Great visuals, sound effects and general atmosphere. Unfortunately the story was absolutely awful.
Stasis is another game whose devs, I imagine, think is better than it actually is. It's fine. Competent. It's very tropey and not especially innovative. The narrative is a mix-n-match of various horror movie and sci fi dystopia tropes and gimmicks. A mostly abandoned space ship full of body horror bugs and fungus people with stasis pods and futuristic surgery devices, jump scares and gross out moments.
The story isn't poorly written. It's fine. It's just not that interesting. It's not new for anyone who's read enough sci fi, enough horror, played enough games in either genre.
A few things, really don't help. The voice acting is very bad. It takes any possible weight out of the scariest or saddest moments. Given the entire game is very dark and grim, the horrible voice acting kneecaps the experience badly. Ripping out tension and emotion. I'd've just preferred it unvoiced.
Some of the maps are far too dark. You have to crank brightness and gamma settings or it's just too dark. And when you brighten them up it's all muddy (because it's supposed to be dark). This might not be so bad if several of the games puzzles weren't wildly obtuse and requiring the player to pixel hunt for seemingly irrelevant items.
Sure they end up getting fitted together in ways that end up making some sense but taking an hour to double and triple back across a couple different rooms for two or three puzzles pixel hunting for entrails in a small corner of the map takes a ton of the weight and suspense out of the game.
Stasis was fine. It's definitely worthwhile if you got it on GoG for free or found it for a buck on Steam. But it's not a mustplay even for fans of the genre.
The story isn't poorly written. It's fine. It's just not that interesting. It's not new for anyone who's read enough sci fi, enough horror, played enough games in either genre.
A few things, really don't help. The voice acting is very bad. It takes any possible weight out of the scariest or saddest moments. Given the entire game is very dark and grim, the horrible voice acting kneecaps the experience badly. Ripping out tension and emotion. I'd've just preferred it unvoiced.
Some of the maps are far too dark. You have to crank brightness and gamma settings or it's just too dark. And when you brighten them up it's all muddy (because it's supposed to be dark). This might not be so bad if several of the games puzzles weren't wildly obtuse and requiring the player to pixel hunt for seemingly irrelevant items.
Sure they end up getting fitted together in ways that end up making some sense but taking an hour to double and triple back across a couple different rooms for two or three puzzles pixel hunting for entrails in a small corner of the map takes a ton of the weight and suspense out of the game.
Stasis was fine. It's definitely worthwhile if you got it on GoG for free or found it for a buck on Steam. But it's not a mustplay even for fans of the genre.
:( This has potential but it gets stale surprisingly fast.
STASIS is a decent space horror game with disturbing graphics and an interesting storyline. I'm surprised this game was made by a three man-studio, as the quality of the game feels much higher than that!
The story itself is pretty trope-y, you play as your Regular Joe waking up on a spaceship and you start looking for your family. However it does lead into something more, something worse and it does tie into a really good ending with twists and turns. Reading the PDAs that are available gives more background lore, making the setting even better. The characters might be trope-y but they're not over the top and the voice acting is actually really good.
Gameplay-wise it's puzzle solving with simple point n click mechanics and sometimes timing involved. It makes the good flow on and you can instead focus on the story and the environments, which are both beautiful and terrifying. This game is visually appealing, however at times maybe a bit too dark graphically speaking. However the game is dark itself as well, based on both the storyline and the fact that your character can meet his death in several gruesome ways, both self-inflicted and by the surrounding environment.
I recommend this to any space horror fan! It's really good and I can't wait for the upcoming sequel! In the meanwhile I'll play the other games released by this dev.
The story itself is pretty trope-y, you play as your Regular Joe waking up on a spaceship and you start looking for your family. However it does lead into something more, something worse and it does tie into a really good ending with twists and turns. Reading the PDAs that are available gives more background lore, making the setting even better. The characters might be trope-y but they're not over the top and the voice acting is actually really good.
Gameplay-wise it's puzzle solving with simple point n click mechanics and sometimes timing involved. It makes the good flow on and you can instead focus on the story and the environments, which are both beautiful and terrifying. This game is visually appealing, however at times maybe a bit too dark graphically speaking. However the game is dark itself as well, based on both the storyline and the fact that your character can meet his death in several gruesome ways, both self-inflicted and by the surrounding environment.
I recommend this to any space horror fan! It's really good and I can't wait for the upcoming sequel! In the meanwhile I'll play the other games released by this dev.