Developer: Convict Games
Publisher: Convict Games
Platform: PC, Xbox One, Mac
Tested on: Xbox One
Stone – Review
Sometimes everything just goes to hell. You wake up with a raging hangover and your girlfriend is missing, which all seems inspired by The Hangover movies. Stone has seen better days and while piecing the past together and retracing his steps, some weird scenes will play out. Get ready for this psychedelic experience in Stone, the smoking Koala bear with a harsh past.
Story
You wake up as Stone, hungover from last night when you receive a phone call. This person says that he kidnapped your girlfriend, Alex, and that you will never see her again. As you don’t believe the person on the phone, you get to explore your apartment. It is all trashed, you have no recollection of what happened. Hence, you need to retrace your steps and find out what really went down last night.
Since Stone is a story intensive game, you will have to hear and interact with the people in the right way in order to uncover the events that happened before Alex went missing. Story progression goes absolutely perfect, as the gaps get filled in piece by piece, linked together nicely and will have you playing until you are either satisfied or have completed the game in one sitting.
Graphics
The story is brought nicely and is done in a unique way graphically. The game is depicted in what seems like a simple 3D graphical design. The animations are also not the best, but the developers did add some small details such as Stone his large Koala ears moving around all the time. This simpler artwork is combined with an artsy feel, because Alex is a painter and this together with some real psychedelic scenes will have you experiencing one mad trip.
Sound
While the graphics are a bit simpler, the soundtrack of the game is amazing. You have the selection of different music styles to listen to, ranging from Hip Hop and Electronic music, to chill tunes. During gameplay, you have the luxury of just sitting back and listening to the great tunes that the soundtrack has to offer in the record store. Next to the wide range of music, it is nice to know that all the characters are fully voiced and different reactions will lead to different conversations and the other animals changing the tone in their voice.
Gameplay
Stone is an interactive story where you try to backtrack last night and search for your lost girlfriend Alex. After waking up with a hangover you get a phone call that your girlfriend has been kidnapped, which immediately puts the player in the driver’s seat as to where the story goes to. During interactions, you can always decide on what kind of way you’d like to steer the conversation. Either take the soft touch and be nice and humble or be the hard-ass PI that you are and get your answers the hard way. When you play your cards right, you can do the ‘good cop, bad cop routine’.
Linking the story together is done in chapters. As you progress through each of them, the story becomes vaguer and you get dragged in some serious sticky business. Reality isn’t as clean as it should be and your actions will influence the future. Now, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and therefore there are a few ways to blow off some steam in the city. You can watch a few full-length movies in the cinema, listen to some music in the record store, dance a bit in the club or grab a drink in the bar.
The game will always point you in the right direction and while interactions are rather simple with only two answers to give at any certain point, you won’t get an ‘L.A. Noire’ kind of experience. It’s rather an easy-going interactive story in which you can decide if you are a friendly person or a tough as nails cop.
Controlling Stone is very simple, you only have a few buttons that you need to interact with. If you are feeling stressed you can always light a ‘ciggy’ to get the edge out of things. These random things do have their own charms in a simple game like Stone. Don’t expect hectic gameplay, instead sit back and relax while walking through the game and taking a break from time to time. There isn’t much spectacular to do, or mini-games to enjoy, so if you like action then the slower pace that the game has isn’t directly for you.
Conclusion
Stone is a simple, laid-back interactive story where you have a few ways to kill the time when you are not playing. Visit the record store to have some of the best chill tracks playing in the background or grab a classic movie in the cinema. If you want to know what happened to your partner, you can follow the interesting story that is brought to you in a special way. Graphics might be simple but help to give a charismatic vibe to the whole experience.
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