CAYNE

It shouldn’t. Great care was given into the game, that makes it strange for the main game to be given for free, whereas the extras are to be sold. Some may argue about the short duration of it, but in my opinion Cayne should be as many other games on the site, i.e. to be normally for sale with its extras in one entry, even in a lower price, but not totally free. So I bought the Deluxe Content as well. Anyhow, I played this first, before Stasis, as it is a prequel. Very interesting story about a woman going to have an abortion, but then things develop very differently. Not complex riddles (with 1 or 2 exceptions). I write it as a good thing. Apart from placing items where you have to, you will also need to combine items in your inventory. There are some texts for you to read to get useful information, in the form of PDA journals, which are well written and they don’t drag long. Also, there are very few occasions (I don’t write how many), when death is possible, so save often. Amazing main voice actress (Sarah Anne Williams) and the overall sounds are also very good. Only (small) negative: no button to show hotspots, but there aren’t that many interactable items on each screen, so no pixel-hunting.

Grisly, degenerate, and ultimately repulsive. I loved every moment I had with this game and grabbed Statis afterwards out of my desire for more. The writing is great. This is a gem -- a free one, at that!

If you've played the predecessor "Stasis", you're already aware of the CAYNE corporation and what one reviewer called its "flamboyantly unethical" research projects. In a fashion similar to the progressively escalating insanity of the Mad Max film series, "CAYNE" carries the vicious depravities of this preposterously powerful research group to new heights. Trade the brilliant but unchained psychopath for a religious zealot who literally worships his employer, add more dysfunctional underlings and colleagues (all secretly competing, of course), and a positively psychotic element that I can't even mention without spoiling something, and you have the backdrop of this additional chapter. In another interesting twist, the protagonist is a young woman at full-term pregnancy. While the puzzles have their share of moon logic, if you've played a P'n'C or two, much of this little vignette should reveal itself. The one tip I can offer for anyone who really, REALLY doesn't want to consult a walkthrough is this: when you're stuck, try brute-force exploration. Combine everything with everything, look at every part of everything that can be looked at, touch everything that can be touched with everything in your inventory. Some of these solutions are obvious once you know them, but they would take some real clairvoyance to figure out. If you haven't played "Stasis" or the recent "Stasis: Bone Totem" and are on the fence about buying either one, "CAYNE" is a nice place to start, because it doesn't spoil anything, and it's free of charge. All things considered, it's a worthwhile title with an "Outer Limits" type of story.

I liked the game. It has great ambient and is to some extend, immersive. The story is average, nothing special but it works. I find it quite interesting, white all the notes left behind on the place. I also liked the puzzles. Looking into notes, thinking a little outside of the box, mixing items, it was fun exploring and experimenting. The gameplay is point&click, so there isn't much to tell about it. I also really liked the main character. Hadley has some humor, and she sometimes jokes around, without taking away from the dangerous situation she is in. For some downside, sound setting was weird, some sounds are sometimes a little louder than they should. It's also very short, you can can finish it in one sitting, however, for a free to play game, one can't ask for much more. It gave me curiosity to check out the other games from the developers, sadly, this one is the only native on Linux. Which is a shame.

I've played Cayne directly after finishing Stasis and I had high hopes that I would find out a little more about what happened (since the devs - elsewhere online - teasered that this might be the case) and could enjoy the atmosphere similar to Stasis, which had been so intriguingly crafted by the devs. But, oh boy, that was quite the bummer. Tone and atmosphere are nowhere near what Stasis embodied. The gore and horror depicted has no visible or audible impact on the protagonist, who never fails to make a snarky remark or to throw in a dark joke to what otherwise would have had the potential to be a moment of true horror. While in Stasis the dialogue absolutely conveyed feelings of fear, panic, melancholy or sadness, in Cayne, everything is over the top - and can't really be taken seriouosly. All characters the protagonist meets (or reads from in the PDAs that are scattered throughout the levels) are bland, psychpathic caricatures and just laughably evil and thereby absolute not believable in any way. The plot also ends on a very low note, which to me seemed like a cheap thrill - and was even more dissatisfying, than the original Stasis ending. The puzzles are in part frustratingly illogical and I rarely could solve them without a lot of trial and error - which I eventually skipped by resorting to a walkthrough to at least experience the whole plot without the hassle. To me, Cayne was an absolute disappointment compared to Stasis, which in every category beats Cayne by a significant margin. Wouldn't the credits list the same people, I would never have guessed that the devs of Stasis created this game. If you like Stasis, I can't recommend Cayne, if cheap horror flicks and slasher movies are your thing, though, you may give it a try.