Stumbling across this game while browsing GOG, it looked interesting. The reviews convinced me to try it out.
In short, it's simply a fantastic game. There's nothing I can really add to the myriad of positive reviews it already has, but if you need any additional encouragement and the description of the gameplay seems up your alley, this is a must try.
I'd say it's close enough to 5 stars to warrant the rating, especially as I personally didn't know of the developer or the game series prior to this second entry in the Stasis catalogue. Truly, I would give it a 4.8-4.9 rating just to nitpick, and I'll explain that now.
While everything from the setting, art style, dialogues, world-building, plot, and characters are absolutely incredible, there are some minor frustrations. This is a puzzle game at heart, and unless you're scouring a walkthrough, there will be a lot of fiddling and back-and-forth with some truly tough but doable puzzles. You can get stuck in your progress simply by missing a single, small thing.
Toward that end, while I have not played the first Stasis game, many say the UI is better in Bone Totem. Nevertheless, as you will be using the UI at all times, some parts can be a little clunky. For example, combining or interacting with items in the inventory (necessary for progression), especially when you're figuring out combinations, is a predictable pastime of selection, dragging, hitting a button, and doing it again and again. I would have liked it if it was easier to select and combine items to try.
Those minor issues aside, I was more than pleasantly surprised at just how good this game actually is. It is free from contemporary politics while also touching on the more salient side of many of humanity's core beliefs and endeavors - good, bad, and neutral alike - in ways that are intelligent and fair. Couple that with prose-like descriptions of items and environments, and there is the recipe for an amazing experience, excellently executed.
