Manual Samuel: Last Tuesday Edition Análise (Xbox Series X|S & PC)

Left leg. Right leg. Blink. Breathe. Blink again. Sit up. Sit down. Clutch. Accelerate. Brake. Breathe. Die. Get up. Left leg. Right leg. Blink. Fail. Laugh. Cry. Die again.

If you’re wondering wondering what on earth we’re talking about here, then I can only describe it as a series of events that consume most, if not all of Manual Samuel’s sixty-minute journey. It is, for lack of a better description, incompetence manifest—a comical, albeit highly infuriating interactive game in which you have the monumental task of learning how to walk again. Walking, as well as breathing, blinking, and urinating, to list just a few of the basic functions of a human being. Think Getting Over It meets Baby Steps, and you should have a rough idea of what we’re getting at here.

Manual Samuel, as a classic rage-baiting flick at its core, invites you to fill the shoes of Samuel—a rich and somewhat inept heir to a robotic empire, naturally—as he tries to endure an entire day of manually running his own life after receiving a curse from the afterlife. He cannot walk, and he cannot wash himself. To tell you the truth, he can’t do anything. Or at least, nothing that can make your job, as the self-appointed weaver of strings, any easier to juggle.

It begins with a breakup, a car crash, and a shady deal with the grim reaper—a hoodie-donning rebel who, for some reason, is more interested in learning how to land the perfect kickflip than handing you back your lavish lifestyle. A condition arises, and before long you find yourself back on earth with a simple goal: to learn how to survive on your own for a single day. If you can survive for twenty-four hours, then you can eliminate the prospect of finding a real job in Hell, and you can return to your old life. On paper, it sounds simple — to walk, breathe, and talk. The fact of the matter is, however, that nothing could be more unnecessarily complicated.

In a similar fashion as a traditional rage-baiting game, Manual Samuel forces you to designate a prompt to each portion of your body. For example, one button operates the left leg, and another operates the right. If you don’t blink, the screen begins to blur, and if you don’t breathe, your face begins to go blue and, after so long, you pass out. Sadly, that same issue carries over to most of the gameplay, too. For example, if you need to take a shower, then you must grip the soap—an act that is, oddly, a lot trickier than it should be. What’s more, you must keep your body upright, so that you don’t accidentally fold and break your spine. Not that this is an unusual occurrence in Manual Samuel, mind you.

In the sixty minutes that you spend with Samuel, you have a series of objectives to complete, some of which require you to manually digest food, drive a manual car, work a job at a robotics company, and engage in a variety of slider-based mini-games. Talking, for example, requires you to match the vowels on a slider. If you fail to hit the correct prompts, then a narrator belittles your mistake, and forces you to, well, do it all over again. And it’s that same narrator who, as the Stanley Parable-like conscience of the world, follows you on your journey.

It goes without saying at this point, but the fact is, Manual Samuel is not a serious game. No, it’s a silly, pointless, and oftentimes irritating experience that, on occasion, is perfectly capable of ticking your funny bone and giving you something to chuckle about. The animation, as well as the characters and voiceovers are as equally hilarious as they are minimalistic and reminiscent of an old-school Flash game. And as for everything else that makes up its short story, well, the devil is in the details. It’s short, stupid, and yet, funny enough to keep you second guessing the next task.

Of course, there isn’t a lot of gameplay here. In fact, most of your time here is spent alternating between three or four different buttons. You walk, fall, pass out, and mindlessly fumble various triggers for an hour, and then you exit its world with a sense that you have accomplished something truly spectacular. In reality, though, you spam buttons and hope to find something that’s worth holding out for. Or at least, until the grim reaper learns how to execute a kickflip.

It almost pains me to say it, but there is an unusually entertaining indie game here. Granted, it’s about as nonsensical and as mechanically incomprehensible as Getting Over It doppelgängers come. That being said, if you can look beyond its shoddy exterior and enjoy it for the gimmicks that it brings to the table, then you should be able to get your money’s worth here.

Verdict

I’ll gladly put my hand up and say, in spite of my best efforts to emerge from a lucid dream involving a spoilt and highly incompetent brat and a grim reaper with a skateboard and a god complex, Manual Samuel still lives in my head rent free. It holds such a powerful stake in my brain, in fact, that each and every time I hear the word “feces” I immediately think of the pain, the suffering, and the monotony of having to learn how to walk, talk, and breathe again. It isn’t that I disliked the idea of teaching Samuel how to stand on his own two feet; it’s that I couldn’t understand how such a ludicrous idea could make for such a good time-wasting experience.

With all due respect to Perfectly Paranormal, I don’t think that I can reward Manual Samuel with a high level of praise, because at the end of the day, it is a niche experience that’s as equally likely to attract fans as it is to deter them from ever playing it. But, that’s sort of what you’re putting your hand in your pocket for here: a laughably mediocre rage game that knows all too well how to laugh at its own strengths and weaknesses. With that in mind, I wouldn’t expect a game like this to take the crown for Best Indie at The Game Awards. A surge in popularity of the name Sam, on the other hand, is, for better or worse, guaranteed.