falls into the floor down into the domain of Darkness. It is likely that the story we watch Pajama Sam experience is a dream rather than reality, but that has never bothered me in playing/replaying the game. The ending is cool to watch, as Sam finally confronts Darkness, preparing to put the being representing his fears into captivity forever. Darkness’s response? “Why would you be afraid of me if I’m the one being stuffed into a box?” This forces Pajama Sam to reevaluate, realizing that Darkness might need a friend instead of an enemy, and ends up playing a game of tic-tac-toe with Darkness in his closet before going to sleep. The message here is on-point, personifying the fear of something normal as “just as scared of you as you are of it” was a brilliant storytelling device and the execution was excellent.

Accessibility

This game is incredibly easy to play – it is available on Steam and goes on sale for cheap often by itself and in bundles.

Final Thoughts

Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It’s Dark Outside pushes so many of the right buttons for me. Charming atmosphere and characters, satisfying puzzles, and a larger-than-expected map. My friend and I actually got stuck while replaying this one recently, something that has never happened to me in Freddie Fish or Putt-Putt. This game is a bite-sized point-and-click adventure that adults can appreciate and kids will find enjoyable and engaging. I am very excited to replay the rest of these (and play a few for the first time), and hope that they match the quality of this original.

Recommended for younger players?

I actually have been thinking of putting together a list of Essential Games for Early Gamers that takes multiple genres and finds an easy but excellent introductory game for each main type, and explains why I am recommending them. Spoiler alert – this one will be on that list. No Need to Hide is, as previously stated, a high-quality point-and-click primer for young players, and a gateway into dozens if not hundreds of great games that utilize the mechanics introduced.

Verdict: Absolutely.

Related Reading