STASIS

TL;DR: 4.5 stars, Uncomplicated gameplay; well done, harsh, but very familiar story; outstanding art direction; really aggravating autosave that will occasionally make you watch the same dialog cutscenes over and over; basically no options to speak of. If you're any kind of fan of sci-fi horror, you'll know this plot inside and out within minutes, but playing your way through all the tropes is a big part of what makes it fun. Without giving anything away, I will say that the creators certainly didn't pull any punches with their story, which lent a bit more weight to otherwise familiar territory. I will say that there were two evens towards the end that, while not unforeseeable, I was not especially anticipating that were a nice touch. Gameplay is excellent, with uncomplicated controls and logical puzzles that are generally not too easy, but not frustratingly abstract either. I can only think of one puzzle that stumped me for quite a while, and was only solved by using all of the items in my inventory in succession until I found the solution, which when it presented itself, turned out to be fairly logical after all, just not at all in the direction I was thinking. Art direction is fantastic, this game is like walking through every sci-fi horror set you can think of, with a surprising variety of locations and looks, not just one dingy spaceship room after another. This is by far the strongest aspect of the game. Voice acting is a) nice to have, and b) overall very good. It mostly suffers from the fact that the emotional level of the voice frequently doesn't match the horrors of what has just happened on the screen. The biggest annoyance was the fact that the autosave, while generally a nice feature, often saves /right/ before a cutscene or piece of dialog, which if you're dealing with a puzzle that involves you dying repeatedly while trying to figure it out, gets really obnoxious and breaks the tone of the game completely. No options to speak of. 4.5 stars

Another reviewer wrote "very derivative" and I think that captures it. The story and its "shocking revelations" are predictable and include some plot holes. The visual style is clearly greatly inspired by The Swapper, as is the "mysterious girl talking over the radio" structure. Also as another review states, the anti-science/technology subtext and simplistic morals are disappointing. Mechanically, the puzzles are OK as far as you can expect. Find all clickables, combine some, use key with lock. It does get boring, so it's good that the game isn't very long... All that said, the looks and ambience are well-done. I enjoyed reading the descriptive texts of various objects/scenes.

I'm not sure anyone will read my late review, but I'll file it anyway because I'm disturbed and disappointed by one particular scene in Stasis that spoilde the whole experience for me. The game is basically "Sanitarium in space". Sanitarium is an old quest game with isometric view about a guy who wakes up in an asylum having amnesia. You take it into a giant spaceship (System Shock/ Deadspace style) and you get Stasis. You can check yourself; Sanitarium is here on GOG as well https://www.gog.com/game/sanitarium I enjoyed the game and was planning to write a review for 4 stars at keast but then near the end of the game I got a very unpleasant scene which made me change my mind. I’ll just say that it involves a small child. You know Stasis is a horror game and all that, but as a loving father of two beautiful girls and a man who saw some nasty things in life I sincerely believe that there are some borders there which are not to be crossed. I love games and play them to be thrilled, fascinated, a little sad, but NOT to be sick to my core. I also feel that this scene was a cheap sucker punch from game creators and I won’t buy their games so easy in the future. It’s just a sign of bad shape story-writing in my opinion So if you’re reading this and you ARE a parent listen to my advice do your research before you buy this one, you might feel robbed of several hours of your life in the end just like I did.

Stasis goes easy on the player when it comes to the puzzles. They're never all that complicated, and even an adventure game amateur like me can solve them without too much of a hassle. They get somewhat harder at the beginning of the 2nd half, though online walkthroughs should help you out. What makes Stasis stand out for me is the overall aesthetics of it. The graphics are easy even on low-end systems, and the art style is reminiscent of old classics such as Sanitarium and Planescape:Torment. The devs have managed to create an overwhelming sense of dread that'll stay with you the whole time. Some of the puzzles, as well as the main character dying, play out these stomach-churning animations filled with gore. If that's your cup of tea, you'll probably enjoy it. The voice actor for the player character also plays a pivotal part in this: his performance is convincing and emotional. That's a good thing, since the rest of the cast sound somewhat dull and robotic, which can take you out of the experience a bit. The game will throw some gut-wrenching moments at you, and they get a bit too much towards the end. It's one of those mistakes that overly-eager authors and creative types tend to make: unloading an excessive amount of misfortune on the main character so that the audience is forced to bond with him. That doesn't quite work here, since by the time you've made it to the end of the game, you're already desensitized to the violence you've seen so far. That's when the game pulls its last trick and socks you in the stomach - it's hard to watch, and cruel to the player and the character. That's all I can say without spoiling it. The game doesn't throw any other offenses at the player besides a rather obnoxious game over screen and a few long-winded animations that you'll have to sit through. It doesn't overstay its welcome though: the whole thing can be beat in less than 10 hours. All things considered, it's a decent adventure game with body horror themes.

The person who wrote the games "puzzles", is a grade a moron. A prime example: You need to walk to the middle of a room so that a corpse falls on you out of the blue. Then you take the corpses entrails to stuff into some gears... In a room full of bodies and entrails. WTF? The game is full of these puzzles where there are tons of solutions to a problem but you have to do something inane, in order to find the "logical" solution, like being in a certain part of a room in order to have a corpse randomly fall on you. The puzzles are garbage, and thus this puzzle game is garbage.