Stela Review (NSW)

Written by Patrick Orquia

Title: Stela
Developer: Skybox Labs
Publisher: Skybox Labs
Genre: Platformer, Adventure, Puzzle
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: Mar 13, 2020
Price: $19.99
Also Available On: iOS, Steam, XB1

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I am not a fan of stealth games, and stealth sections on otherwise non-stealth games often leave me frustrated. But upon seeing a trailer for Stela, I though it looked good enough for me to give it a try. It looks a bit like Little Nightmares and Planet Alpha and also offer the same gameplay, so I thought it would be fun to play this game as well.

Stela originally got released on Apple arcade last year and now ported to Switch. I have not played the original, but this port of the game plays quite good. It looks very similarly to the original as well, but with a lower but pretty stable frame rate. The game looks simplistic, with not much color to play around with, but I think it works as the game seems to be set in a post-apocalyptic world. The musical is also simplistic most of the time, only being subtly audible when not much is happening but go full throttle when the action is high. This excellent blend of visuals and sounds highlight the gameplay of this “cinematic” platformer.

In this game, you play as a woman, presumably the titular Stela, who woke up in some cave and for there, you begin exploring. You come out of a cave and through different types of biomes, with different puzzles to solve in order for you to progress further. The puzzles may invole moving objects such as boxes or slabs of wood or rock, or manipulating switches and levers, etc. They are quite good, though not very hard to solve. And of course, there are the stealth sections, wherein you have to avoid getting seen by monsters or bugs or humanoid beings with long limbs that would instantly kill you at first sight. When you die, you respawn right away, and with the game having auto-save funtionality, usually not too far away from where you die. Rinse and repeat.

The game has almost no story to speak of. Nothing is really taught to the player. You just move from one area to the next, encounter enemies, die, and you are left to figure out on your own what you did wrong and how to get past your mistakes. Aside from being able to run left to right and vice versa, you can also jump, to cover gaps across platforms, you can also interact with certain objects, as previously mentioned. These objects are usually of different color with high contrast from the background to make them standout. A few minutes into the game, you would have already learned everything there is to learn in the game, and it would then be up to your gaming skills to reach the end. By the way, the game is quite short. You can finish it in one sitting in around 2 hours. One catch is the game costs $19.99 on the eShop. Kinda reminds me of the game The Gardens Between, which is also short and pricey, but I like that game more because it is much more unique and with a good story.

Overall, Stela that looks and sounds good, and is quite enjoyable to play. It’s hard to recommend, though, because of its high price. If it was at $10 then it would probably much better for its length. Maybe wait for this game to go on sale, and in the meantime, maybe try the others games that inpired it instead.

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REPLAY VALUE: Low

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PROS

• Simplistic yet haunting visuals and musical score that go hand in hand well
• The different biomes offer different varieties of puzzles to solve
• Minimalistic gameplay
• Very good use of HD Rumble
• Ideal for handheld gaming

CONS

• Very short
• Very pricey
• Virtually no story or narrative threads to tie everything together
• Very repetive and monotonous gameplay

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RATING: 3/5 Stela vs the unknowns

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