''Manual Samuel'' is an

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

developed by Perfectly Paranormal and published by

Curve Digital Curve Games Limited (formerly Curve Digital Limited and Curve Studios Limited) is a British video game publisher and former video game developer based in London, founded in 2005 by Jason Perkins. It focuses on the publishing of indie games. ...

. It was released on PlayStation 4 on October 11, 2016 and on Xbox One and Microsoft Windows on October 14, 2016. The Nintendo Switch version was released on August 16, 2018.

Gameplay

''Manual Samuel'' is a 2D animated adventure sidescroller where players control all of the bodily functions of main protagonist Sam. This ranges from taking individual steps using alternating buttons to move each foot to pressing a key for Sam to blink. The goal of the game is to help Sam make it through the day in this manual fashion.

Plot

Sam Welthenburg, the son of a wealthy CEO, is hit by a septic truck while chasing after his distraught girlfriend. Finding himself in

Hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history sometimes depict hells as eternal destinations, such as Christianity and I ...

(where all residents must get jobs), Sam makes a deal with the skateboard-loving

Death Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...

to return to life under the conditions that he must survive 24 hours performing all bodily functions manually. After a disastrous day at work, Death inadvertently causes the robots of Sam Sr's company to come to life. With his job on the line, Death forces Sam to volunteer to control a massive manually-controlled robotic suit to help eliminate the robots. Chasing their leader to Mushroom Orphanage, the robot tricks Sam's heat-seeking missiles into firing upon the orphanage, killing 300 innocent orphans and sending their souls to Heaven. Death, trying to escape, is confronted by

Satan Satan, also known as the Devil, is a devilish entity in Abrahamic religions who seduces humans into sin (or falsehood). In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God, typically regarded as a metaphor for the '' yetzer hara'', or ' ...

in Hell. Angry at the orphans being sent to

Heaven Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common Religious cosmology, religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deity, deities, angels, souls, saints, or Veneration of the dead, venerated ancestors are said to originate, be throne, ...

(due to their age making them too young to

sin In religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law or a law of the deities. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered ...

), Satan throws Death in Hell's jail and the horseman

War War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

is forced to take his place. With Death's deal no longer in play and Sam having technically already died, War kills Sam and returns him to Hell. Due to having given his Shreds of Life (Hell's most valuable

currency A currency is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a ''system of money'' in common use within a specific envi ...

) to Death in exchange for his life, Sam is unable to pay the gatekeeper's toll to get a job and gain access to Hell. He is thrown in hell jail alongside Death. Death concocts a plan to help them escape through cutting open a demon guard's body and allowing Sam to control it manually from the inside. After slaughtering several of the hell guards, Sam and Death are confronted by Satan, who engages Sam in a sword fight. While initially losing, Death successfully performs a

kickflip The kickflip is a skateboarding trick, in which the rider flips their skateboard 360° along the axis that extends from the nose to the tail of the deck. When the rider is Footedness, regular footed the board spins clockwise if viewed from the fro ...

for the first time in his existence. This distracts Satan, who has never managed to perform a kickflip himself despite having skated longer than Death, and allows Sam to slash him with a sword. Satan, upset at his injury, demands Death to send him to a Hell hospital and ignores Sam entirely. With Death no longer in jail, he offers to bring Sam back to life and gives him one final wish of his choosing. Sam wishes that the 300 orphans would come back to life, before returning to earth and reuniting with his girlfriend as a changed man. During the credits, a series of slides show the aftermath of the game. Sam first has his car fixed and then finally remembers his girlfriend's birthday, buying her three presents to make up for the three birthdays in a row he had forgotten; Death finally lands a kickflip and goes on a date with War; the Four Horsemen get two weeks of paid vacation, while Death and War earn a 55% boost to their salary; Death's actions and kickflip manage to impress Satan; Sam Sr's company gets even more money from the publicity of having 300 orphans come back to life in front of it; and the

demons A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in folklore, mythology, religion, occultism, and literature; these beliefs are reflected in media including fiction, comics, film, t ...

Sam killed return to life and hold no hard feelings towards him.

Development

''Manual Samuel'' was created by Perfectly ParaNormal, based in Norway.

Reception

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the game has "mixed or average" scores for its PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch ports.

References

{{Reflist 2016 video games Adventure games Curve Games games MacOS games Multiplayer and single-player video games PlayStation 4 games Video games developed in Norway Windows games Xbox One games