MadCap's Game Reviews - "Pajama Sam: No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside"

...okay, I know what you're thinking. "Children's games?" I hear you cry. Well, we were all children once - yes, even you, Ebeneezer. When I was a kid, believe it or not, I also played video games and I'm pretty sure that you did as well if you're reading this. If not, then I welcome you to the now present day of whenever you're reading this from your time traveling steam engine from the 1880's, Doc Emmett Brown.


Some of the games I played back in the day on those transparent monitor iMac G3's in my school's computer lab (and subsequently at home often enough) came from the Pajama Sam series of point and click adventure games. The series is wildly popular, if you were a kid growing up in the late 90's and early 2000's, you probably at least heard about it if not played a few of them yourself. You also know that if you've played one, you've pretty much played all of them, which is why I picked the first one in the series No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside as the game to review.

It also being easily accessible via Steam is a big help. Thanks, internet!

So those of you that haven't rolled your eyes and clicked over to some article on holistic medicine, international politics, or some other third thing are probably wondering just what the Pajama Sam series is. Well, short answer is that it's a point and click adventure game. Ron Gilbert is in the producer's chair and Dave Grossman as the writer and if you don't know who either of those people are, just know that they did work on Monkey Island, so you couldn't ask for a better pedigree in the genre. To put it in perspective for you, it's like getting John Romero to make a game where he makes you his bitch or less sarcastically getting Rare of the pre-Microsoft era to make...basically any game ever. Essentially, it's the top of the top of the line as far as talent goes.

As far as an interface goes, add a mouse and items that pop up from the bottom when you scroll.
Simplicity itself.

The series of Pajama Sam games follows a young boy named Sam, voiced by Bobby Hill herself Pamela Segall Adlon (in the first three games, anyway). In each game, Sam is faced with a problem that would seem earth-shattering to a child such as being scared of thunder and lightning or losing something important. In No Need To Hide (as the 2012 mobile port shortens it to), Sam has a fear that many children have: being scared of the dark. However, seeing as Sam is a courageous man who follows on from the example of the comic book hero Pajama Man, he heroically puts on his dashing red cape and retrieves three important items - his domino mask, his flashlight, and his "trusty portable bad guy containment unit" (a lunchbox) - before deciding to go into his closet and face off against Darkness once and for all!

You'd expect this would lead to Sam tripping over his own two feet in the dark and possibly getting a comedic injury, but it actually leads him to fall through an extradimensional portal into "the Land of Darkness" where a bunch of trees take away the three items I mentioned. Now, Sam must find a way to navigate this strange land to recover these items and complete his mission to stop Darkness once and for all. I know some of you are staring at the screen like I just grew a second head, but would you believe it gets even more insane than what I just mentioned?

I think the implication is that this is meant to be a dream that Sam is having, which explains the very childish and surreal atmosphere around the whole thing. That does not, however, explain why Sam looks the way he does...namely...

...yes, thank you Rocket. Been a while since your last cameo.

However, this is a child's game, so colorful main characters are to be expected. Sam is believable enough as a child, though Pamela Adlon was going to be known for doing that for quite a while in the year after this game was released, and it works well enough.

As I said before, this is a point and click adventure, but it's not really an overly complex one. Speaking as someone who works in education: kids are indeed far smarter than we give them credit for, and they can paradoxically also be way, way dumber than we think, so it can't be too difficult to complete. In that same sort of adventure games style, Sam goes around and interacts with the environment through pointing and clicking, either picking up items or using items on other items to progress.

That's...really all there is to it. Sam will give hints to players that are stuck, some things such as "I have to do [x] before I can [y]" (remember, it's a kid's game), but that's really all the complexity there is to it. You go to different locations, find items to use on items to find more items to use on more items. What it does do well, and especially well for a kid's game, is give us a few memorable characters such as the Talking Trees, the guerilla leader carrot, Otto the Boat, and King the Mine Cart. Even Darkness himself for his five minutes cameo at the end is a character with some personality, albeit not the kind that Sam is expecting when all is said and done.

For the "Land of Darkness", many things are bright and colorful

Oh, and there's collectibles that I forgot to mention. In the Land of Darkness, twenty of Sam's socks can be found as Sam remembers his mother told him to pick them up. It kind of lends credence to my theory on this all being a dream of his, largely because it is actually possible to find all twenty socks in an act that basically a full divorce from reality if it weren't already for the blue kid, the singing carrot, and the Trees that steal items.

...yeah, this entire game is a fever dream.

Don't go into this looking for a great deal of challenge, because you won't really find any. The locations of Sam's items can get varied up at times, but that's basically the only sort of difference you'll find on repeat a play-through unless you don't obsessively look into every single nook and cranny you can access (but then why are you playing a point and click game?). It's childish, not particularly long. If you know where you're going, you could probably knock it out in a quick lunch break (or two). It's certain not bad as a baby's first point and click adventure. Not quite as good as I remember it being, but then I was somewhere between six and nine at the time. No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside holds up pretty well and if you get that nostalgic itch, it's only seven bucks on Steam. You could do a lot worse.

Pajama Sam: No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside comes to us from Humongous Entertainment for Windows and Macintosh, other studios were involved in the Wii and iOS ports, and DMG+Kaboom Entertainment developing the Steam port of the game.

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