I bought the "The Brotherhood Deluxe Mega Bundle" a while back and have been slowly making it through their point and click games
First I played
Stasis.
This game was....."meh" as I look back at it. I'm not feeling super enthused to play it again, but it wasn't terrible. Just had some really, really,
really, obscure puzzles. Like they didn't do a great job with delivering some of the clues. Appears to be the devs first game. They have gotten much better in subsequent releases.....for the most part. The swing and a miss comes in form of
Cayne. This game was literally free. Despite this is has pretty poor reviews, to the point I am actually afraid to start this game.
So, instead I went to their next for profit game
Beautiful Desolation.
This is where I think they found their groove, or at least the start of it. Plenty of indie corner cutting going on but this is more like actual budget constraints it seems rather than hurts the gameplay. Minor stuff like why are the conversation FMVs so short and their repeat points are mostly pretty bad, very obvious where the loop occurs. Yet they somehow afforded Mick Gordon for the sound track and it is pretty good. The story is absolutely bat shit crazy. Very "out there" ideas. I will definitely play this game again after some time to forget the story and puzzle solutions. It has multiple paths too so it has that going for it to see different story lines play out between difference races in this world they have built
Lastly, the reason I write this is to say their latest game
Stasis: Bone Totem is a master piece in my opinion. This is the best modern point and click game I have played. Granted, that ain't saying much, I don't play these often. But this game was so good I had to start playing it again to try for different achievements and see how much quicker I can get through. I'm not a very fast gamer apparently. If most people say something takes around 10 hours, it's going to take me at least 12 hours. I needed 17 hours to beat this game first time around. Second time around it took only 11 hours. So that's how much time, about 6 hours, I spent on first play through running around lost trying to figure out puzzle solutions
. The puzzles felt pretty good though. Only one or two were a little more obscure, but it's more like their clues were really well hidden, but in plain sight at same time, and I didn't connect the dots. They include a walk through guide for free which is great if you need it. Buying the bundle I got it also had a nice graphical version of the walk through which was much appreciated. The graphics and animations have really improved for this game. The story, just as bat shit crazy as the last games but boy this one was really gripping! I genuinely wanted to get back to my computer to play this to find out more! The game play improves big time with the whole story centering around 3 characters and you can control them all (separately though) and pass items around which add a whole new layer of complexity for puzzles. Oh and I was quite pleased to see they continued on with the "secret death" puzzles/achievements. This is kinda funny and weird, you get achievements for finding certain ways to die. This feature was absent in Beautiful Desolation, seemingly opting for different story paths instead of the possibility a wrong choice will kill you. This feature was present in the original Stasis, so, glad to see it return here for the sequel!