A year on from Stasis: Bone Totem’s console launch, The Brotherhood’s first title in the sci-fi horror point-and-click adventure series makes its way outside of PC at last. Stasis initially released in 2015, and was followed by Cayne, a shorter story available to play for free on Steam that delves deeper into the sinister corporation at the heart of each game. The South African developer now returns to where it all began, with Stasis adapted for Nintendo Switch.
Aboard a medical research spaceship, John Maracheck wakes up from and breaks out of a stasis pod, only to find no one else around. Stasis immediately enraptures by having John ask the same questions of the one holding the controller. He was on a trip to Titan with his wife and daughter, but this is not the same place that he and his family last closed their eyes. The Groomlake, as John soon learns he is aboard, is deserted. The reason for that quickly becomes clear. Something went wrong here. Very wrong.
Each room progressively unravels more of what events may have transpired, telling a tragic story with streaks of blood, overgrown plantlife, malfunctioning machinery and mutilated bodies that are elaborated on further through additional flavour text that, unlike Stasis: Bone Totem, isn’t overly wordy.
PDAs containing diary entries and emails, while entirely optional to read and not exactly realistic given their fully unlocked states and overly revealing nature, provide more context and doses of humour to offset the highly disturbing experiments that have been taking place. Creepy background noises and distorted prerecorded station messages maintain the discomfort felt in each area.
A woman by the name of Te’ah manages to connect to John’s radio, and she becomes the predominant communicator to help guide John throughout the facility. For the most part, chatter is kept to a minimum to maintain the isolated and distressing atmosphere, but each time Te’ah chimes in, her words carry weight as she reveals more background information, while the player is always kept guessing as to whether she can be trusted or not.
John’s inventory doesn’t get bogged down by numerous items, with the maximum held at most times usually topping out at four or five. Combining tools to craft something else is common for the genre, and Stasis is no different in that regard. It is unlikely players won’t resort to a guide, though, because there are a handful of times where it seems farfetched to have thought of the next step’s requirements. Expect to get stumped on more than a few occasions, particularly since not every interactable object can so easily be seen.
Stasis’ transition from PC to console has been handled well enough, with only a few buttons required to navigate the Groomlake and interact with the environment. However, there are some issues that have surprisingly gone overlooked.
One wish would have been for more natural controller integration when reading PDAs. The d-pad will move pages of text up and down, but the scrolling very commonly stops a few sentences before the end. It then needs finnicky movement of the cursor, as it must be accurately moved over the onscreen button that moves pages down and clicked upon. The B button also does not exit from the PDA screen, again requiring manual cursor input. It makes for a far more annoying reading experience than is necessary.
There is a bit of an oversight with regards to still being able to move John around and interact while a PDA log is up on the screen, even to the point where scenes will play out just because John was made to inspect a device while walking over a trigger path. On a related note, a log of previously read entries would have been a welcome addition, as would being able to skip dialogue.
Audio mixing isn’t the best, with radio communications often being quiet and voices returning to normal volume afterwards. Loud sound effects can drown out the dialogue when comms are in use, and there is a lack of audio options to address this.
Stasis also shows its age graphically, with low resolution prerendered backgrounds – although highly detailed and beautiful in all their grotesqueness – being brought to the fore frequently. One major improvement over Stasis: Bone Totem, however, is the quality of the zoomed-in puzzle imagery, which is far clearer than the blurry messes of last year’s game.
Small grievances aside, Stasis is not one to be missed for horror point-and-click adventure fans. A shocking and compelling story compounds on the individual ones learned of aboard the Groomlake. Even if the finale lacks some surprise, it isn’t anything that diminishes the experience, and all sorts of theories will run rampant once it’s over. Despite Cayne being free on Steam, it would be great now for the trilogy to be complete with a port of that entry to consoles. Fingers crossed The Brotherhood can make it happen.
