While Benoit Sokal is writing the script for the third part of Syberia, Big Fish has released the original 2002 game on iOS. So far, however, only for Canadian iPhone and iPad users.
From our own experience, we know that for the authors of games in the genre of “I’m looking for” or modern quests, there is no complement better than to say: “cool, it resembles Siberia.” To make their Syberia for them something like an impossible dream, a Fallout with caravans. And that, launching the game now, eleven years after the original release, seems like a strange desire.
Syberia is an archaic, slightly scary quest these days. To fall in love with it today, you must first overcome yourself (as, indeed, is the case with most games older than eight or nine years). That is why “Siberia” seems to us a game worthy of a full-fledged remake (like what was done for The Monkey Island).
A simple adventure game about how a young lawyer is trying to complete a deal for the sale of a toy factory was a poignant story about the meaning of life. The heroine of the game – Kate Walker – in search of the owner of the factory, the brilliant designer Hans, met lost, lonely people on her way, cherishing this or that dream, and tried to help them. The problem is that solving their problems, realizing what they wanted, only exposed the meaninglessness of their existence. And at the same time, the main character lost the meaning of her former life. In fact, “Siberia” is a kind of requiem for a life lived in vain.
Despite this, and at the same time the atmosphere of decline, old age, loneliness, the game gave rise not to depression, but a strange warm feeling of melancholy, and also hopes that everything in life is still ahead. For this, in fact, she was loved.
Unfortunately, Big Fish did not undertake to redraw the game. Judging by the first screenshots of the mobile version, we will get the same “Siberia” of 2002. The main and probably the only difference from the original is the following: all interactive zones are immediately displayed on the screen. No pixel-hunting.
Siberia is distributed according to the freemium model. That is, the user downloads the application for free, goes through several stages, and then can purchase the full version for $ 4.99. Yes, apparently, in order to increase the profit from the game, Big Fish sawed the original project into three parts. And, most likely, each of them will cost five bucks.
The first results in the Canadian market are not encouraging. The game shows a weak retention level.
