If you're into stories with casual game play with an eerie vibe, then this one is for you.

Point and click game with lots of reading. Some of the puzzles were tricky, which I ended up completing by brute forcing items together. There aren't really any hints or certain items may be hard to find.

If you're an achievement hunter, be prepared to die. A lot.

This truly is a gem of a game. One of the best adventures I have ever played since the 'olden days' of Lucas Arts adventure games such as Monkey Island.

STASIS combines all that is great about the Sci-Fi/Horror genre, and in atmosphere, storyline, and presentation definitely can be described as an amalgamation of several franchises such as Aliens, Event Horizon, The Thing, Dead Space, and others. It's not as downright terror inducing as some movies or games are, but the subtlety behind the story, the way it is presented to you, and the almost casual way you end up dead in random situations, are definitely a novelty.

As far as difficulty is concerned, some of the puzzles require a little thinking, and I do admit that I did get stuck for a bit in one or the other area, but none of the puzzles are illogical, and the game does provide all you need to solve them; just read, read, and re-read the pads, don't skim or skip any of those, otherwise you may miss some vital clue on how to progress. Plus it is essential to the storyline.

So, in short, if you like Sci-Fi and Horror, and don't mind a little, good, 'old-skool' point-and-click adventuring, then whatever you do, don't skip this. And remember: In space, no one can hear you scream!

STASIS is exactly as described, a sci-fi point'n'click horror, but for people that have an overactive imagination (like me) you wont have to worry about any scares from an isometric perspective. Unfortunately it's not as great as it sounds.

The storyline has been used sooo many times, in games, in films, probably in books I haven't read, that it's actually frustratingly annoying to see it again. It screams lazy. We cannot be at a place in time where we have explored every fictional idea in the vastness that is space! Alas this is only part of the problem.

I've seen some people criticize the voice acting but I'd say it was the script/direction. There is extreme emotion trauma in this game which isn't really reflected by what "John" (the protagonist) says. His feelings seem inconsistent; he gets seriously disturbed at the atrocities he sees then couple of scenes later it's as if he has forgotten. On the bright side (if you like reading), a lot of what gives this game depth is written on PDA's found throught the game. You will need to read them as they give clues to puzzles. Thankfully, they're easy to see, well-written and give a lot of backstory. To the puzzles!

The puzzles are all pretty logical and not overly hard. The items are distinguishable from the art in most cases with only a few being the sort of small that makes you say out loud "REALLY?". What I would of liked to see is some timed puzzles to enhance the horror aspect of the game.

The art is great as can be seen in many of the screenshots.
Music didnt really fit well.
And animations need a bit of fine-tuning when interacting with objects.

I feel like I've been overly harsh, as I believe most of the work was done by a small group of family members. And it shows a lot of potential for future games if they use this one as a learning experience. It's not one of the greats but it's not a complete waste of time either.

Buy on discount
It's not great but not a total waste of time either.

If you ever played Heavy Rain, this game practically has Ethan Mars in it with how much ♥♥♥♥ he goes through with this entire journey. Ethan Mars cut off fingers, John practically dies with all the wounds he gets.

I'm on the edge with this game, and really wish there was a thumbs in the middle for this game, but I'll have to say that I enjoyed most of my time playing this game, although it could've been done much better. It's a creepy (not too scary) isometric puzzle adventure game that almost did it perfectly, but didn't

Read and decide whether it's for you or not:

• ATMOSPHERE - Graphics aren't the best in this game, but damn I felt like I was on a desolate space ship floating around Neptune for certain. Very well done with the atmosphere and making me feel like I really was dead in space.
  
• VOICE ACTING/CHARACTERS - One of the main things I felt this game did really well was the the conversations between John and Te'ah. It's an isometric explorer, so your gameplay won't be too intensive, so you have to rely on building up the story. Although the story falls short, the way these two characters interacted was authentic and they both did their parts really well. John is a teacher that is desperately searching for his family, and Te'ah is a mysterious scientist that helps you along the way.

• STORY - In the beginning, it had potentially, but midway through, it just fell flat with the same ideas from John about the injustices he saw. Could've been a bit better if they introduced more new ideas into John's head, but I guess that's what John would've thought if he was seeing from the Eugenics War.
  
• GLITCHES - This game is pretty damn glitchy, most of which are not gamebreaking and only require you to alt-tab and go back into the game. Things like inventory being wonky, menus disappearing, etc. In my eight hours of playthrough, I only encountered one glitch that forced me to relaunch the game, when I glitched out of the level and could only walk in the unaccessible areas.
  
• PUZZLES/ITEMS - Hit or miss. Some puzzles made sense, some didn't make any logical sense. Most items were easy to find, but there were a couple (one I'm thinking of is before the spinal surgery in the eugenics hall) that were VERY hard to see.
  
• TYPOS - There are a couple of embaressing typos throughout the game, you won't notice them if you don't read them.
  

• ENDING - I like inquistive endings (Bioshock Infinite had me puzzled for a while), but the ending in this one was terrible. If you are still on the verge of buying this game, don't read the last pointer since that one contains spoilers as to why I think it was bad.
  
• VILLAIN - Malan's motives are generic and don't spook anyone. More in the last pointer.
  
• SPOILERS - The fact that Te'ah suddenly becomes evil at the end, the classic "I'm the secret evil guy even though I was helping you all along" was badly done. Malan's buildup was obvious and cheesy with the "I'm a god" just because he's a crazy genius or something. Also, why doesn't John escape with his wife? He went through all that trouble, and now he won't even accompany his wife back to earth? What's he going to do, die on the spaceship? If his motive was "the world must know about this", then what the hell is he going to do on the spaceship? Overall, the writers could've spent a little more time brainstormin and thorught up of better things for both of them.

Having read all of that, if you are interested in this game, I'd recommend you buy at full price. If you are skeptical, buy it on a sale, and if you aren't interested, you aren't missing too much - a youtube playthrough should suffice at any point. Be prepared to die a lot and be a bit disturbed with some scenes, and enjoy a decent mysterious story. The ending ruins it for me, but hey, maybe you'll think differently of it.

It's a 6.5-7/10

Poor voice acting, animations and plot.
Pixel-hunting drag of a game, sprinkled with more-often-than not illogical "puzzles".

In essence: hours you will not get back, spent trudging through a predicatable, emotionally stifled story that is neither original nor remotely interesting.

In space no one hears you scream.. or die, which in case of this point and click horror-sci-fi adventure proves very true.

You begin the game, when the cryostasis capsule of the protagonist, John Maracheck opens.. to a very strange spaceship, obviously filled with all kinds of more or less crazy people... and that was before something went totally wrong!

Stasis is a very dark (in every aspect) game, which i maybe could describe like Dead Space in the adventure genre. Great atmosphere, interesting story and fine puzzles keep you on your toes, as well as on your way through the ominous Groomlake. Main parts of the story are told via pdas of the mostly deceased personal, which also contain the occasional hint on how to solve the puzzles.

While you explore the cruel history of what has happened here, you have also many ways in which you can die quickly and cruelly (the devs also gave you the opportunity to release poor John of his torment and to kill himself in many ways throughout the game). If you die not willingly though, the savepoints are always set very fairly, which is appreciated in this deadly enviroment. So are the puzzles, most of them are logical and "easily" to solve.. if you always keep your eyes and ears open, at least. Beside the hints in the textes, i very much enjoyed reading the excerpts of all the different persons. Also much of the enviroment has textes to describe them furthermore. So, if you don´t like reading, this game maybe is not optimal for you.

Graphically it is well made 2D with great animations. Also the sound and background music enhance the creepy atmosphere greatly. The not too often used conversations of the main char finally, also fit into the positive category.

What few gripes i had, would surely be that i dont know of a hotspot key, so i quite easily missed something of importance on the first try, which made it necessary to run around more then i´d like to.
There also aren´t that much inventory slots, and the handling needs a bit getting used to, but in the end it fit´s quite well.

Conclusio: Stasis surprised me a bit, in the way how quickly the dark, creepy atmosphere sucked me into the game. If you like Dead Space, Alien or Event Horizon like scenarios and enjoy a bloody good atmosphere, you should give this game at least a try. But make sure that you don´t play alone.. in the dark... ;)

Point Scale 9/10 - Excellent

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STASIS is a science fiction horror themed isometric point and click adventure game which takes place aboard the Groomlake, a deep space research vessel that belongs to Cayne Corporation. The game has a very gloomy and dark atmosphere to it and it seems to be inspired by various popular sci-fi horror games and movies such as Alien and Dead Space.

In STASIS, you take control of John Maracheck, a school teacher which awakes from cryogenic stasis and finds himself on an unknown ship, the Groomlake. Soon enough, John finds that something has gone terribly wrong aboard the ship and he is surrounded by nothing but death, blood and destruction all around him and he is driven by the fear for his family safety.

The main gameplay element of STASIS, as with any other point and click adventure type of games, is of course, puzzle solving. I can’t remember exactly how many puzzles are in the game but most of them are solvable by finding out certain items and combining them or using them on some background object or something on the environment around you in some way and surprisingly enough, even though I got stuck on some of these sections, afterwards I felt like it all made sense in a way and it wasn’t just some way to stall the player progress. Besides this, you’ll also come across some some other puzzles that involve some actual investigation and sometimes I even had to take notes so I couldn’t forget certain things. That said, STASIS puzzles are not just there for the sake of solving puzzles, they fit in the world and the story and they have a purpose.

For a indie development team, STASIS features a huge amount of high production quality material such as high fidelity cinematics, amazing writing, some of the best rendered backgrounds I’ve seen in recent years and superb sound design. From these aspects I think the ones that contribute most to the game’s amazing atmosphere are the writing and the overall sound design. The dialogue is voice acted but in this case I don’t feel like it’s that much of a strong point, the voice acting isn’t exactly terrible but it isn’t exactly great either in my opinion. The writing however is really neat, and I don’t mean the character’s dialogue, I’m refering to several crew logs you find scattered throughout the levels and to the grotesque and gruesome descriptions of piles of filth that you come across. These provide with you a backstory and fill you in on the history background of the ship, its crew, the company and what happened in previous years creating a believable and credible game world and timeline. I don’t know how they managed it but the sound is quite a big deal in STASIS, no matter where you are you’re constantly hearing things, sometimes you hear screams, sometimes some child’s creepy chanting, probably product of John’s sanity, or even scratches and noises echoing throughout the ship, in some situations, when John witnesses something rather gruesome you can hear his heavy and constant breathing.

Still, I do have a few gripes with the game such as the lack of resolution and V-Sync options on the options menu. One time I had to change my desktop refresh rate so that the game could progress further, it kept freezing at one section. The options menu only has two options, one for brightness and another one for volume and that is it.

Overall STASIS is a great point and click adventure game, it’s very atmospheric, immersive and the puzzles are challenging. It offers around 10 hours worth of gameplay along with an amazing sountrack by Mark Morgan and by the end of it you might be facing some moral dilemmas.

I played through STASIS in basically one sitting. It took around seven hours to complete.

What STASIS basically does is pay homage to various movies like Event Horizon, Pandorum, and Aliens(you will find Easter Eggs in the game demonstrating proof of these influences) while crafting it’s own fairly well written story. The dark and foreboding atmosphere in STASIS really sets the tone for what was, at least in my opinion, a stellar gaming experience.



The story in STASIS is centered around John Maracheck, who awakens from stasis to find himself alone. His wife and daughter are missing and the place he awakens in seems abandoned. The story in STASIS develops as John searches for his family while also trying to figure out how he even ended up alone and what happened to everybody else on Groomlake, the space base he now finds himself on.

As I mentioned in my intro, STASIS takes bits and pieces from many of our favorite sci-fi/horror films and melds them into an interesting story that manages to hold its own while being respectful of its influences.

Where STASIS really shines in this regard however, is with atmosphere, urgency, and a sense of potential doom at all times. Nothing comes easy for our protagonist. Unlike many horror based media, STASIS doesn’t rely on jump scares. It doesn’t need to. It draws you in due to the intensity and emotional attachment created almost immediately. You will definitely care about the protagonist and his plight. Moreover, you legitimately feel bad for him and are hoping for a positive outcome for all his adversity and perseverance.


Overall, there isn’t much negative with the story in STASIS minus my biggest peeve with all stories. Be they games, movies, or books: sloppy or poorly thought out endings are my biggest gripe. The ending in STASIS was in part very cool, but mostly, it was underwhelming. It did the game a disservice considering the quality of everything leading up to those final moments.

Overall, and despite my lack of excitement over the ending, I would still give this aspect of STASIS an 8.5 out of 10



The overarching sense of dread and foreboding in STASIS was in no small part due to the excellent artwork and imaginative use of isometric perspective. Without the stellar work and attention paid to even the smallest details, I think the effect would have been seriously diminished. Not only were the graphics evocative and interesting, but they truly laid the foundation for the entirety of STASIS. I was quite impressed with this aspect. The high end graphics of what currently is available in isometric gaming is on full display.


A solid 9.5 out of 10. Possibly the best graphics in an isometric game yet.



From a design standpoint, STASIS is definitely a linear experience. That isnt a bad thing at all. The sense of urgency you feel propels you forward, so the linear design actually works in the game’s favor from this standpoint.

Something I found particularly impressive is that STASIS proves the validity of the horror genre in an isometric and point and click game. It really does a great job of providing a fresh perspective on the genre, this only further kept me engaged as I played.


The actual puzzles varied from reasonably simple to surprisingly complex. A couple of the puzzles in STASIS were genuinely perplexing. Although with the proper application of logic and some solid trial and error, I found even the most difficult puzzles in the game to be solvable.

An exceptional 9 out of 10



The audio is fantastic as well, even if some of the basic sounds repeat themselves often. They still really work to flesh out the setting. Unsettling, shocking, unnerving, cryptic….all are excellent words to describe the sounds in STASIS…and yet, there are so many other adjectives that could be put into play here. Evocative is my favorite though, so I will close with that one.

A solid 8 out of 10 here



All told, this is an excellent game that is easily worth your attention. Even if you don’t love the horror genre, you might still like this one. 8.8 genetic alterations to mankind killing their progenitors out of 10. How do you get 8.8 genetic alterations? It’s science my friends…

Genre - Isometric Space Horror Adventure

I purchased this game as a bit of a gamble as liked the art style and had seen a few positive reviews already. I am glad to say it did not dissapoint.

The game will take about 6 hours depending if you read all the PDAs and spend time on the puzzles before looking for hints online. I looked online for hints to 3-4 of the puzzles although in most instances I was on the right lines so they are not too obtuse. Just watch out for diagrams in different rooms, things being stuck to the PDAs and hidden sinks.

The graphic and sound is very dark and atmospheric, You actually feel like you are trapped alone in a spaceship in deep space. There is very little action and this is more of an adventure/puzzle game but the progression speed makes you feel like you are fighting for your life. The characters you meet are immersive enough with good voice acting. The various objects you pick up and inteact with are well thought out and interesting.

In terms of re-playability. After finishing the game I went through once more for a couple of hours to hunt the easter egg achievements, and I didn't mind this as you can go through the game quite quick when you know the puzzle solutions and don't read the PDAs.

A great indie game, that was worth paying a but more for based on actual gametime. Although as always look out for it on a sale, as you are likely to only play it through once or twice. Saying that, if I sequel does come out (fingers crossed), a pre-order discount will be good enough for me.

As a massive fan of point & click adventure games, my favourites being Monkey Island, King’s Quest and Sanitarium I can without a doubt say that STASIS is now among that list. STASIS achieves pretty much everything I love about gaming – fantastic art direction, great visuals, great design, heavy atmosphere and (not always necessary) a very intriguing plot and well written/voiced dialogue. This game has restored a lot of my faith in this industry, great to know minds like this still exist in this industry.

In STASIS you play the role of John Maracheck, a school teacher whom with his family enter hibernation capsules for deep space travel, after which, John wakes up 3 months later alone on a massive, dark and seemingly abandoned ship but soon finds out that he’s not alone. As John, you will need to progress through the ship, which is achieved by exploring and solving puzzles, in pursuit of your family, not knowing of their current state, and with them try find a way off this ship.

STASIS is truly a breath of fresh air, if you are a fan of Sanitarium then getting this would be an absolute no brainer, I’m still lost for words that something like this exists in this era, even more so knowing that it was pulled off by a team of two South African brothers, there really is no excuse for gaming to be in the lackluster and uninspired state it currently resides. Easily the best point & click adventure game since the 90’s in my opinion, a true modern classic.