STASIS: BONE TOTEM

[h3]A Game That Gets Better If You Don't Drop It[/h3] I almost dropped this game after one hour. Point-and-click gameplay was already annoying me, the underwater industrial setting felt suffocating and monotonous, I didn't care about the characters, and the story gave me very little reason to care about what was happening. Point-and-click is a very specific genre, and I think for it to completely work for me, the puzzle logic needs to be extremely readable. The whole idea is that you combine things, take them apart and interact with the environment in ways that supposedly make sense. The problem is that they make sense inside the developer's head. It isn't even that the puzzles make me feel stupid. My logic simply works differently. I would never think that these two particular items should be combined, or that this random object can even be dismantled. Once your logic isn't on the same wavelength as the developers', you eventually reach the classic point-and-click state of just clicking everything on everything and hoping something works. The game makes this even more cumbersome with its interface. One character can combine certain objects, another can dismantle them, …

Wow, Stasis: Bone Totem blew away any expectations I had going in. After maybe one chapter I went and wishlisted the other games in the series. It's a mix of rpg, point-and-click, and even a little hidden object, with a bunch of high-fidelity cutscenes thrown in. The whole thing is fully (and well) voice acted. There's no combat, although there are a few situations where you can die by making a bad choice or missolving a puzzle. The environments are rich and detailed: visually, aurally, and there's an absolute ton of descriptive text, as well as additional flavor text in the form of pda logs. The story is engaging, weird, and [i][b]dark[/b][/i]. Some of the puzzles are [i]extremely[/i] obscure - they're all solvable, but some of them maybe require you to notice an offhand comment buried in a pda log, or a small decoration on a wall somewhere else. The gameplay is really solid, and there are a bunch of nice quality-of-life touches that definitely didn't exist in rpgs and point-and-click games of my youth. For example, you can easily highlight all the descriptions and interactibles in an area. Or, I mentioned you can die, but after watching your death cutscene, you start back in…

I recommend Bone Totem with some reservations. The core elements are strong: the characters, premise, art direction, and sound design are all good, sometimes excellent. What you see in the trailers is what you get, so if that appeals then go for it. The puzzles are ok. Spreading actions and inventories across several characters is awkward, but the number of combinations is limited enough that brute force will usually yield a result in short order if intuition fails. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the latter third of the plot. Without explicit spoilers: the game chooses to explain one of its central mysteries, but the nature of the thing is impossible to justify with natural "real world" answers. The result is deflating, confusing, and immersion breaking. Likewise, I think the "twist" character motive substitutes one coincidence for another much less plausible one (I can't say more without spoilers). Unfortunately, these two missteps are so central to the themes and horror that they detracted materially from my overall experience. Still good, still recommended, but I hope the devs continue to refine their craft. They could make something really special if they do.

I don't think this team as made a bad game yet.

This was the first ever point-and-click game I beat without a guide. For me (a total dumbass) it was tricky, but not so hard I felt the solutions were impossible. The story and art are fantastic and really get you immersed in the world, and the puzzles are satisfying. I highly recommend this one.

moses is a good bear