Stonewall Penitentiary is the latest offering from Unimatrix
Productions in their Storycentric Worlds line of games, and the first
not be based on a previously released title. Coming hot on the heels of
Lifestream, Shady Brook, and The Filmmaker, Stonewall Penitentiary
departs from the visual text adventure hybrid style of its predecessors,
to bring players a much more traditional 1st-person point-and-click
adventure game experience. And it is all the better for it.
The basic set up is that we are William Thane, a once happily married
family man, now struggling with alcoholism and depression. And as if
that wasn't enough to deal with, we've just been abducted, stripped
naked, tied up, and locked in a cell in an old disused prison. We're not
alone either. There are six other people locked in here with us, and
we're about to be forced into a violent, bloody, and downright
disturbing game of cat-and-mouse, by a sick and twisted masked figure
with a point to make. Oh, and just to top it all off, one of us is a
killer, and we're all going to die, one by one, over the course of the
next six hours! Yay!
It's easy to see that Stonewall Penitentiary takes a lot of
inspiration from slasher horror movies of the past, and for the most
part it mirrors the structure of those movies very well. Characters die
in a seemingly random order, and there's no way to really guess who's
going to be next, so it's always a surprise. What was even more of a
surprise though, was that the next victim can even, sometimes, be us!
Yes, it is possible to die in this game. But don't worry, because if you
do die, the game puts you right back to just before the terrifying
event, so you can try again. And when I say terrifying, I'm not joking.
Well, I might be exaggerating a little, as the game is never really
terrifying. It is, however, quite creepy and unnerving in parts, with a
few scenes that actually did genuinely scare me. These are the scenes in
which you can die, and they take the form of little chase sequences,
where our masked friend, The Judge, comes at us with an "oversized
gavel". It's relatively easy to escape though, as you're given
plenty of time to move to the next screen and get away. One thing that
really impressed me, during one of these sequences, was that I had an
instinctive reaction to The Judge coming at me - a kind of
fight-or-flight response - and was very happy to see that this reaction
had been foreseen by the developer and designed into the game simply as
an option. It's little things like this that show a developer is really
thinking about how a player might interact with the game, and so I was
more than happy to be given an achievement for it.
So, how is the story overall? Well, it's perfectly adequate, but it's
not mind blowing either. It really is just your typical who-is-doing-it
slasher movie feast of mystery and horror. Basically, all of us now
trapped in the prison have done something bad in our past. Something
that we didn't get punished for. And something, which resulted in the
death of someone else. So, this Judge character has taken it upon
themselves to make sure we experience just retribution for these
terrible deeds. As we play through the game, each of our tragic
backstories is revealed in flashbacks, with our own story being saved
until the very end. This is good because what WE did is part of the
overall mystery of the game, and one of the reasons to keep playing. I
wasn't entirely sold on this concept however, as it felt like there was
a little inconsistency in the severity of the characters' so called
crimes. Some of them were cold bloodied killers, some had just made
mistakes, and some didn't appear to have really done much of anything at
all. How The Judge came to know of our crimes is revealed late into the
game, but again, that didn't really fit for at least two of the
characters, as they seemed legitimately awful people who probably
wouldn't have felt any sorrow or regret, and who wouldn't have done what
they were supposed to have done that led The Judge to them.
As we explore the prison, a deeper mystery emerges to do with the
former Warden, inmates and guards. And again, it's nothing really deep
or original, but it suffices perfectly well enough to facilitate the
events of the game, and plugs nicely into the darker themes explored
through the main characters; themes such as loss, abuse, revenge, anger,
death, redemption, religion, and suffering in all its glory. I would
have just liked a bit more of an intriguing mystery with a much better
payoff in the end; something to make me go "Hmmmm!" and
"Wow!" That being said, our backstory is not exactly what I
thought it was going to be, and I was glad to find quite a lot of depth
there, as well as a little sadness and heartbreak, which really helped
connect me to our character in a way I wasn't expecting.
So, what about those other characters? Well, they're a mixed bag of
mysterious man, cocky guy, shy guy, vulnerable girl, and straightlaced
woman - the usual suspects in a story like this. What's good though is
that the game offers a variety of ways to interact with these
characters. Sometimes we can question them outright by simply clicking
on them, and other times they'll pop up around the prison and offer
insight into the situation or themselves and their background. We also
get to kind of work together with one or more of them, and go around in
a little group, where they'll offer comments on the things we look at
and make use of. All of this creates a very good feeling of cohesion,
and even, feelings of empathy and genuine concern when bad things are
happening. We also carry a journal with us, which helpfully, William
continuously writes in as we progress. Called "My Thoughts",
he writes about himself and what he's feeling, and he writes about the
other characters, what they've done, what they're doing, and what he
thinks about any of that. This, coupled with the copious amounts of
other journals and notes that we find lying around, really means that
there is no excuse to not know exactly what is going on here, and what
HAD gone on here in the past. There might be a little too much reading
at times actually, but all in all, I think it was about right.
Let's talk about structure, design, and puzzles. Structurally,
despite a little blip around the halfway point where things get a little
muddled, the pacing of the game is spot on, with major and minor
revelations at all the right moments. Design wise, the game is a good
mix of simple exploration, chase sequences, dialogue sequences, and good
old fashioned puzzling. Puzzles come in both the traditional varieties:
inventory style, which won't present much of a problem for any seasoned
adventurer, and the more logical, get out your pen and paper style. It's
this second type where the game has a few issues. There were at least
two times when I had to look at a walkthrough to get the answers to a
puzzle. Once I had the answers, I went back into the notes I had picked
up, and tried to figure out how we were supposed to get those answers.
Both times I knew that I would never ever have figured it out; it was
just too abstract. Also, there were a few backtracking instances where
items that I had previously clicked on, would now be able to be further
interacted with, or even picked up. This was frustrating because for
one, I had completely forgotten about these items being there, and two,
even if I had remembered, there was no real indication that I'd be able
to go back and use them again in a different way.
In conclusion, I can say that I enjoyed Stonewall Penitentiary
wholeheartedly. If you are a fan of first person pre-rendered slideshow
style adventure games, then I'm sure you will definitely enjoy it too.
The story and characters are interesting enough, the puzzles both simple
and challenging, there are some genuinely creepy moments, and finally,
the game looks and sounds absolutely professional, with excellent
graphics, voice acting, music, and an infallible attention to detail
overall. If you go into it not expecting anything terribly original, or
that you haven't seen before, then you will have a great time over the
ten or so hours that it will probably take you to finish. So, enjoy.
