Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside

The Good
"No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside" is the first game in Humongous Entertainment's Pajama Sam series. After Fatty Bear, Putt-Putt the car and Freddi Fish, this time the character is human - or at least humanoid, since Sam's blue skin isn't exactly typical... A nice thing is that Pajama Sam is actually more of a funny character than the others (he is, however, a bit similar to a secondary character, Freddi's best friend Luther the small green fish). He is still a little boy, with all the attitude typical for this age, such as impatience. His defining characteristic is his obsession about the imaginary comic book hero Pajama Man - Sam tries to imitate him, wears a mask and the obligatory (and not very good for adventuring, which can be seen especially in the second game, when Sam causes a disaster by stepping on it) superhero cape with his pajama, perceives his lunchbox and flashlight as superhero equipment just like Pajama Sam's... In this game Sam's mother is trying to help him grow out of his fear of darkness, but Sam - after reading a Pajama Man comic book - decides to solve the problem in a superhero way, by "capturing Darkness and locking him in his lunchbox".
By the way, the funny thing is that, in the end, Sam will "vanquish" Darkness - by beating him at the Cheese & Crackers game...
I will write more about the game's "deeper meaning", but generally: in Pajama Sam games the worlds seem to grow out of Sam's imagination. Sam opens the door to his closet and, after falling down, finds himself in a strange world which still contains elements from his room (this will be yet more visible in the final Pajama Sam game, "Life Is Rough When You Lose Your Stuff"); after getting into Darkness' closet he will only need to open the door again to be back in his room. And this new world is beautiful, has some of the best graphics in Humongous Entertainment games. Darkness' house is inside a great tree with red leaves, a strange blue light is shining over the well, many colors of paint bubble in the geysers... As in all HE games, there are also lots of little details and animations found by clicking everything possible.
There are a few minigames in the game. The abovementioned "Cheese and Crackers" is simply a variation on Tic Tac Toe, however with interesting bigger boards, but it's there mostly because Sam will play it with Darkness (this part, however, is non-interactive, it's just a cutscene). "Nuggets" is a variant of the well-known mobile game "Snake" - it's found in the mine and it's optional. A very nice idea, but with some flaws: it sometimes takes sooo long to collect all the pieces from a big board and cart movement isn't as smooth as in the original "Snake": turning right after another turn, which was no problem for the snake, usually won't work. Taking the "Brain Tickler" quiz is necessary to gain access to a part of Darkness' house - the quiz could also be considered a minigame. It's funny ("- His interests include skydiving, channeling ancient spirits and stamp-collecting. - I don't collect stamps. You're making that up") and very much a parody of TV shows. It's, of course, a quiz which can be solved by children, but some questions are extremely easy and some a bit more difficult. A nice change are questions which have more than one correct answer, such as the one about the king of France and poverty in his country (by the way, the same answers will appear in the tough economic question in the second Pajama Sam game). Some answers are completely obvious ("Who wrote Beethoven's Symphony No. 9?", "What color is an orange?") - altogether, the quiz is a mixture of some brainstorming and pure humor.
A scene I just loved is the one I call "the kitchen opera". In Darkness' kitchen all utensils introduce themselves by singing, but in one of the plot variants there is a whole sung dialog between Sam, the fridge and the carrots, which reminds of a comic opera.

The Bad
As in all Pajama Sam games, the tasks can have different solutions. However, it's a pity that you can't - like in the later games - "cheat" and choose the variant yourself. It's even more of a pity that you aren't warned that the button in the lower left corner is not the menu button, but one used only for exiting the game...
There are not as many variants as in the second and third game because Sam only needs to find three items: his mask, flashlight and lunchbox. The difficulty level is uneven: some solutions are ultra-easy, some more complicated. I don't remember well the one with Sam using a rope to pull himself and King the mine cart higher so that they can gain more speed, but I recall that it was quite hard as an arcade sequence.
It's also a pity that Carrot doesn't always appear. The second variant for finding the mask (in the room with the dancing furniture) is more difficult, maybe more satisfying, but also disappointing when you realise it means that Carrot won't appear at all. Only in the third game is he a character that always appears. And he's, in my opinion, a very interesting character - often compared to the hippies and, as such, an example of the lazy hippie stereotype being unjust. Carrot is political - he leads a revolutionary movement of vegetables tired of "being relegated to the salad", infiltrates World Wide Weather to document exploitation of their workers and ends up reforming the company from the inside, helps prevent a war on Moptop Island...
All Pajama Sam games have side tasks which involve collecting things. In this game Sam's mother asks him to sort the family's socks and, after Sam goes to the Land of Darkness, the socks appear there. However, in this case they are often hard to find. In some cases only a small part is visible, sometimes they hardly stand out against the background, and in the mine some are found in places where there is very little time to notice and grab them.

The Bottom Line
The word "psychonaut" means someone who explores his or her mind, using methods such as psychedelic drugs - therefore the word is very often used as a synonym for "psychedelic drug user". Pajama Sam is a child, so far drug-free... but it could be said he does exactly the same. He confronts his fears or at least his impulses such as lack of patience, he creates new worlds with his imagination, he travels through his mind ("psychonaut" was, of course, constructed as analogous to "astronaut"), to find solutions to his problems within himself. Sure, Pajama Sam games are very funny and completely suitable for their intended age group - but there always is a more serious undertow. Under all the fun the games are indeed quite dark - it's about a boy who is scared (I can sure feel some empathy for him - I'm over 30, but I'm still afraid of sleeping in total darkness and silence...) and left to sort out his problems by himself. "Mind wandering" is too often perceived as "unproductive" - and in Sam's case it's very productive, it allows him to solve his problems. It's really bad that in "the real world" such a vivid imagination would likely be perceived as something bordering on pathology...