The Stone of Madness is the latest game from The Game Kitchen, the developer behind the two Blasphemous titles. They are coming off a couple of decent and well-known releases, then, as both were well-received, fun games. It would have been a simpler decision to persist with that series and continue that success. As such, it should be praised that the developer has tried something different and gone down a different route with The Stone of Madness. The results are decent enough, but not spectacular.
The game takes place in an 18th-century Spanish Monastery. With a cast of five playable prisoners, each with their own personal background and personalities. You must utilise each prisoner’s skills to get through the various missions and try to find a way to escape. The game features psychological horror elements mixed with an aesthetic that is meant to feel very historical, so it’s quite a unique blend.
This is a tactical stealth game that employs an isometric viewpoint – when I first started playing, I was getting Commando vibes from many years ago. It isn’t the kind of game that’s straightforward, as you can tackle a lot of the missions in a variety of ways. There are multiple paths to take and multiple ways to deal with different scenarios. What you will find, however, is that it’s very rewarding to think about a solution that at first seems a bit implausible but then pull it off moments later. It can get quite difficult, meaning that some players may get a little put off by it. It’s the kind of game that you sometimes do have to persevere with, as you could fail missions multiple times over before finally getting it right.
At the start of each mission, you are given the choice of picking three out of the five prisoners. Gameplay-wise, each of these characters aren’t just simple palette swaps, as they have their own skills, weaknesses and phobias (more on the latter point shortly). You will find that you end up using certain characters more than others, simply due to certain skills they have. For example, one of the characters, Amelia, can slip through locked gates and crawl through small tunnels, which I kept finding to be a very useful skill to have, so she was pretty much a nailed-on pick for me.
With this being a modern game, there are a few newer ideas in here that add a new spin to things. For example, there is a bar at the top of the screen that shows your sanity. Each of the five characters has their own specific phobias, and if you come into close proximity to one of these, a red icon will appear to show that your character is in a state of fear, and your sanity meter will start to decrease. To give an example, one of the character’s phobias is mirrors, so if you go close to any mirror, the trigger will start, and sanity will start to decrease. Some of the phobias are harder to avoid than others. The mirror phobia, for example, is not that difficult to avoid. However, another character has a darkness phobia. With this being a stealth game, there are plenty of darkened areas, so you can imagine the difference in difficulty will increase depending on who you go for.
If a character’s sanity drops to zero, their status will change to insane. When this happens, that person will gain a ‘Disorder’ and these can vary depending on the character involved. These could limit movement (such as being able to run), disable certain abilities or both. This isn’t fixed throughout, though, as you are able to cure these. So if a character develops one of these Disorders, it doesn’t mean they are stuck with it for the remainder of the game.
The performance on Nintendo Switch is a bit of a mixed bag. You can feel the game struggling and chugging along at times, along with some other smaller glitches and hiccups. It’s not terrible by any means, but you can certainly feel it now and then. The aforementioned aesthetic and general tone of the game is great and unique. There aren’t many games out there that look like this, and it really fits in with the theme. The animated cutscenes are also impressive and serve to enhance the experience as a whole.
The Stone of Madness is a decent game in a genre that is quite niche nowadays, make no mistake about that. However, if you’re a fan of top-down strategy-stealth games, want something new, and don’t mind a challenge, then you will find lots of enjoyment here. It’s not perfect, but despite its flaws, The Stone of Madness brings together enough new ideas and great aesthetics to help breathe some new life into a dying genre.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review copy provided by Tripwire Interactive
