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.
I finished the game recently and liked the experience very much. Indeed so much that I took the time to delve a little deeper into what it all meant in the end ... but more on that down below. Stasis, from the very beginning, strikes a tone resembling well-known Sci-Fi horror movie classics the likes of Event Horizon, Alien, etc. and indeed the (very small) team of developers confirmed that they took a lot of inspiration from those. The story, which advances with a nice pace, slowly grows into a dark tale of grim desperation, which I really enjoyed. I actually was so engaged that I tackled the game more or less in one go. The game mechanics follow the usual point-and-click adventure logic, the puzzles are (mostly) moderately easy to solve, although the required parts for solving them aren't always easy to find on the map, since there is no possibility in-game to have them highlighted. There is the possibility to die when combining the wrong items or entering some areas prematurely, but due to the autosave feature I rarely lost any progress. Although I was really engaged with the game, there are some things I still have to criticise: - Although there is a constant threat present in the game, there is no actual confrontation with that danger (which I don't like to spoil here), so in the end, this felt a bit short of its potential - some characters that you meet (or read from) are a bit stereotypical and act quite irrational. - the ending (actually the entire last act) felt very disappointing and is quite ambiguous. Although the developers again confirmed that this was on purpose, I still felt dissatisfied. And although there are a lot of speculations online about what actually happened there, there is still no definitive answer from the devs. Still, I enjoyed the experience very much. So, if you are into Sci-Fi Horror, you should definitely give it a try.
