I did it. I finally escaped the Myst. I crossed the Riven. I’ve earned a rest. It’s time to calm down, slip on some pajamas, and unwind.

That’s right. I’m playing the Pajama Sam games. I bought the Pajama Sam pack on steam and now I’m going to play all of the main-line games in the series. I played the first two games as a kid, and I have vague, yet fond memories of them. So I figured, what better way to detox after a month of high-concept adventure games, than a restorative jaunt through some of the games of my youth. It’s time to find out just how rosy my rose tinted glasses are.

The first thing that jumped out at me in the game’s opening cutscene is that Pajama Sam sounds a lot like Bobby Hill. After some googleing I found out that Sam is voiced by Pamela Adlon, the same woman who voices Bobby Hill. It’s always great when you find out that an actor you respect now, unbeknownst to you, worked on something you loved in the past. I love following the careers of voice actors since the scope of their work can vary so wildly when compared to the stars of stage and screen. You’d never catch Brad Pitt staring in a Cartoon Network show, but John DiMaggio could go from Futurama to FFX to Adventure Time without anyone batting an eye.

With the opening cutscene out of the way it was time for some good old fashioned adventuring. Time to click on everything! I can’t tell you how happy I was to have a mouse cursor that actually indicated what was clickable. It’s such a tiny thing, but it cut my random clicking down by so much. Speaking of random clicking, Pajama Sam might already win my personal award for best use of random clicking as a core mechanic. You see, almost every object in Pajama Sam is interactable in some way. Most objects just play some adorable animation when you click on them, but all of the sight gags add up in a way that is really endearing. While Riven and Myst were dense with symbolism and meaning, Pajama Sam is dense with charm. Since the game is designed for kids, it doesn’t have much in the way of complex puzzles. Yet, it feeds off of a child’s need to touch everything to see what it does, and then rewards them by making Sam’s mundane bedroom spring to life.

In the bedroom I had to find the three parts of Sam’s Pajama Man costume, a mask, flashlight, and luchbox. I also managed to find one of the socks that Sam’s mom asked him to pick up in the opening cutsene. Look at this game, gamifying chores in 1996! Way to go Humungous Entertainment, you were ahead of your time! Once I had the components of Sam’s costume, I entered his closet and fell down the rabbit hole.

Sam’s closet is full of psychedelic nightmares! Look at this stuff! Look at it! Everywhere I click something else grows a face and starts talking! I think I made a tree eat a fly at one point. Also there was a bowling ball that juggled tiny bowlers. This explains so many recurring nightmares.

After I regained my sanity, I wandered a bit further into off-brand-Neverland. On my way to a forested trail, I found a board floating in a river that I couldn’t reach and a Freddy Fish Easter egg. Once I entered the forest, Sam was snared in an ankle trap and suspended in front of a bunch of talking trees that called themselves the customs department of the Land of Darkness. Sam was then robbed by horrifying trees with weird accents. I mean look at this one’s eye!

I was able to climb down from the snare, but only after my brutal mugging. Thankfully I did get a rope out of the experience. I used the rope to fetch the board from the previous screen and then continued on my way. It was at this point that I found one of the main hubs in Pajama Sam. I was really appreciated that Sam would read the three signs out loud if you clicked on them. Though some kids playing the game might be able to read, the developers didn’t take that for granted and as a result the game largely communicates via symbols and narration. The quit button is even represented by a stop sign with a hand in place of text. Nice touch there dev team.

I decided to go right first and by the boat dock I found Otto, the talking boat. Unfortunately Otto refused to go in the water because he believed that wood sinks (his dentist once knew a guy who had some wood, and that guy’s wood sank when he placed it in water). So I used my newly acquired piece of wood to demonstrate that wood, in fact, floats. I’m learning so much today! Otto proceeded to jump into the water and find his true, boatly calling: moving around on the top of water. So I hopped aboard my anthropomorphic buddy and set off (since he technically doesn’t have a sail).

I again went right when faced with a fork in the road. That lead to a set of geysers full of what appeared to be multicolored paint. I clicked on one and it erupted. What followed was a 2-3 minute lecture on the physics and history of geysers.

With that I saved, set down my controller, and gazed in awe of a joke in a children’s game. I think I still love this game people.