Adventure Gamers - Forums

How do you fell about performing open spinal surgery?
- On yourself?
- While being fully conscious (for obvious reasons) and only mildly sedated?
- Using a computer / robot surgeon ... that keeps giving you different error messages?
- Following on screen instructions ... that keeps flickering on and off at the most critical time?
- With death as a not just possible, but also likely outcome?

Well, if that is how you like to spend your free time, then STASIS might just be the right game for you, as that is exactly what you have to do in the above puzzle.

But apart form that, then I must say that I find the puzzles in this game to be a bit of a mixed bag. But before I start criticizing the puzzle design, and I will criticize it, then let me get the praise out of the way first.

The puzzles are generally well integrated into the game and the setting, and they never once felt like artificial obstacles that was only there to hinder my progress. Well perhaps there was one or two, that felt like they were added to slow progress, but even they were perfectly integrated into the setting, and felt like an obstacle that you could encounter in such a setting - So kudos for that.

And now for the negative:

1) Pixel hunting!
if there ever was a game that needed a hotspot revealer, then it is this game. I can’t begin to count how many times I strolled up and down the same corridors, looking for that one unknown evasive item that would allow me to solve a puzzle and continue, at one point I even got stuck because I completely missed an exit on the screen, believing that it was just a part of the wall.

That they wanted to make finding items a bit of a challenge and didn’t included a hotspot revealer, that is something that I can respect, and each location isn’t larger than you can afford to spend a bit of time backtracking, looking for any possible items that you might have missed the first time. But without a hotspot revealer then you also need to make sure that the interactive items stand sufficiently out from the backgrounds, and that is unfortunately not always the case here, or perhaps more accurately, there are so many non-interactive items that also stands out from the background, that the interactive ones drowns in all the “noise”.

For example (fictive, but similar to an actual item) having a loose pipe on a wall that you can pull off with your hands, that can in itself be fair enough. Having that pipe in a room, where far more important things are going on, that draws your attention away from the pipe, that is a bit questionable. Having a whole space station where pretty much every single room is littered with pipes on the walls, and where you have already tried at least ten times to pull off, saw off or simply pierce those pipes, to no avail, and then suddenly have one single pipe that you actually can interact with, in a room where far more important things are going on .. well that is simply unfair imo.

2) Try everything on everything.
In this game I’m never sure what will actually work or what won’t, for example tool X might work on item A and B but not on item C, even though item C is almost completely identical to item A and B. And when I did resort to “try everything on everything” then I would quite often be flabbergasted that something this silly of desperate actually worked, sometimes in a way very different from what I had actually intended.

This is of course not something new or unknown to us adventure gamers, but it is I believe, a bit worse in this game than in most other modern games. I also think that perhaps the reason for this, is the isometric view where we don’t see any close ups of the object we are tinkering with, and it can be hard to make out any details on the objects, thereby making it harder to predict what will happen if we for example use a wet towel on a machine.

3) Trial & Error / No hand-holding
There is at least two puzzle that seem to rely very heavily on trial & error.
And I do say “seem” here, because I have later learned that one of them actually had some extra hints that I just never found, or rather I did actually find them, but the hints were so well hidden it other text, that I simply didn’t noticed it and recognized it as being hints for a puzzle. But even if you do find all the hints, some trial & error is still required for this puzzle, just not to the extent that I had to use it.

It is of course also possible, that other puzzle I solved using trial & error also had some hints, and that I just never found them or simply didn’t recognized them as being hints for this puzzle. So in reality it might be more a case of the game not holding your hand, not offering you much help, and going to great lengths to conceal the hints that it actually does offer.

This no hand-holding approach is normally something that I appreciate, but it can also be to much, and in this case I would actually prefer a bit more hand-holding and instead have the logical aspect of the puzzles being a bit more difficult. There is imo too much that depends on finding more or less concealed items or hints, and too little that depends on making logical deductions.


Let me just add, that besides what I see as some flaws in the puzzle design, then I am still very much enjoying the game, and when it comes to both story and graphics there is really nothing that I can complain about.

I also haven’t actually finished the game yet, so my final view of the game might still change a bit.

I haven’t reached the part from the screenshot yet, but so far all puzzles have been more than decent, including one VERY good one (obtaining the drill early on - it makes you think outside of the box). I’ve encountered one puzzle that required an actual in-game hint so far, and that hint was so obvious that I wrote it down as soon as I saw it (the sequence for emptying the sewage tank), and for the rest I just try to be as thorough as possible and I haven’t missed a hotspot yet…

Great choice, Izno!

damn hell fkn adrenaline pumper scene, i was clinched to the mouse as i havent been with adventures, since ‘chainsaw monday’, but i guess i am glad (now) that STASIS didnt hold another death scene like it, i am too old for this, i guess…

but man i really (in general about the game) figured something about myself (i might have long forgotten) while playing STASIS, i do enjoy/dig deaths in Adventure Games, especially when you dont have really worry about save games.

I guess because you’re into imminent death without the possibility of a pre-save means that you are playing adventures again. I will still try to compile the “Best of” casuals, just in case you back-slide a bit.

Advie - 30 September 2015 09:24 PM

damn hell fkn adrenaline pumper scene, i was clinched to the mouse as i havent been with Adventures, since chainsaw monday, but i guess am glad (now) that STASIS didnt hold another death scene like that, i am too old for this, i guess…

Sefir - 01 October 2015 05:48 AM

Except from this puzzle. It was tense. It was brutal (in its gory aspect). And I loved it.
By far the best scene in the game IMHO.

Yeah, it might not be the best puzzle in the game, but it is also imo by far the best scene in the the game (so far (I still haven’t finished the game)). And I also love the many different ways you can die in this game.

TimovieMan - 30 September 2015 04:47 PM

I’ve encountered one puzzle that required an actual in-game hint so far, and that hint was so obvious that I wrote it down as soon as I saw it (the sequence for emptying the sewage tank)...

I actually fell a little bit stupid now, because one of the two puzzles I was thinking about was emptying the sewage tank, and as soon as I read your post, something clicked into place and I suddenly remembered that I actually did saw the hints for that one - but for some reason I didn’t write it down and when I got to the actual puzzle I had completely forgotten about the hint

As for the pixel hunting, well I guess it all depends on how many items you miss. If you find them all the first time, then it is obviously not going to be a problem, but if you, like me, miss many of them, then it can be very frustrating.

Needed three tries to complete the scene depicted.

Got the first part right on all three accounts, but it took the third try to notice the timing of the animation on the second part. Getting that timing right resulted in a beautifully fluid motion that immediately gave me confidence that I’d get through it this time.

Great scene!

wilco - 07 October 2015 10:40 AM

Btw, this was the scene at end of the beta

You waited 10 days to tell me this, didn’t you?