Video Game Review: Stone

Stone

Convict Games

Adventure

Nintendo Switch

With the Rise of the newest gaming console, the Nintendo Switch, we are starting to see all kinds of games making their way into the spotlight. Old favorites are being ported over to enjoy on a new system, and new games are hoping to find their niche, opting solely for the Switch experience. Stone is no exception, and in this Game Review, we’re going to be tackling some of the biggest issues with the game itself.

Stone is a game by Convict Games. The main protagonist is a Koala, who is also a Private Investigator. Sounds cute, right? However, this game is far from family friendly. In fact, in the very beginning of the game we’re introduced to an interesting game mechanic which lets you press the x button to smoke pot. At any time. We find out very soon after, that out furry protagonist is also an alcoholic with some major issues. However, this is just a bit of background on the game, and isn’t anything to do with the problems I had with this game.

One of my major issues with this game has to be that, though you are introduced to the pot smoking mechanic, and the ability to drink alcohol whenever you please, it has no real effect on the game! Absolutely nothing changes, no one even comments on the fact that you’re smoking in a public area. There are no screen effects, no dialogue other than from the disgruntled bartender who doesn’t want to serve you because you’re banned from her establishment but does so anyway, and…no real point to the mechanic at all. It feels bland, and hardly thought out, more like it’s a sort of gimmick for attention. It had potential to be fun, but it ended up being more annoying than anything when I would accidentally click the button and had to wait a second before I clicked it again to stop.

The second issue I had with Stone, would have to be the empty, and frankly, rather pointless environments you were forced to “explore.” There are a total of eight areas you can go to. There isn’t any choice in the matter, however, because if you go somewhere that doesn’t progress the story, you can do absolutely nothing in any of the environments except drink, or smoke pot, which we have established does nothing. When you are in an establishment that progresses the story, you can interact with a maximum of 3 things at any given time (if you’re lucky) and usually none of them do anything. The most interesting aside from the NPC you were meant to talk to, was the jukebox in the bar, which gave you the choice of “hip hop” or “rock” and that’s it.

On top of the environments feeling empty and lackluster, they were entirely frustrating. When you were meant to find something, you had to look very closely for the little orb which indicated what you were supposed to look at, and if you missed it (like I did a few times) you ended up wandering around an empty, boring room, getting frustrated because you couldn’t do anything. It’s also worth mentioning that our pudgy protag. doesn’t run, so I ended up wandering aimlessly, meandering at his own pace which was infuriatingly slow after the second time around an empty room.

The story of this game was actually rather interesting. You wake up, having lost your memory of the previous night, to find that your lover is gone. You receive a strange phone call, which sends you into a panic, stating only that “you’ll never see Alex again.” During the course of the game you hop from place to place, speaking with NPCs (one in each area ONLY) to find clues about where Alex has gone. However, the “gameplay” doesn’t really reflect any urgency at all. As stated above, Stone (the name of our protagonist) doesn’t run. In fact, I wouldn’t really call it walking either. It’s sort of wandering about with no real urgency. It doesn’t reflect the panic that the story is trying to sell, and neither does the fact that you ask for free drinks, or randomly start smoking pot wherever you feel like. These things break what little immersion there was, at least for me.

Now, onto the issue of gameplay. Stone is classified as a “casual” Indie adventure game. In my opinion, it was too casual, and a Visual Novel had more gameplay than Stone. As I mentioned before, going to any of the environments other than whichever the objective specifically told you to go to, was a waste of time and really irritating. Which means that you never had any choice on where to go in the first place. The only two places that you could do anything at, other than the objective area, were the movie theater and the record store, but we’ll get to those later. When you were in the right place, and speaking to the only person you could, you didn’t have any real choice either. You could choose to be angry, or soft spoken, but regardless of what you did or what choice you made, you got exactly the same outcome. It was worded a bit differently, but didn’t change or even affect anything about the scene at all. A few times I was given the choice to ask about Alex right away, or about something else related to the person I was questioning, but regardless of my answer, Stone would talk about both. I just got to choose the order that he asked. There was absolutely no freedom in this game. No real choices to make. Not even the ability to choose which NPC to question first. Personally, I feel that this can’t even be classified as a game. It was a Visual Novel at best.  One that felt forced, at that.

The presentation of the game itself was rather solid. I quite enjoyed the look of the game, and the character designs. It was a refreshingly stylized game which worked well with the Switch’s more limited graphics. I thought it was cute, and I liked that a cute graphical style was paired with a game with adult themes. The story itself is also a really emotional and adult theme, which, again, I feel went really well with the disarmingly adorable style. A specific location in the game also reminded me of the video for the song Lone Digger by Caravan Palace, which made me smile. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but I like to think it was.  The choice to make all of the characters animals made the story all the more interesting. I wanted to know more about the world this game was set in. I’m glad to say that I had no issues with the look of the game at all, which is why I chose to play this game in the first place. Great job to the creative team behind the artwork and character designs!

Now, onto the elephant in the room. My final verdict for this game is not good. I felt it had much more potential. It had an interesting story idea, that dealt with some very real adult themes. I believe if it had been given more time, this game could have been something truly unique and wonderful. However, sadly, in the end, it turned out to be less of a game, and more of an excuse to showcase some good music and strange movies. The Cinema and the Record store that I mentioned earlier are two areas in the game that you can access any time, and their only purpose is to play the music used in the game and to show some strange black and white films (a few of which you saw in the game itself, luckily you were given the option to skip them). There is a third area that is even more pointless. It’s the Sauna, where you can see Stone sitting on a bench, wearing some sunglasses. That’s all you can do there.

I don’t feel that I can properly judge Stone as a game, because it didn’t feel like a game. I felt pushed along the entire time I was playing it. most paths in video games are narrow (unless they’re open world) but this path was so narrow it was almost non-existent.  At any given time there was only ONE thing to do. If you did not do the one thing, you couldn’t do anything. There was no choice, no gameplay, and no real fun. The only saving grace was the story, and even that was undersold by the lack of urgency. The whole time I just felt like shouting “someone you loved was kidnapped, at least jog a little!”

In the end, I was very disappointed with this game. It could have been so much more! It was so colorful and vibrant, and the story was very interesting! I really wanted to enjoy it! I wish I could give this game a better review, but for me, unfortunately, it just wasn’t enjoyable.