Call it the result of my personal gaming history, which is of course highly subjective, but Jordan Mechner’s original Prince of Persia, and Frozenbyte’s Trine, are probably the two yardsticks every contender is measured against within the 2D puzzle platformer genre. The former is a landmark title in terms of level design and simplicity, the latter added player agency along with an innovative use of physics. Oh, and Trine looked absolutely stunning.
I feel that this wordy introduction is necessary when talking about Stained, the latest release from RealAxis Software. You could say it tries the same things as the games mentioned above, but stumbles along the way. In Stained, you control a cloaked figure wielding a scythe, making his way through a castle towards the throne room because… I have no idea, really. The story doesn’t make one iota of sense. In fact, I am still not sure how the player fits into all of this. Before each of the game’s 19 levels, you’re presented with a diary entry containing something about castles, monsters, a mage, and a lot of filler. It completely fails to engage, and ultimately, doesn’t seem too relevant anyway. So let’s focus on the castle climbing part instead.
First things first: the environments and lighting effects are without a doubt the game’s biggest achievement. They do their job of evoking a ruined castle well and are generally rather atmospheric. Those stained glass windows definitely bring some much needed color into otherwise drab surroundings; it’s a shame you’ll be destroying most of them. The same cannot be said about the player sprite, which sometimes looks out of place, as if coming from an altogether different game. The animations are choppy, for instance when “climbing” a wall with your scythe. Additionally, the standard walking speed is too slow. It’s hard to imagine you’re on an epic quest when you dawdle about like it’s a walk in the park.
Our hooded hero wanders through each level at a leisurely pace, occasionally running and jumping with mixed results as the controls aren’t too tight. You might sometimes miss jumps or fail to pull off other maneuvers. This is only a minor annoyance overall, and you will quickly adapt to it, but it doesn’t change the fact that the controls could be better. The unique feature in Stained is the ability to shatter structures and items made out of glass or crystal. Hitting the ground with the butt of your scythe causes windows, chandeliers, and other things to break. Those shards falling to the ground might magically reassemble into something useful, like a key or part of an upgrade. Most of the time though, a nasty glass monster appears. Time to put that scythe to good use!
Sadly, fighting feels like button mashing. You have no control over the kind of attacks you perform, be it an overhead swing or a deep cut. You also cannot block incoming attacks. Instead, you need to turn around and run a few steps in the other direction in order to avoid getting hit, which is as clunky as it sounds. Sometimes, standing inside of the enemy makes it impossible for you to get hit at all. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but it feels more like a cheap exploit than a valid strategy. Compared to the regular enemy encounters, boss fights are designed quite differently, involving a lot of trial and error. Instead of hurting the various bosses directly, you’re sometimes supposed to find a way of using the environment against them. This adds some variety, but in the end, these fights are not very engaging. Instead, you usually discover how to win them quite quickly and then repeatedly fail until luck is on your side. It makes your success feel random all too often.
From a level design standpoint, the game’s structure is rather rigid. Where Trine offered multiple solutions to any given problem, the puzzles in Stained can only ever be solved one specific way. There are downsides, as well as chances to this approach. On the one hand, the game’s replayability is severely limited, but then again designing your game to be very linear makes it easier for you to make the player’s journey truly shine. Stained doesn’t manage to pull that off every time: there were a few levels I thoroughly enjoyed, but just as many complete failures. Even though most stages are rather short and can be finished in just a few minutes, dying right before the end is really aggravating, especially when the placement of checkpoints is inconsistent. Sometimes there are multiple checkpoints, other times dying sends you back to the very beginning. In combination with the hit-and-miss fighting, this quickly leads to frustration.
To give you an idea how some of the boss fights play out and what problems I encountered, let me tell you about them in a little more detail. First off, there’s the giant glass monster that is conveniently trapped in a huge cage for whatever reason. It just stands there, waiting for you to come closer and hit it. Of course it hits back, so for the duration of the fight you will essentially hit the monster, get hit in return, retreat, and wait until your health regenerates so you can repeat all of these steps until the fight is over. That’s not very exciting per se, but it gets so much worse when due to what could only have been a bug the monster’s health bar vanishes, making it invincible. I spent ten minutes hitting that thing and nothing happened. Multiple restarts solved the problem, but how something like this was not noticed during playtesting is beyond me.
Another boss encounter featured a giant glass scorpion that appeared on a ledge which is supposed to chase you. Except that it didn’t always come after me. Curious on how to get its attention, I ventured closer and tried the glass-breaking move on it, which pushed it over the ledge, floating in mid-air. It seemed quite content with its new-found levitation powers, because there was nothing I could do to make it come back on solid ground. Obviously, another restart was in order.
Numerous other bugs and technical issues should be mentioned as well. From clipping errors to missing sound effects, I experienced a multitude of technical hiccups along the way. Most of the time, this was nothing that a restart (or four) couldn’t fix, but the sheer amount of problems is inexcusable. When the game suddenly decided to unlock a couple of stages all at once and permanently lock the one I was just about to play, that was the last straw. It’s one thing to have a few annoying bugs in your game, it’s a different story once those bugs don’t let you finish the game the way it was meant to be finished. Apparently, the last patch was deployed ten months ago, so I’m not sure if RealAxis Software are still supporting the game at all. That’s a shame, for I do believe that a little bit more post-release polish could turn this into a much smoother and more pleasant experience.
Conclusion – Is It Worth The Money?
I think I’m so annoyed with Stained because, underneath it all, there is a game I would love to play and enjoy. The glass mechanics, some of the levels, and the visuals are all things that could truly shine with a little bit of added polish. This is the first release of a small indie studio, and the few things it gets right are commendable, but the flaws make it difficult to warrant the $9.99 price tag.
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