![]() “This sequential unlocking is the key to learning a complex game without the need to know anything about games,” he elaborated in a response on a Reddit thread.īut whereas incremental games like Clicker Heroes (one game I can’t seem to stop playing for close to a year now, so send help, please) lets players tap away mindlessly, Stone Story gradually introduces some of the RPG genre’s more classic elements, which adds unexpected depth to the game. It’s a deliberate choice by developer Gabriel Santos, who was fascinated by the incremental process of learning that’s weaved into the fabric of idle games. Yet it’s deeply compelling, engaging the player by gradually ramping up the challenges in later chapters. After all, the point is to interact with it as little as possible. ![]() This may make Stone Story RPG sound like a lowbrow excuse for a game. At one point, I was definitely letting the game run on its own while I busied myself with real life responsibilities, like finally dealing with my ever-growing pile of laundry, or putting on clothes that meets the bare minimum of decorum to grab a quick meal near home. This makes the stoney RPG somewhat structurally similar to clicker games, in that you mostly perform simple actions like clicking and grinding for loot, with the game eventually culminating into a state where battles can essentially play out by themselves without much player input. All you need to do is make strategic choices like selecting what location to explore next, what weapons to wield, and which potions to brew. Most repetitive tasks like walking, attacking and collecting resources are relegated to the AI, so Stone Story pares the elements of the genre down to its core essentials. This is your base of operations for your RPG-ing exploits, where you can construct a smithy, craft useful tools, and upgrade your equipment before you set off. Here you can descend the cliff and build a door to a cave, hilariously enough, by stacking up the O-stones you’ve collected along the plateau. Reaching the end of the path reveals a dialogue box, which describes a cliffside path at the bottom of this rocky canyon. ![]() You walk towards your right as a trail of “O”s guides your attention, while you fastidiously pick them all up. Beginning at the plateau, most of your hero’s actions are automated. Stone Story starts out simply enough, but it soon swells with complexity. The ornate animation of the scene’s ACSII art, with subtleties like the stars (portrayed as dots that first morph into plus symbols, then gradually into asterisks) makes for an oddly pleasing sight. It seems you’re a stick figure standing atop a plateau, as two crescent moons and a constellation of stars illuminate the landscape, which is lightly adorned with trees and slabs of rocks. The game’s opening scene is a text-driven one that eventually makes way for an animated environment. It’s still a dark place, but now it’s also a sprawling world rendered by dashes, dots and a collection of ACSII characters. Then a blinding light engulfs the scene, but only for a brief moment. ![]() The fifth stone you pick turns out to be that flickering “o”-a strange one with peculiar etchings on it, with an artfully amassed cluster of punctuation marks and symbols that’s somehow visible to you. You can’t see or hear anything, but you can, at least, feel the rocks that chafe your feet. Shimmering like buried silver, the text on screen informs you that this is all you see the rest of the universe lays concealed beneath a veil of darkness. Stone Story begins with the birth of a singular “o”, blinking ceaselessly at the centre of a pitch black screen. This week, Khee Hoon Chan steps in to kick some rocks in Stone Story RPG. Premature Evaluation is the column which explores the wilds of early access.
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