Developer: The Game Kitchen
Publisher: Tripwire Interactive
Platform: PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PC
The Stone of Madness – Review
The real-time tactical stealth subgenre is one you’ll either absolutely adore or one you’ll stay miles away from. The genre is often not that forgiving to casual players, and it does take some time to get used to the overall gameplay loop. This is, in essence, also the case with The Stone of Madness, but it’s also one of those rare titles that actually might manage to lure in other types of players as well, thanks to its setting and visuals. We were rather curious when we were able to give it a go, and for the most part, we were not disappointed.
Story
In The Stone of Madness, we are taken back to a Spanish monastery in the 18th century that also doubles as an insane asylum. You’ll start the game with Alfredo, a priest, who is wrongfully locked up in the asylum. Alfredo has uncovered corruption in the monastery, as many of the asylum’s patients are there simply because someone is paying the inquisitor to lock them up and throw away the key. Alfredo wanted to expose this and ended up becoming a patient himself. Even so, he is still plotting his escape until he sees a woman being violently dragged away. He decides to investigate the matter to see what is going on and finds himself a few unlikely allies along the way. He’ll come across Eduardo, Amelia, Agnes, and Leonora, who are all locked up in the asylum. Each has their own strengths and flaws, and they form an unlikely family-like entity while trying to escape the confines of the asylum.
All in all, the story is captivating, but it does come to a bit of a standstill after the introduction of the game. It’s still interesting to see things evolve throughout the game, but everything remains fairly superficial, and the pace slows down significantly. We also found that the characters weren’t as fleshed out as they could be, which is a shame, given the diverse cast.
Graphics
The Stone of Madness’ visuals are quite impressive. The 2D hand-drawn art is gorgeous, even though the game takes place in a bleak and nasty 18th-century asylum. The character arts are unique, and while quite a few enemy models are duplicates, there is enough character variety. The environments do tend to grow a bit more stale, but that’s also due to the game’s setting. A few odd rooms here and there have a bit more asset diversity and stray further away from the grey colors that otherwise make up most of the game’s environments. The animations are fluid, and it feels like you’re playing through a polished adult cartoon. We did notice a few visual inconsistencies, such as characters seemingly floating or other NPCs clipping through each other, but these were minor issues.
A special mention goes to the short 2D cinematics sprinkled in between the gameplay. These look amazing, and we wish we had gotten even longer cinematics such as this, accompanied by proper voice acting. Even so, what’s present is quite impressive already. It reminded us of some older games, albeit with better-polished visuals.
Sound
All in all, the sound design complements the visuals quite well. The music is more atmospheric, and it does pick up from time to time to highlight certain events. There is not that much voice acting present, except for a few voiced lines here and there, and some narrative components. It’s a shame that not all dialogues were accompanied by voice acting, as this would have enhanced the atmosphere even more. The sound effects are decent and provide proper audio feedback for the in-game actions.
Gameplay
The Stone of Madness is a real-time tactical stealth game, which basically means you’ll be using stealth throughout the entirety of the game. The stealth gameplay is further supplemented by puzzle elements, the freedom to ‘explore’ the monastery and asylum without a lot of handholding, and light party management. After the prologue, the game feels a bit overwhelming, especially for newcomers to the genre. Luckily, there are some difficulty options you can mess around with, making the game slightly more forgiving. Saving is only done at the end of the day, so if you mess up, you might need to redo bigger segments again. At the end of the day, you retreat to your hideout, allowing you to do some party management. There’s a clear learning curve, and it’s rather satisfying if you can overcome the initial hurdle. Sadly, some difficulties remain, but these have more to do with minor bugs and clunky controls.
The game wouldn’t be all that captivating if it didn’t have an original shtick to rope players in. The Stone of Madness manages to entertain thanks to its diverse cast of characters, of which you can have three active ones per day. Your characters each have different abilities, such as lockpicking, excorcising evil spirits, throwing huge chunks of rubble, or even outright murdering guards. It’s interesting to create your team based on these strengths, but you’ll have to take into account the phobias of all those characters as well. For example, one is afraid of the dark, while another is afraid of open flames. It’s a system that you’ll have to get used to, especially considering the consequences. Exposing characters to their phobias for too long will unlock even more phobias, making progressing through the game even harder. While this system was original on paper, the execution wasn’t always that great. Sometimes things felt a bit too punishing, and some phobias felt a bit more inconsistent. This, in combination with how some obstacles were placed, made certain segments fairly annoying to progress through.
We played through The Stone of Madness with a controller, and while general movement controls were fine, it was everything else that felt a bit clunky. Taking simple actions feels slow, and as everything happens in real-time, you’ll mess up things more easily. Swapping between characters also felt rather slow, and basic functions such as having other characters follow you also felt undercooked. Things would have already been slightly more user-friendly if inventories were shared when exploring, or if certain actions would freeze time for a second. A quick-save feature would already help a lot here as well. We understand the risk and excitement of only saving the game in the evening, but we do expect the controls to be intuitive and responsive then.
Conclusion
The Stone of Madness is an engaging real-time tactical stealth game that has a few rough edges. The overall gameplay loop is fascinating, but it’s held back by somewhat awkward stage design and clunky controls, which may result in having to redo entire segments. We absolutely loved the visual design and the atmosphere, and it’s a shame that things weren’t polished further. Even so, if you’re a fan of real-time tactical stealth titles, then we suggest still looking into this one.
No Comments