Stasis: Bone Totem – no one can hear the screams underwater. review

Studio The Brotherhood has already managed to mark a couple of unusual games. And while neither Stasis nor Beautiful Desolation can be called a new word in the point ‘n’ click genre, they worked their modest budget by 150%. In general, the combination of intricate plots, hideous biomechanical devices, the strangest characters, and the general oppressive atmosphere of suspense has always set developers apart – and Statis: Bone Totem, fortunately, was no exception.

The Brotherhood adds many short CG cutscenes to their games. Some of these look great

There were three

At the same time, the studio worked on the bugs. In the previous two games, the idea of ​​”pointing and clicking” was taken to the absolute – you had to “scan” the entire environment with your cursor: either hoping to find an item or understanding where this article would come in handy . Bone Totem is simpler in this regard – all active points are conveniently highlighted with a button press, and the things themselves can only be dragged from inventory directly on the puzzle screen. Incidentally, they also make it possible to show areas of interaction.

Did that make the puzzles easier? Not at all. The Brotherhood has practically overcome the genre’s misery of applying anything to anything. In the vast majority of cases everything is logical and within a few spaces – the complexity lies elsewhere. We have three active characters that you can switch between at any time. And even though they operate in completely different locations, items can be easily transferred between heroes – something found in one location will surely come in handy in someone else. You just have to understand where and when. In some cases, one thing needs to be broken down into components, in another – combined. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the studio has managed to balance exploration and puzzles in a way that leaves the user pausing but never feeling stuck in search of a solution.

Highlighting active points is also useful because many places here are very dark. Pixel hunting would be a nightmare

After all, point ‘n’ click adventures have almost always been made primarily to tell stories. Bone Totem is not as ambitious in this regard as Beautiful Desolation, where the fate of entire nations was decided. This time we are again in closed rooms reminiscent of stasis. The plot begins quite normally: a couple who recently lost their daughter and the child’s favorite toy, the robotic bear Moses, arrive on a tower in the middle of the sea. Kind of random, kind of for no particular reason. But the further the attempts to understand what is happening on the station and in the laboratories, the deeper the characters and the player with them fall into the abyss of madness.

This is where the Brotherhood’s ability to create an awkward atmosphere almost from the ground up helps. There aren’t even real enemies in the game, but with every journal, with every new spooky biomechanical device, with every discovery, you want to be less and less in that place. Then the residents (if you can call them that) of the station connect themselves and speak to you in a human voice. Sooner or later you meet them and … what is it about! Adventures take a wrong turn pretty quickly, but if you help the characters overcome various difficulties, you can cope with them calmly. Moses was particularly successful – AI in a mechanical shell is initially repulsive in both looks and speech, but ultimately turns out to be perhaps the best character in this strange adventure.

The puzzles range from “Let’s pull the levers” to genetic engineering

And this adventure, like previous The Brotherhood games, is firmly anchored in your mind. Here, the themes of religion and faith, forgiveness and attempts to accept loss are addressed, making Bone Totem even tougher, darker and scarier than the studio’s previous projects. Not because of the external design (although it’s good too) and not because of cheap tricks with a sudden appearance of something like that – that’s not the case here. The game almost physically crushes the entire bulk of the ocean. The three-strong studio continues to tell offbeat stories through the budget prism of classic point ‘n’ click adventures – and they’ve done so with a feat so celebrated, all you can do is sit around during the credits and try to make sense of what happened.

Advantages:

• another strange story from The Brotherhood with unusual characters and nasty environments;
• The ability to highlight active points helps, but doesn’t simplify the game.
• entertaining puzzles: they are interesting to solve, but you won’t be able to get stuck in one place for long.

defects:

• Optimization leaves much to be desired;
• Technical issues such as occasional glitches in character pathing or discrepancies between the hotspot and where you need to click to interact with it.

Degree: 8.0/10

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