As an old-school gamer who fondly remembers the era when point-and-click adventure games were a powerhouse genre, but then sadly fell out of favor, it has been great to see them slowly becoming revitalized once again. More often than not, the tendency has been towards the funnier side of the genre, with many titles opting for a classic LucasArts mix of humorous dialogue and oddball puzzles. There are those that deviate from that path though, whether simply playing it straight, or going in other directions like Stasis, which happens to favor sci-fi horror.

Waking out of your drug-induced coma to a darkened ship that appears to be abandoned, one of the game’s strengths is in establishing some atmosphere. This comes from a mixture of its visuals that impart a feeling of isolation and eeriness, as well as an audio presence of the spaces you’re in, whether of alarms, more industrial sounds, or simply the hum of machinery around you. While initial exploration is a bit of a chore, once you’ve healed yourself up you’ll set out to discover what has happened, and try to work out what you can even do. Thoughts of your wife and daughter initially serve as some motivation, but the dark mysteries you’ll face will make demands of you to push yourself to simply try to stay alive.

The problem is that there are some areas where the experience struggles, in part from the conversion from its initial release on PC to using console controls, and then from issues that may stem from expectations for the genre evolving over the years. While moving the mouse pointer around with your controller is functional, it’s hardly ideal, and tends to be both slow and inaccurate. One complication is that you’ll often be hunting around the screen for what you’re even able to interact with, but compounding that is that the area you’ll need to target often feels needlessly small, making for a rough edge that could have been smoothed out, but instead serves as a periodic irritant. Another issue is with what often feels like the very trial-and-error solutions to too many puzzles. Granted, this isn’t unusual within the genre, but especially when mixed with the less-than-stellar controls, the problems are sometimes exacerbated. Also, while much of the voice acting is fair, it can sometimes sound like it was recorded in a closet while others in a cavern, and that can be with people who were supposedly in the same space. It’s just rare that I’ve encountered this as a problem, so it really stood out.

Despite what can feel like a laundry list of issues, for people looking for a good story that will take you on quite a ride, it may all well be worth it. These problems aren’t insurmountable, they’re just irritating at times and stick out like a sore thumb considering there are simply many other adventure games in the eShop that handle many of these details better. If you’re mostly looking for the story to grab you, it may prove to be strong enough to help you overlook the shortcomings.