INTRO:
Stasis is a Kickstarter-funded game that was completed in the latter half of 2015. It was praised for being a spiritual successor to Sanitarium, an old adventure game that was vaunted for its horrific atmosphere and visuals. CAYNE is a prequel to Stasis, and it is intended to further flesh out the fictitious universe that Stasis is set in.
Unfortunately, CAYNE has quite a number of problems which can sour the player’s expectations, especially if he/she had prior knowledge of Stasis and/or Sanitarium.
PREMISE:
CAYNE is set in the same sci-fi future as Stasis is, but it has a seemingly different story. The protagonist of this story is Hadley, a pregnant young woman who is undergoing a certain procedure in a medical centre. Part of the procedure involves her being put to sleep.
Following a tried-and-true horror story trope, she wakes up in a terrifyingly different place, and just in time before a messier procedure is about to be inflicted on her. Fortunately, she has a proverbial guardian angel in the form of the player, who is to have this otherwise hapless girl survive her ordeal and escape.
PRE-RENDERED CUTSCENE ISSUES:
For better or worse (worse in this case), CAYNE is one of those games which make use of pre-rendered cutscenes, which are packaged in video files. The problem with such a design decision is that problems can happen if the player happens to be using a computer that lacks the codec to decompress these files.
By default, CAYNE makes use of some kind of MP4 sub-format, which may not play properly on computers with N-version Windows OSes (which by far, have the most problems with such games). In fact, the player would be seeing a black screen when he/she starts the game, because there is a logo splash for the developer and it so happens to be a video file.
Fortunately, there is a fix for this in the game’s list of setting options: the video type has to be changed from “MP4” to “OGG”.
LITTLE CHANCE FOR PLAYER CHARACTER DEATH:
Where Stasis had quite a number of scenarios in which the player character might die a messy death, there is only one for Hadley. In fact, this one is used as a progress “gate”. Yet, compared to the death scenes in Stasis, this one is hardly graphic, and is not even rendered in-game; the player watches a cutscene, but the screen blacks out before the killing blow is dealt.
Perhaps there is the matter of the beholder’s sensitivity, e.g. having a pregnant woman being slain in hideous ways might be too much for some.
PLOT ARMOUR:
The player who happens to be a veteran story-goer may notice that there are many scenarios where a pregnant lady with less-than-protective “clothing” could not possibly have survived unscathed. These scenarios include explosions which torched an entire room but not the protagonist and structural collapses with a lot of debris which somehow missed the protagonist.
Of course, there is the aforementioned progress “gate”, but after seeing how incredibly lucky the protagonist is in other situations, it can be hard to believe that her luck could run out at this moment.
CARICATURED CHARACTERS:
The entertainment that adventure games can offer is often dependent on how the characters in the story are designed. Unfortunately, many characters in CAYNE are insufferable near-stereotypes.
Firstly, there is a foolish lady with bad choices in boyfriends. There are two of these actually – the protagonist being one of them. Hadley is at least more contrite than the other though. The other is likely already dead by the time when the player discovers her existence, so Hadley at least has the opportunity to redeem herself, such as realizing that many of her cynical jokes are made in bad taste.
Next, there is an overweight techie nerd whose only way to cope with his less-than-ideal social status is to adopt a superiority complex. He is not the only narcissist around either; there is a self-proclaimed alpha-male hunk with a speech pattern that might be very annoying to some players.
Then, there is an old self-flagellating zealot, whose rival is a creepy doctor who would have been charged with violation of patients’ dignity. After that, there is an opportunistic crone who had too much of this game’s version of plastic surgery.
Fortunately, most of these characters are portrayed through entries in their digital diaries. However, there is a character which has actual screen-time in-person, but he immediately makes a bad first impression such that it is next to impossible to feel pity for his painful situation (if the player bothers to have any pity for video game characters at all).
REMEMBERING DETAILS:
For better or worse, CAYNE resorts to ages-old puzzles which are solved by remembering something which has been observed earlier. In this day and age, this is easily done by taking screenshots, so the challenge of such puzzles is low.
For example, remembering passwords (or more likely, taking screenshots of them) is something that the player would be doing several times. Then, there are puzzles which require the player to remember code-based labels, and puzzles which require the player to remember numbers to be entered into a computer terminal.
Of course, there can be the argument that these lazily designed and boring puzzles and their solutions are not out of place in the game’s setting. Still, there are missed opportunities to implement more challenging puzzles.
STRETCHED LOGIC:
Nonetheless, there are puzzles which require more than just remembering. Yet, some of these have to be solved through solutions that might seem a tad far-fetched, even in a sci-fi setting.
For example, there is a puzzle early in the game in which the player has to use a powdery substance on a surface in order to reveal fingerprints. This is nothing new in adventure games, of course. Yet, the problem is that the player character could have interacted with the surface before using the powder, so technically, she should be revealing her own fingerprints too. Yet, this does not happen. Moreover, the powder has a description which suggests that it is meant to be used for something else that is entirely different (i.e. its description is actually a red herring).
Another example of a puzzle which requires such thinking involves a fuse for a circuit box. Again, electrical fuses are nothing new in adventure games. However, where other games use fuses that clearly look like cartridges, the fuse in this puzzle is a piece of shaped metal which somehow connect multiple lines together. People with knowledge of electrical engineering might well be raising their eyebrows when they notice this.
Of course, there is the argument that this is a sci-fi fuse, and as such it should not restricted to the form of a cartridge. However, the main problem with this puzzle is how the player obtains a replacement fuse; it is not through finding a replacement that was manufactured in the same way. Rather, the player would be making a makeshift replacement, which somehow has the electrical properties to suffice as one.
One could see these solutions as “thinking out of the box”, but others would just see them as loaded with a lot of moments which are more unbelievable than those involving MacGyver.
A LOT OF BACKTRACKING:
The game takes place in a research complex of considerable size. It is small enough such that walking and running are still viable means of getting around, but walking and running is what the player character would be doing – a lot.
Of course, the player character has a running animation that has her going across floors and rooms at speed, but the problems lies in the design of the locales, and the need for asset-loading when transitioning between them.
One of these locales is particularly bothersome: the Main Annex. This is the hub location to which all branches of the complex are connected to.
One would think that it should have a convenient design, such as a circular area and a single floor. Instead, it has two floors, both of which are arranged as a short spiral. This means that the player will spend a considerable amount of time watching Hadley run around the floors to get from one branch of the complex to another. There is at least some dialogue between Hadley and a disembodied character when she moves through the Main Annex, but these dialogues will eventually run out.
ICON LABELS FOR OBJECTS:
Objects in the immediate environment which are of interest to the player will cause the mouse cursor to be accompanied by additional icons when the mouse cursor hovers over them.
For example, there are eye icons, which indicate objects which the player character cannot immediately interact with. These objects generally can only be observed, but there are some which can be interacted with, usually through the use of some items on them.
Next, there hand icons, which indicate that the object can be used by Hadley, assuming that she can reach them. Alternatively, the icons also indicate that she can pick them up, if they are small enough to be placed in her storage device (more on this shortly).
OBSERVATION TOOLTIP:
In other present-day adventure games, the player often has to have the player character directly examine something or someone in order to obtain a description of the latter. This is not necessary in CAYNE. A tooltip text passage appears at the bottom right of the screen with some flavour text, which is often grim-sounding.
QUANTUM STORAGE INVENTORY:
In the sci-fi future setting that CAYNE has, everyone conveniently has a device which can store man-portable items in a pocket dimension (never mind why the items have to be man-portable in the first place). (Hadley also visibly looks at the holographic display of her device when the player accesses the inventory.)
There may be a small problem with the inventory system though. Whenever the player accesses the inventory, the rest of the screen blurs; this is still the case after the player has turned the mouse cursor into the icon for an item. The player has to manually close the inventory display before the screen returns to normal.
VOICE-ACTING:
The voice-acting (and accompanying text) is packaged in several languages, some of which are provided by voice-talent and recording companies. In the case of this review, the English set of voice-acting is used. The English voice-acting is mostly effective at emphasizing the circumstances of the various scenes in the story.
Anyway, there are only a few voiced characters. Hadley is one of them, as well as a certain character that is not seen on-screen but is talking to Hadley anyway. Hadley’s voice-acting is quite convincing for a young woman who is suddenly caught in a dangerous situation. On the other hand, she also has a slightly unseemly sense of humour that allows her to make light of horrible situations. (However, this does justify the fact that she is not stupefied when she sees a hideous scene.)
There are a few others, but as mentioned earlier, they are insufferable characters, and hearing them speak makes them even more so. Perhaps the voice-actors deserve some kudos for making these characters even more dislikeable than their diary entries already suggest.
WRITING:
Most of the writing in CAYNE is evocative of what might be gotten from Stasis, or to cite the main source of inspiration for both Stasis and CAYNE, the classic title that was Sanitarium.
The bulk of the writing can be seen in the illustrative descriptions of objects in the immediate environment. Most of it sounds grim, as befitting the circumstances. There is also some dark humour, as evidenced by Hadley’s aforementioned sometimes unseemly jokes.
Nevertheless, most of the important scenes are shown through cutscenes and in-game animations. The player should expect these to be action-heavy and tense (or are at least intended to be tense).
There are minor issues with the writing, namely typos.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
CAYNE is, to use its own words, an “isometric point and click adventure game”. Players who have played Sanitarium would know what the term “isometric” means. To other players who had played the adventure games of yore but not titles like Sanitarium, the isometric view might seem odd, or even limiting, because the view does prevent the display of any horizons and similar vistas (which can be seen in other adventure games).
Nevertheless, the isometric view is adequate for the purpose of showing what is in the player character’s immediate surroundings. For example, the view shows all of the carnage which has been wrought unto a room that has been visited by a monster. The isometric view may also hint at the presence of hidden partitions within a room; players who have had experience with isometric dungeon crawlers may find this to be quite familiar.
The in-game visuals are made by placing 3D models in an environment with overlaid 2D artwork; this is not unlike what has been done for the first few Resident Evil games and the first The Longest Journey title. There are visual effects such as the directional casting of shadows which are intended to enhance the believability of such a combination of visuals.
However, there are a few moments where Hadley’s 3D model does not blend in so well into the environment. This is usually due to mistakes in the placement of her model.
Speaking of 3D models, there are actually not a lot of these in-game. They are mainly used for human characters who happen to be still alive; other moving objects on-screen are animated 2D artwork. The 3D models are actually not very well-detailed, but there are almost no close-up shots of the models so this is not immediately apparent.
As for the 2D artwork, they are very well-detailed as overlaid 2D artwork tends to be in games that have them. More importantly, there is a considerable amount of animation for the 2D artwork such that the environments do not look static. A locale may also have multiple versions of artwork, to show changes wrought unto it by catastrophic events.
As to be expected of a game that prides itself on its horrific visuals, plenty of the details involves blood splatters and gore, which is perhaps par for the course for jaded people. There are more disturbing scenes though, such as tumorous growths of bones and muscles throughout a certain enclosure.
SOUND EFFECTS:
The game takes place in a sci-fi research complex that is undergoing disastrous failure, so the player can expect to hear a lot of explosions, crumbling of concrete, rumbling of strained metal and the crackle of fire.
The most memorable sound effects are those for the grislier scenes. Examples include the slow gurgle of gore-filled disposal pits, the crunch of bones and the low hissing of gaseous miasma.
All these effects add to the atmosphere, and would seem to increase tension if not for the fact that there are very few timed (if any) timed sequences to impose an actual sense of urgency.
MUSIC:
The music is the least memorable of the sound designs in CAYNE. There are soundtracks for the game, but they are quite subdued. Even when terrible things happen on-screen, the music that plays is not very loud.
That the music takes a proverbial backseat is perhaps just as well, because it allows the other sounds to be prominent and these happen to be more convincing at generating a dreadful atmosphere.
SUMMARY:
Fans of Stasis might appreciate CAYNE for being free-of-charge and for expanding the grim universe of Stasis further. However, other people who value their time might see it as a deficient take on Sanitarium due to its weak characters and puzzles of unconvincing challenge.