BinaryMessiah Stasis: Bone Totem Review

The original Stasis is one of my favorite point-and-click adventure games. The atmosphere, the raw, gory imagery, the soundscape, and the overall tone were just fantastic. While the story and characters themselves were forgettable, you really got pulled into the alien world. Bone Totem continues this path but does a better job with the characters and story as well. You start the game as a married couple who do contract work for private companies. Mostly rescue and salvage operations. Mac and Charlie have their own unique skills. Charlie can take two items together to combine them, and Mac can break a single item apart into a new item. You will use these features throughout the entire game, as items can be swapped between characters at any time, making backtracking a minimal thing. Oddly, this trick is never explained, as how do these items warp between characters no matter what situation they are in? Moses is your third character, introduced late in the first chapter, and he has no abilities. He is an animatronic bear with some sort of AI. Just like in the first game, you can click around to move the characters on the pre-rendered backgrounds. Right-clicking will flash green and blue dots on the screen. Green are descriptive items, and blue are interactive ones. Always go for the blue. Each screen usually has something to interact with, and if you run out of things to do, then another character needs to advance the story somehow. The swapping of objects is how you solve puzzles. Some puzzles are strewn across all the characters who need to do something. Create a new object, find an object, break down an object, or something along those lines. Cut scenes are all voiced, with pre-rendered scenes sprinkled here and there. Every time you enter a new area or interact with a blue object, a cutscene usually plays. The story is well-detailed, and it takes its time over the 8–10 hours it takes to complete the game. The salvage operation turns into a horror and nightmarish hellscape quickly, and the descent is pretty amazing. The visuals change constantly as you progress, and you always run into "WTF?" moments. The Brotherhood is great at making the game look like a 90s point-and-click with fantastically drawn art. A mix of their own style fused with H.R. Giger is just wonderful, and I can't get enough of it. If you liked the look of the recently released Scorn, you will love the art in this game. A lot of disturbing imagery fills this game. Flayed bodies, disemboweled creatures, eerily humanoid androids, and weird aliens The list goes on, and every time you interact with one that ends up being a blue object, you get an up-close, full view, and it's marvelous and incredibly disturbing. The Brotherhood set the bar in the art department for retro point-and-click games. Every screen has something new to look at, and I couldn't wait to see what they would show visually. Thankfully, the voice acting is pretty good, and the pre-rendered cut scenes are janky, but in that classic '90s way, that's so bad it's good. They are clearly made this way on purpose, and I love it. Thankfully, I always felt a sense of progression thanks to the lack of backtracking. The worst it got was when I remembered a clue maybe six screens back and forgot to take a photo or screenshot of it. Usually, it was my own fault. Puzzles are also not insanely cryptic. Usually, some fiddling here, some thinking there, and you always get that "AHA!" moment fairly quickly. Every time I got a new object, I would try it out on the next blue object for each character. Some items get held on to for hours at a time; some are used right away; but few are obvious in their uses. Overall, Bone Totem is a great follow-up to the original. The gorgeous art, dark horror, gruesome rawness, and visceral detail in the imagery are a sight to behold. The voice acting is decent. The characters have depth, and I was hooked until the end. The ending also felt like a conclusive finish, and while I still wanted to know more about a few of the characters, their mystery might be on purpose. If you love 90s point-and-click adventures or just love gory art in games, then look no further.