Still There Reviews

Within my top 20 games oat

A real gem of a game.

Near the end you have to choose a song. Go with "Goodnight Moon".

Trying to play this game is like receiving a package from some unknown person, the contents of which require assembly, but you have no tools, the loose, unnumbered pages of the manual are written in a language you don't understand, the illustrations are based on a previous version, and you have no idea what the finished product is meant to be. Every time a crisis arose, I had a moment of thinking, 'Ooh, this will be cool to solve!' and then I got bogged down in the obfuscation of the puzzle design. As another reviewer said so well, most of the time you're not even sure what you are meant to be doing, nevermind how to do it. Every time I got stuck and had to look up a solution online, it was a 'How was I meant to know that?' situation. I could have finished the game with a walkthrough, but I wasn't engaged enough in the plot even to do that, and in such a puzzle-heavy game what's the point of that anyway? Oh and a special negative shout-out to the in-game manual that obscures most of the screen when opened so that you have to close it before manipulating devices, unlike in real life where you'd have the manual open in one hand and fiddle with the tech using the other. Really disappointed, because I liked the idea of the game. Concept: 8/10 Execution: 2/10

beautiful game please please please play this puzzles are hard but please play it please please please

I really wanted to like this game. I gave it a few tries. Unfortunately there's just not quite enough explanation/ clues about the puzzles to the point it becomes frustrating and annoying. I think if they would give you just a tad bit more of direction to help you understand what to do, it might be a great game. It's not fun if you have to look up the answers to puzzles. It's a cool idea and I tried to love it, unfortunately it's just not fun for me.

Great puzzles and some fun dialog. Overall I wasn't a fan of the story, but even with that, I still greatly enjoyed the game.

Still There is a narrative puzzle game set on a space station. You play the lone regular guy on board whose job it is to keep things running and perform some basic monkey work each day for the corporation that put you there. The art style, music and tone of Still There is fantastic. The hand drawn art, vibrant colours and feeling of melancholy give it a comfy-game vibe while also being touching and meaningful - think Citizen Sleeper. However, the central gameplay loop (solving engineering problems aboard the ship using the ships manual) is absolutely jarring in comparison - abstract, difficult and often quite annoying. The story the game wants to tell is engaging and human but it doesn't know how to do the work to make the big beats land in the second half. While I applaud any game that wants to deal with topics like grief, loneliness and the struggles we all face when trying to deal with tragedy and stay connected to those we love, simply making your sad game sad doesn't make your sad game good. You still need good writing to make it feel real, the same as any game. And for me, Still There was lacking in that department. I can certainly recommend this game, but primarily if you have already played Citizen Sleeper and Observation. If not, I think both of those would be better choices for your time.