Pajama Sam in Don't Fear the Dark

"Ay, Al! Pajama Sam as a maja playa!"

Having played and enjoyed the PlayStation Pajama Sam game, I was pleasantly surprised to find Pajama Sam had a different subtitle for Windows, 'No Need to Hide When it's Dark Outside.' Fortunately the major difference was only in plot and not in quality. Although 'no need to hide while playing this on a slow work day' would have been more appropriate for me, the game teaches a gentle lesson well with a point-and-click adventure that differs on repeating. I used to be scared of the dark when I was young, and I can see why this would be a great idea for a game. It has many of the qualities of a nightmare, but it is never scary or preachy, which many often find nightmarish. It's more the sort of dream you wish you were clever enough to have.

Pajama Sam's quest to vanquish the scary darkness in his closet seems straightforward. First he must search his room for his cape, flashlight and toolkit lunchbox so that he can face Darkness with confidence. But he springs a trap in the fantasy land, and some evil trees take the items away and put one each in the mine area, the river area, and Darkness's house. Once Sam recovers them, he can face the Darkness with confidence. Of course anyone over thirteen should figure that there is no big fight at the end, but that won't spoil the puzzles in the meantime.

Humongous's point and click games for children seem to develop standard and respectable conventions after a while. Here you have the places you can click for fun which won't necessarily help your game, the subdivisions into main areas, the two initial easy game puzzles, and small roadblocks as you explore the side areas of a game you can never lose. You may have places such as the shack(no parents to tell you to avoid strange places you don't fear) which can hide different items, and there are also passages that are blocked depending on which of eight random games you take; for each item there are two different paths to get there. You may also have certain items unnecessary for your current game missing. While this makes each game different it is not perfect, as the easier path is generally more likely to be found. This can help younger people get through the game more quickly, but there is no way to force the computer to give you the greater challenge. Not that you can just solve the game by exhaustively pointing all your items on room objects and clicking; you may need quick reflexes when you enter a room or jump over something you can't reach, or perhaps you will have to sneak around in a dumb-waiter to gain time before a spell you make in Darkness's laboratory wears off. On re-solving the game you can even skip quickly with the <ESC> key. On solving it the first time you can hit F1 for a help file or visit the company website for complete clues; this layered and separate approach really helps temper rash acts spurred by the fear of never getting through the game.

You also have a strange sub-game where you have Sam pick up all the socks he finds lying around the night-time world. This isn't as random as it could be; each sock has a two-thirds chance of being in a pre-specified spot, and the matching, although it addresses a fear I have to this day(sorting socks after doing the laundry--the second perhaps too great a fear to address now,) can never be completed. There's nothing even in the help file which could help confused kids who want to 'solve everything.' It's too bad. Although it makes you look a bit more carefully, it's not as sensible as the usual Humongous sub-game.

Pajama Sam himself is a cross between bratty Calvin(if he never gets a game or a movie, this is surely the next best thing) and a Smurf, with Pogo's hair and wild background perhaps verging on Bloom County. His blue skin is hardly out of place in a land of curvy-sloped mountains, baseball glove and fast food plants, and bubbling pools arranged like an easel's palette. Sam rarely trudges where he needs to go, too; even though he winds up at the same spot in each screen location, the wind drag created by his cape never slows him down.

His room is about the only normal looking place in the game but even so there are plenty of places to look for the items he's left lying around. Once he enters the closet, though, all plants are fair game to click on, whether they represent toys or fast food or even have the token green parts. And whatever you look at seems to have several different responses. It's obvious right away when you do something that won't help you through the game, but dreary 'you can't do that' messages are only broadcast when you try to fit items together for a puzzle. It's not a bad place for a kid to be stuck in.

Still although the general bright colors of places to go and things to see cancel out the dark backgrounds, the game isn't content with being pretty, as it even offers subtle clues that Darkness is not so bad; the smiley welcome mat when you enter Darkness's place, the happy doors that give you an impromptu quiz show(a mix of general knowledge and observation of game locations,) and just how similar Darkness's room looks to Sam's belie the messages given by the constant dark purples and blues. The only temporary annoyance is an optical illusion room with doors tacked every which way; one passage out is not at all obvious.

But my favorite idea is the room with the dancing furniture. Although the chairs and such stop when they notice him and refuse to budge despite his pleas, it's a clever way to make you suspect there is more magic out there and a lot of the stuff you can't click on as the mouse arrow has gone clear has something underneath it. Maybe when you're gone from that scene more bizarre things come out to play!

Sound also works well with this. You have the usual comic sounds for bounces and crashes, but in tune with the rhyming title there are many singing objects, and Sam even manages to fool some people with his earnest voice and third-person self-references. Intonations and inflections are better than I have heard for many more grown up games; of course bathos is more forgivable in a cartoon, but given a choice between a game trying to depict a historical era impressively with people who say the same darned thing('You must find your own way, my son')--as if you should be grateful the programmers didn't find the time to program a sequence where the other guy beats you up and leaves you for dead--and this, contrasting the usual 'go away, dumb kid' some adults are too eager to give, I know what I'll do. I won't try to mess with history, so to heck with the ancient empire, because if it's full of stuffy clowns like that, it deserves to go under.

The strong special effects, while even making tic-tac-toe variant interesting, also serve up the message that Pajama Sam's fear of darkness isn't the only one out there. Early on he needs to convince a wooden boat that it is wood and not metal that floats, and in some cases he may need to use tools to repair something broken. I suppose other fears may be overcome as well: rude trees that won't let you pass, rough water, and heights are all things kids can be scared of. You even have a puzzle where Sam must blind himself temporarily and risk injury, and another solving it loses an item he borrowed. There's even the slight tension you get when a drop down the rapids is one-way, and to top it off, I know I felt that it would be impossible to enter Darkness's intimidating house on the hill right away--a manufactured mild phobia of my own, as it was in fact the easiest one to explore. And there are puzzles related more to mischief than fear; often you'll have to climb on a place where you wouldn't be permitted to with adults standing around. Yet even in the mine maze it is impossible to get lost.

Given that the numbering is a bit mixed up for the series(Pajama Sam 3 for Windows is Pajama Sam for the PlayStation) I will harbor the secret hope that this series will follow Final Fantasy in longevity as well as initial numbering confusion. It's the most challenging of the Humongous point and click series, and despite the jumps in imagination, the puzzles never seem ludicrous. The only annoyance I can find in this game is how hard it is to get a game with the harder random paths. This will cause you to replay the game several times more than you want, as it takes a while before you are far enough through the game to know which puzzle you want to face. But given how cleverly the game pokes at fears, creates a magical fantasy land, and wraps up with a gentle lesson, I think this is a wonderful choice for parents who want to give their kids educational games. If only because they can sneak in a game of their own with the kids being quieter at night. I know I often look at games and say 'If only they'd had this technology when I was younger.' With Pajama Sam I find myself saying 'If only I'd had this sort of game to play when I was younger.'

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/02, Updated 07/21/02