Or: why Stasis: Bone Totem perfectly fits the ideal mold for Point and Click Adventures.

Recently I finished a playthrough of Stasis: Bone Totem and other than some gripes with an interruption heavy ending I had a great time. In fact, I’m pretty confident in saying that Stasis: Bone Totem serves as a fantastic first entry into the Point and Click Adventure genre if only because of how coherent the game is. Like any game, coherence (i.e. how every element of a game fits together to create a consistent world for the player) is extremely important in Point and Click Adventures even though they’re naturally stunted with almost no options for mechanics other than simple context sensitive actions. In the end, I believe the premises of each puzzle or roadblock within a Point and Click Adventure provide the biggest mechanical opportunity for a game in this genre to be consistent.

Consistent puzzle premises ends up being one of Bone Totem’s best qualities. The game presents roadblocks that align with the story and setting through the various shifts in both. Starting your adventure on a broken down oil rig your initially tasked with basic system diagnoses and repair for vital things like power and door operation. Descending deeper underwater, the challenges turn to being more investigative and survival-based as your environment becomes increasingly hostile. I’ll avoid spoiling further but suffice it to say the game keeps this up throughout its entire playtime as the setting gets increasingly unknowable. There’s even some thematic consistency with the puzzle premises as it relates to your party getting separated from one another which is a very nice and layered touch.

An early game puzzle which establishes the run down state of the oil rig as well as the party’s skillset.

An example of a puzzle later in the game which aligns strongly with the setting and mental state of the characters.

What led me to believe that the premises for an adventure’s roadblocks are pivotal for achieving coherence in Point and Click Adventures was comparing Bone Totem to a game I have more mixed feelings about, Sanitarium. Sanitarium is also a Point and Click Adventure which has players moving from varying levels based on the main character’s current state of psychosis. To Sanitarium’s credit I think it’s story is way more ambitious and ends up coming together very nicely in the end. But I think even the most devout defender of the game would agree with me that some of the levels in the early second half of the game are quite rough to get through. I felt this way because the puzzle premises in these levels started to lose consistency with the greater narrative. In the Lost Village and Hive levels for instance I felt very confused as to why I was performing certain actions or was roadblocked arbitrarily by these half realized settings. On the surface level I think there is some consistency here with the story since confusion is undoubtedly a common emotion for someone suffering from the main character’s delusions. But, I wish these areas had the same internal consistency that the Innocent Abandoned and Circus of Fools levels had. I haven’t played Sanitarium in a bit now so I could be misremembering things but overall I imagine that puzzle premises have to be the main thing that caused the weaker levels in the game to feel so confusing to me.

This area’s puzzles felt super consistent and aligned with many of the game’s priorities.

I could just be dumb but I had no idea what I was doing here for the entire level.

Part of my fixation on puzzle and roadblock premises stems from my priority on having a very gameplay mechanic oriented approach to video game analysis. Admittedly, there’s a lot more to games than just their mechanics. But, interactivity is the main aspect of games that separates them from other mediums; so they’re what I like to focus on. Anyways, I believe Point and Click Adventures don’t have a lot of options to choose from in terms of mechanics. As I see it, this causes the premises for each game’s puzzles, which form the majority of the interactivity in these games, to be the main ways a Point and Click can achieve coherence through gameplay. It’s also important to add that I’m placing a lot of focus on coherence above other design concerns. Partially that’s a bias on my part since I’m not fully versed in every kind of high level design concern. But also I think coherence specifically is an incredibly important element of design especially in Point and Click Adventures. There’s a lot I haven’t played in the genre though so I’m going to keep a look out for this going forward. I plan on playing more of the classics within the genre this year. So, I’ll have to see how these thoughts I’ve outlined relate to my experience playing The Longest Journey and Beneath a Steel Sky. More to come.