Stasis (computer game)
| Stasis | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | The Brotherhood | ||
| Publisher |
The Brotherhood Daedalic Entertainment
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| Senior Developer | Christopher Bischoff | ||
| composer | Mark Morgan | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
August 31, 2015 | ||
| platform | Windows , macOS | ||
| Game engine | Visionaire | ||
| genre | Point-and-click adventure | ||
| control | mouse | ||
| system advantages preconditions |
Windows XP or Mac OS 10.7, 2 GB RAM | ||
| medium | Download , DVD | ||
| language | English voice output, subtitles in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish and Russian | ||
| Age rating |
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Stasis is a point-and-click adventure from the South African development studio The Brotherhood. It belongs to the genres of science fiction and horror and was released in August 2015 for Windows and macOS .
action
John Maracheck awakens aboard an unfamiliar spaceship that appears abandoned and is in a state of advanced destruction. He was actually on a vacation flight to Saturn's moon Titan with his wife Ellen and daughter Rebecca . Because of the long flight duration, the passengers were placed in an artificial coma (the eponymous stasis ) - he can't remember any more. Little by little it becomes clear to him that he is on board the "Groomlake", a medical research vessel that orbits the planet Neptune and on which the Cayne Corporation carried out research on humans outside the reach of the authorities. While exploring the apparently abandoned ship, Maracheck comes across numerous horrific corpses, and he quickly suspects that what has killed the people is still somewhere inside the Groomlake. On his way through the ship, he can use a radio device found on a human corpse to establish contact with the botanist Te'Ah Hensley, who tells him only hesitantly and in parts about the events on the Groomlake, but guides him through the ship by radio to help him find his family. Another person on board the Groomlake, the scientist Geradus Malan, made contact by radio and tried to kill Maracheck. He makes his way through the wrecked ship, inhabited by dangerous mutations, finds his daughter dead and can finally find and kill Malan, the alleged originator of all evil, only to find out that his wife is also dead and ultimately Hensley the whole The chain of events had set in motion because the Maracheck family could be useful to her in a personal campaign of revenge against the Cayne Corporation.
As an overarching, philosophical topic, stasis deals with the question of the extent to which scientists, in their efforts to help humanity, may subordinate the welfare of individuals to the welfare of the general public. The game takes a clear position by portraying the scientists' actions as unethical.
Game principle and technology
Stasis is a point-and-click adventure in which the game is presented from an isometric perspective. From Sprites composite characters act against pre-rendered, some animated scenes. The player can use the mouse to move his character through the locations and use the mouse buttons to initiate actions that allow the character to interact with his environment. John Maracheck can find objects and apply them to the environment or other objects. As the story progresses, more locations will be unlocked. A central play element are PDAs of former crew members, on which they present the events on the Groomlake from their respective perspectives like a diary and thus gradually give the player a picture of the previous history. In contrast to most contemporary adventures, the player can die in stasis during the game, which forces him to fall back on a game state that has hopefully been created beforehand and is considered a bad design for graphic adventures.
Production notes
The Brotherhood development team consists of two South African brothers, Christopher and Nicholas Bischoff, who began developing stasis in the early 2000s . The decisive boost for the production of the game came in November 2013 with a crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter platform , which was supposed to bring in 100,000 US dollars and raised a good 130,000 US dollars during the four-week period. As part of the campaign, the publication was announced for August 2014. The actual publication took place a year later, among other things because of the achievement of so-called "stretch goals", bonus goals for expanding the game that The Brotherhood promised as part of the Kickstarter campaign in the event that the campaign goal was overachieved. Stasis is distributed as a download version by the manufacturer The Brotherhood itself via platforms such as Steam or GOG . In Germany, the publisher Daedalic Entertainment also launched a real version in October 2015.
The soundtrack of the game was by Mark Morgan created a US game and film composer who already have the soundtrack for Adventure Zork: Grand Inquisitor , the role-playing game Planescape Torment and Fallout series and the television series One Tree Hill , Kojak and Shark created would have. Morgan's involvement was not included in the original project plan, but represented one of the stretch goals of the Kickstarter campaign.
In January 2017, The Brotherhood released a free adventure game called Cayne , which takes place in the game world of Stasis , but has an independent storyline. The addon was based on a new engine with a stasis- like appearance and was intended to advertise the Kickstarter campaign for the Stasis successor Beautiful Desolation .
reception
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From 31 aggregated ratings, Stasis on Metacritic achieved a score of 79. GameStar praised the atmosphere of the game, drew comparisons to classic films such as Alien , Resident Evil and Event Horizon and pointed out that the numerous PDAs of the former crew members scattered across the game world were considered to be " Well-written reports gave an insight into the abnormal processes and the psyche of the people "on board" and thus created an "intense and (...) credible atmosphere". The magazine criticized the fact that the story became increasingly implausible as the game progressed and ended up as an "interactive variant of a cliché-riddled B horror movie (sic)". The specialist magazine Adventure-Treff pointed out that the USK classification of the game was rightly made, since the visualization of violence and its effects take up a significant part of the game presentation and “blood and disgust were not spared”. As an example, the magazine used scenes in which human intestines are used instead of tools to solve puzzles. Adventure-Treff praised the partially animated background graphics, the background soundtrack and the English voice output, but criticized the game's low resolution, which had an effect on large monitors, the occasional "funny" animations of the characters and errors in the German subtitles. The PC Games called Stasis a "no frills retro adventure" and drew comparisons to Sanitarium in terms of optics and horror content . The magazine praised the "well and atmospherically written" notes, which gradually convey the background story, the philosophical echoes of the story and the "motivated" speaker of the main character. It criticized some “absurd” puzzles as well as a strongly decreasing tension curve towards the end of the game.
Web links
- StasisGame.com - Official Website
- Stasis at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Digital Antiquarian: The 14 Deadly Sins of Graphic-Adventure Design. Retrieved May 19, 2016 .
- ↑ Kickstarter.com: Stasis - 2D Isometric SciFi Horror Adventure Game. Retrieved May 22, 2016 .
- ↑ Adventure-Treff.de: Cayne is now free on Steam, Beautiful Desolation on Kickstarter. Retrieved February 15, 2017 .
- ↑ a b AdventureTreff.de: Stasis. Retrieved May 23, 2016 .
- ↑ a b Gamestar.de: And suddenly B-Movie. Retrieved May 23, 2016 .
- ↑ a b PCGames.de: Stasis in the test: Dead Space for thinkers. Retrieved May 23, 2016 .
- ^ A b Metacritic.com: Stasis. Retrieved May 23, 2016 .