$7.99STASIS Horror adrift on a dying ship
Search a derelict research ship sinking into Neptune's clouds, solving grim puzzles to uncover what happened to a missing family.
Is STASIS worth it?
STASIS is worth it if…
- you like slow, atmospheric horror that builds dread instead of throwing jump scares at you
- you grew up on 90s point-and-click adventures and miss puzzles that refuse to help
- you want a dark, story-driven game you can finish in one long sitting
- you would read every PDA on a corpse-strewn spaceship before moving on
Screenshots
A family lost on a dying ship
The last thing John remembers is talking with his wife and daughter before their trip. Then he wakes up in agony on the Groomlake, a seemingly abandoned spacecraft that is plunging into the swirling blue methane clouds of Neptune. His family is not beside him. The crew is not beside him either, if the corpses scattered around the ship are anything to go by.
What follows is a search with real weight to it. You push John to physical and emotional limits as you piece together what happened here, and why he was brought aboard. The dread builds slowly and deliberately: this is horror that gets under your skin rather than leaping out at you, and the mystery of the Groomlake is what keeps you moving from one dark deck to the next.
Old-school puzzles, no mercy
This is classic point-and-click in the old sense: you combine items, poke at computer terminals, and work out how the ship's machinery fits together. Some puzzles are genuinely challenging, and a few will send you back across the ship hunting for the detail you missed. The game does not hold your hand, and it never pretends to be anything but old school.
It also does not pretend you are safe. John can die, and will, in some spectacularly horrible ways. Certain special objects can even be used on John himself to end things early, which the game treats as a deliberate, grim mechanic rather than a failure state. If you grew up on 90s adventures, that mix of head-scratching and dread will feel like coming home.
A ship told in corpses and PDAs
The Groomlake is more than a backdrop. Every scene is individually hand-crafted, viewed from a detailed isometric angle that turns each room into a small, grim diorama, and cutscenes staged like a film when the story demands it. The score comes from Mark Morgan, the composer behind Fallout, with additional music by Daniel Sadowski, and it sits over professional voice acting that gives the characters you meet and hear real depth.
The story itself is layered through the environment. Terminals can be accessed and read, and the PDAs littered around the ship's corpses hold a great deal of backstory. Read them and the horror aboard stops being a mystery and becomes a record of what people did to each other here.
Questions before you wake up?
Can you play it in one evening?
Quite possibly. One player finished it in roughly seven hours in a single sitting, and most runs land somewhere around that length. It is a compact, focused adventure rather than a sprawling one, so a couple of long evenings will carry you from John's waking to the end of the Groomlake's story.
How scary is it, really?
It leans on dread rather than jump scares. The horror comes from the atmosphere: dark corridors, unsettling sounds drifting through the ship, and a story that gets genuinely disturbing as you uncover what happened to the crew. It is grim and oppressive throughout, and some scenes are hard to shake.
Are the puzzles as hard as people warn?
Challenging, yes, and honestly old-fashioned. Most item use is straightforward, but a few puzzles expect you to explore thoroughly and think sideways, and a couple of solutions are not obvious without careful reading of your surroundings. If you like adventures that respect your patience rather than dropping hints, that is part of the appeal.
Does the story actually pay off?
The mystery of what happened aboard the Groomlake is the engine of the whole game, and the world-building and twists along the way are strong. Fair warning: the ending divides opinion. Some find it fitting, others find it the weakest part of an otherwise gripping ride. The journey is the point.
