Syberia 1 & 2

Syberia 1 and 2 are old-school point-and-click adventure games designed by Belgian artist Benoit Sokal, and this bundle packages both halves of what was always intended as one continuous story. You play Kate Walker, an American corporate lawyer sent to the fictional French village of Valadilene to close a routine factory sale, only to discover the recently deceased owner had a brother everyone thought was dead. That brother, the eccentric inventor Hans Voralberg, is alive somewhere to the east, and finding him becomes the entire spine of both games. The journey takes Kate across beautifully rendered European locales and eventually deep into a frozen, mythologised version of Siberia, all aboard a clockwork steam train piloted by Oscar, an automaton with a stiff personality that grows on you fast. Gameplay is straightforward point-and-click: left-click to move and interact, right-click to open your inventory, and a cursor that helpfully changes shape when you hover over something useful. There is no combat, no levelling, no time pressure. The puzzle design in the first game leans heavily on inventory-based logic, where each item has a single clear purpose and the solution usually makes intuitive sense. A recurring puzzle type involves winding or activating automaton machinery, which fits the clockpunk, Art Nouveau visual identity that the whole series wears like a signature. Backtracking between screens is the main friction point, and Kate walks slowly enough that some players will grit their teeth during the longer fetch loops. The sequel tightens a few UI issues and introduces more varied logic puzzles alongside the inventory ones, which either fixes your complaints or, depending on your taste, starts to feel arbitrary toward the later chapters where pixel-hunting and convoluted multi-step puzzles creep in. The first game is the stronger of the two. Its pacing has a natural rhythm, the world feels genuinely strange and melancholy, and the writing strikes a tone that is wistful without being maudlin. The clockpunk aesthetic, all cogwheels, punch cards, and spring-loaded automatons frozen in an alternate early 20th century, still holds up visually even on modern screens. The second game picks up exactly where the first ends and should be played in sequence, but it trades some of that original magic for expanded puzzle variety and a harder narrative push toward the finish line. Community opinion is split: some players find the sequel a worthy payoff, others think it loses the specific quiet charm that made the original click. If you have never played a graphic adventure from this era, Syberia is one of the more approachable entry points. There are no moon-logic puzzles designed to make you feel foolish, and the story is genuinely adult without relying on shock or spectacle. The pace is slow by design. This is a game for evenings when you want to wander somewhere atmospheric and think a little, not for sessions where you need action or a dopamine loop. Fans of The Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or early LucasArts titles who somehow missed this series owe themselves a visit.

Alex · Scout Team

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