Stasis | The Game

McT

McT

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Hopefully you will not mind a dedicated thread for Stasis.

So what is Stasis?

Stasis is an upcoming 2D adventure game by indie developer THE BROTHERHOOD.

Taking control of John, the player must interact with the environment and complete puzzles to progress further in the story and explore the Groomlake’s mysteries.

The graphics are created from highly detailed, two-dimensional artwork that is drawn from an isometric view point.

Inspired by the adventure game Sanitarium and the art of Crusader No Remorse; Stasis has a unique visual aesthetic that brings this horrifying tale to life.

What is about?

John Maracheck awakes from Stasis on the Groomlake, a seemingly derelict spacecraft.

This repurposed mining ship, conveniently outside of the jurisdictional influence of Earth, is in a decaying orbit around the gas giant – Neptune.

Cayne Corporation is a trillion dollar, multinational company which has played a pivotal role in human technological, medical and scientific advancement for decades. The Groomlake is operated by this conglomerate and provides a secret platform for horrific experimentation and illicit research.

John is in tremendous pain, his wife and daughter are missing and time is running out as the Groomlake plunges further into the swirling blue methane clouds.

More about the game

Stasis delves into the struggle between good and evil while delivering a fun and challenging adventure experience and an epically engaging story.

The world of Stasis harkens back to Sci-Fi classics like Alien, Event Horizon and Sunshine.
It is set in a time of blurred morality, where corporate pursuit of profit outweigh the rights of the few.
In this dystopian future, an ordinary man must make the best of an extraordinary situation and save his family.

The first chapter of Stasis is available as an Alpha Demo here: http://www.stasisgame.com/getstasis/

The person behind the game:

Christopher Bischoff. Chris is South African and is part of the partnership of "The Brotherhood" who is the game developer.

Stasis is being developed by The Brotherhood, an indie team lead by Christopher Bischoff. - http://thebrotherhoodgames.com/

Chris has maintained a game development blog for years. See the development history of Stasis here: http://www.stasisgame.com/blog/

Chris is an architectural 3D artist with more than a decade of production experience. His résumé includes film 3D set construction, 3D visualization of large scale urban developments and commercial architectural animated films. He spends the rest of his waking moments being inspired by games, obsessing over sci-fi films & TV series and creating 3D art.
Chris and Nic (the other brother) have been making games together for twenty years and Stasis is a culmination of their passion for story telling and world building.

The Brotherhood hopes to create many worlds for you to explore, but first need to bring Stasis to life.
 
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An extract from the latest newsletter | Project Update #27:

A year ago today I clicked the big green LAUNCH button and listed STASIS on Kickstarter.

I hoped of attaining the vast $100,000 goal, which would validate three years of my part-time labors and allow me to work full time on my passion project, STASIS.

We did it and more!

It is now November, a year later and a few months after my initial planned BETA release date.

I want to give you an in depth look at what we've been up to and where we've been allocating our time and your money. So much more has been added. More than initially planned. STASIS is now looking and feeling like the game I dreamed of all those years ago - this has taken a little longer than anticipated, but is coming together splendidly.

In addition to AAA voice-acting, music and graphics, STASIS now boasts some amazing Shader effects that will certainly enhance the immersion in the world we've created.

These include:
  • A flashlight with a twist. Rather than a character-based flashlight that John has to wield, we've chosen a vision light that connects the player to him.
  • Degrees of darkness. Each room has been designed to include a mood lighting setup. This can range from utter darkness (which is scary as hell) to soft red glows and a warmer atmosphere.
  • Lighting effects: broken lights hum and flicker. Emergency power attempts to come on for a few minutes and then shuts down, leaving John to face what lurks in the shadows.
 
RELEASE DATE

Although we have no official release date yet, we're furiously working towards the end of Q1 2015. Nic and I will be at GDC in March and would like to have STASIS in the BETA, at the least, by then. I'm sure you can see the dedication and effort we're putting into making STASIS a definitive adventure game.

RAGE

We had the privilege of exhibiting a playable demo build of STASIS at rAge, Africa's biggest game expo.

I cannot quantify how valuable the feedback was to watch people play. We made several interface design decisions based on observing players, and even got to meet a few homegrown STASIS fans.

IGN was at rAge and they had a chance to play and then tweeted: Just played the @StasisGame demo at rAge. Now I'm going to change my pants.
 
IN THE NEWS

Redbull Games has voted Stasis one of the scariest games you need to play. Check out the creepy list here:

http://www.redbull.com/en/games/stories/1331687776415/the-scariest-kickstarter-games-you-need-to-play

If Dead Space laid an embryo in the chest of the late-90s Fallouts, Stasis is what would claw its way out of the chest cavity. You are John Maracheck, just a regular space-man crossing the stars with his regular space-wife and space-child – a caravan holiday through the void. Space being the bleak, featureless empty that it is, however, you decide to bed your family down in your ship's stasis pods. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, honestly, we don't know. When John wakes up sputtering on a strange research vessel, anyone's guess is as good as anyone's as to what's actually going on. But as you explore the new, deserted ship, you'll find trails of blood, malfunctioning acid baths and notes left by a surgeon who talks about whipping off the top of people’s heads in the same way a mechanic might talk about removing a faulty radiator grill.

An isometric horror that’s torn off a few limbs from Event Horizon and Alien, it’s very bleak, very pretty and very good.
Click to expand...
 
I am mesmerized by the music. So much so that I made it my ringtone :o I hear the music and I melt :love:
 
Been following this for a while now. Hopefully we'll finally be getting it next year. The wait is killing me.... :(
 
Am I the only one who preferred the game without the flashlight? They've got these amazing looking levels but it's ruined by a gimmick.
 
Solitude said:
Am I the only one who preferred the game without the flashlight? They've got these amazing looking levels but it's ruined by a gimmick.
Click to expand...

I think the flashlight adds a certain degree of 'atmosphere' to the game, making it a bit darker and 'scarier', but I do agree with you to a degree. I've followed Stasis for a while and Chris' environments are beautifully detailed - even in renders years ago - but a lot of that now gets lost in the dark. Maybe the flashlight adds an extra dimension where you'll want to explore every bit of every room now, and might notice more of the details with your vision focused in a smaller area?
 
Toxin said:
Been following this for a while now. Hopefully we'll finally be getting it next year. The wait is killing me.... :(
Click to expand...

The original month it was penned for release was August 2014. I suppose the deeper they got into programming and what not, the more they realised they still needed to do. The wait is hopefully allowed them to iron out more of the glitches.

I cannot quantify how valuable the feedback was to watch people play. We made several interface design decisions based on observing players, and even got to meet a few homegrown STASIS fans.
Click to expand...

Also this ^ from Chris about the game play at Rage.

Solitude said:
Am I the only one who preferred the game without the flashlight? They've got these amazing looking levels but it's ruined by a gimmick.
Click to expand...

I think I am with you on this one, Solitude. I am not convinced that it is the way to go, but when we finally get to play it, maybe it'll feel different.

DrDeth said:
I think the flashlight adds a certain degree of 'atmosphere' to the game, making it a bit darker and 'scarier', but I do agree with you to a degree. I've followed Stasis for a while and Chris' environments are beautifully detailed - even in renders years ago - but a lot of that now gets lost in the dark. Maybe the flashlight adds an extra dimension where you'll want to explore every bit of every room now, and might notice more of the details with your vision focused in a smaller area?
Click to expand...

Hey Doc! It certainly would make it scarier for me. Maybe that's why I would have been happier without it :o :)
 
Stasis update january 2015

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ric-scifi-horror-adventure-game/posts/1106102

In the update is a zipped file for a Stasis free wallpaper.

PROGRESS

So, what's been going on for the last few weeks? Well, quite a lot! Since our last update we've completed ALL of the main puzzle chains for the Beta. I'm working on a few last minute details, and we'll soon be full swing into our internal testing. This means that STASIS is playable from the very first screen to the very last area that our Beta players will encounter! It's now a process of hunting down bugs, tweaking the interface, adjusting effects, and making certain that the game play is as smooth as possible.

We've been sure to add complexity to some of the puzzles. I must say that puzzle design is one of the highlights of the process for me. Nic and I would have a cup of coffee and talk through the chain of events needed to complete a game task, often coming up with ideas and areas on the spot. It is a free form way of design - something that I believe is only possible with a very small (in this case 1) team to implement the decisions.

CLOSED ALPHA

The Beta, which covers 3 of the 4 chapters of STASIS, will be in Alpha testing from the end of this month. What this will entail is testing STASIS internally, to iron out as many bugs or glitches as we can. I really want the Beta testers to experience the game as completely as possible. We're hoping to wrap this process up during February. At the same time, I'll be polishing up the final chapter.

ESRB RATING

If you had any doubt about STASIS being a mature adventure game, fear not! We received our ESRB Rating, and I'm proud to say that STASIS will be rated MATURE 17+ for VIOLENCE, BLOOD AND GORE, SUGGESTIVE THEMES, and STRONG LANGUAGE.
 
There is plenty of other interesting content in the update including sound files/clips, a couple of GIFs and Chris proudly announcing that Stasis made the cover of NAG (with a bit of a write up). Worth the read.

(I hope the image isn't too big.)

4f06537fbeb9868ea63f215bdd043d21_large.jpg
 
I must say that the flashlight looks much better now than the last time I saw it. I can't wait to play it!
 
June 2015 - progress update

Hey STASIS fans!

Rather than type a boring wall of text, I thought I'd grab the iPhone and make a quick video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IagihEp47Fc

If you crave STASIS info daily, follow me on Twitter -https://twitter.com/stasisgame

The STASIS release date is going to be towards the end of August. The BETA release is going to be very soon - we're aiming for July. Nic and I do a nightly build and test, and then I fine tune things over the course of the following day. Every single time it gets a little slicker and we iron out bugs that have crept in. We want to have a flawless play through before we get the BETA players involved. The BETA will weed out any technical crashes, etc. and ensure the game runs correctly (and isn't broken!).

We've decided to remove the shader system that provided the flash-light and post processing effects to STASIS. It was a concern that it would take away the 'old school' feel of the environment.

TRANSLATION

Next week Monday we're handing over the entire game text (50,000 words) to our translation partners, ROBOTO (http://roboto.pl/). This is the very same company that did the translations for The Last of Us,so STASIS is in good hands. STASIS will be available from Day 1 in 6 languages - English, German, Polish, Russian, French and Spanish.

PARTNERSHIP

Daedalic Entertainment are going to be our European partners. They'll assist with several distribution platforms and handle the retail component of STASIS.

We're huge fans of Daedalic (Deponia, etc.) and we feel that they'll bring a wealth of knowledge to our release campaign. Be sure to check out their site here: http://www.daedalic.de/en/#1

MARK MORGAN

The incredible Mr. Morgan, who has crafted an amazing auditory narrative for STASIS with his music, has done an interview with NAG magazine.

Mark Morgan is a renowned musician living in California who has worked in the games industry since the 1990s. Some of his work includes the soundtracks for Descent II, Fallout and Fallout 2, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Planescape: Torment, and more recently Wasteland 2, and the locally-developed Stasis...

You can read the full PDF interview (care of NAG) here: http://stasisgame.com/public/MARKMORGAN.pdf

DEAD BODY REWARD

This is a final call for the Dead Body reward tier guys to get us their pics for inclusion in the game. Please send your Kickstarter name and a 80x80 image to [email protected]

Follow me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/stasisgame

Our Facebook page is here:https://www.facebook.com/stasisgame

- CHRIS

http://stasisgame.com/web/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=65
 
Really looking forward to this game, been following it for a while, here and on Neogaf. I really hope it's a success for chris and his brother.
 
Stasis gets launch date and trailer!

Trailer:

It's launching 31 August!

On twitter Chris has said that existing backers will be able to choose between a Steam or GOG key. :)

And [MENTION=2121]McT[/MENTION] in case you don't know yet.
 
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Awesome! Have high hopes for this game! Looks like its one of those games you will play at night with no lights on and some good earphones.
 
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