Stay - Review

When I started Stay, I didn't know what to expect, I wasn't really sure what the story behind it was or what I was going to do. I didn't look at any gameplay videos for it because I wanted to go in with Fresh eyes and from looking at screenshots, that didn't really give much away, which was good, however, it did add to the intrigue.

Stay is a puzzler, the story bases around Quinn who has been kidnapped and placed in a room in which he has to get out of. When he wakes up all he has is a computer with one person to talk to.... you...



The idea of the game is to speak with Quinn and help him on his way, help him get through the ordeal and find his way out. There are several options when you're speaking with him, you can be a caring soul asking about him, see if any of that links up to why he has been kidnapped, or you can be as cold as ice and basically not care about his many many ramblings and tell him to snap out of it and find a way out, which he isn't thankful for a lot of the time, but can be grateful for the push back to reality as he kind of loses his way in his ramblings.

As your speaking and decide on the course of action to take with Quinn, there are different puzzles which you have to figure out, these range from moving books, fixing broken plates, or trying to get a lock undone through moving blocks around. What I really liked about the game was the relationship I could build with Quinn, there are many ways in which you can go with this, and it was another reason I liked this game so much, is that there are several branching ideas going on which depending on how the game plays out, you could end up with 1 of around 7 endings I think. This makes the replayability of the game very good because when you're playing through you can think 'Oooh, what if I had said that or asked him to do something differently, how would it have played out?' - In the one play through that I did, I only killed Quinn once, and this was because I asked him to break a door down which crushed him... Pretty heavy door!



The design of the game is Pixel art, which is very nicely done, and to be honest it suits the game down to the ground. The game bases around a chat room, which is how you're communicating with Quinn, there are also stats that you can switch to see how your relationship with him is going and how much the trust level is between you. This seems to be quite important as the more he trusts you, the more inclined he is to go with the suggestions you're making.

This game really shocked me, I didn't think I was going to like it very much from what I originally saw from the screenshots of it, but after playing it and going through the emotions and different topics that the game brings to light, it can hit home quite hard, especially if you've suffered from depression or anything else the game brings up.



All in all, an excellent game and one that I would highly recommend.