Being as far removed from a typical adventure game set-up as imaginable, STONE throws you into the role of an Australian koala with a fondness for weed, alcohol and casual swearing.
The docile detective wakes up in his pigsty of a flat and realises Cockie, the love of his life, is gone. Yes, you guessed it – this is yet another rescue quest. Unfortunately for Detective Stone, he’s still hungover from the night before.
Your objective is to revisit the places you were the night before and piece together what happened by striking up conversations. It’s really as simple as that – everything is laid out for you and most characters drop not-so-subtle clues as to where to go next.
Despite clunky animation, STONE isn’t bad to look at, and some of the lead’s lines are amusing. He’s generally disliked by his peers, but it’s hard not to root for the poor guy.
Mechanically, the game isn’t too exciting, limiting interactions to slowly walking around the environments and pushing the odd button to choose a response. It’s all very basic stuff. Action scenes and puzzles are thin on the ground, and there isn’t even an inventory to speak of. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we should note – some may relish the game’s simple nature.
The voice acting is also a little rough – a fact not helped by the juddering mouth movements – and the environments are mostly basic and empty. The nightclub, in particular, is disappointingly bare.
Some scenes are more interesting than others, such as meeting shady characters and hearing what they have to say, but if the story doesn’t draw you in then it’s likely you’ll find progression drags.
The fact that the cinema shows full-length public domain black and white films (including Night of the Living Dead) is rather neat, and you may chuckle at the occasional joke, but generally STONE is too slow and restrictive to recommend to anybody except genre diehards.