Argonus and the Gods of Stone

Not for those with motion sickness, even after tweaking the settings. Moving around this game made me feel sick with nausea for some reason. I only could play for half an hour and asked for a refund. :(

Call this one a semi-precious hidden gem. If you enjoy first-person adventure games / walking sims and have any interest in Greek Mythology, it's enjoyable. Not great, but it's a pleasant enough way to spend a weekend.

I've given up, and I've given way worse longer. Like many others, I'm a huge SG fan, and this has all the wonderful hallmarks of what a cool 3D experience with a mythology paint job could've been, but it's not that. As many others have said, it's more a walking simulator with a half-baked adventure game slapped on top. It feels like a pitch or early design document was the inspiration for this, as there's nice narrative elements with identifiable characters from mythology that would've charmed any early participants. However, the "keys" for these gameplay "locks" are usually no more than two rooms away, and most of the time puzzles solve themselves because you already have a key to a lock before you even knew it existed. When they don't just fall into place, it's because there's some fantastical idea, like "burying dragons' eggs in order to grow a tree," that can only be reasonably solved by throwing the (nifty) inventory menu open and just trying everything with everything. So if you're someone who enjoys puzzles, and not just "find fish" and "give to pelican" type puzzles, don't expect the gods to ask much more from you. Throw in the fact that potential enemies, towering creatures, and environmental fears are removed and nullified, where some classic SG grit could've made this game charming to at least die in, or maybe just kicked back from. The visuals are nice, but the levels lack any kind of direction, and at some points, the game is needlessly extended through not allowing an action on a particular branch, requiring you to pass it to activate a sequence that seems unrelated, and then not directing you back to the original branch which is now inexplicably active. The narrative is okay, but honestly, it's nothing I could explain further than "gods be backstabbing other gods," which if you know them, you know. There's a pretty good VO that narrates the game to you, which at first, I was enjoying, but after she explains the 30th statue of some "great person" who "met their untimely fate," you start to feel like you're reading Styrofoam gravestones at the boy scout retreat. It's also kind of awkward when a god is talking to you- because everyone else isn't a statue and would be hard to animate- and the narrator just chimes in with "and then the statue said this." Narrators can be fun in a game, but less is sometimes more, and I would've preferred the diagetic sound over the VO a lot of the time. I would love to see the new Shadowgate take this design philosophy, but provide more diverse paths with a stronger emphasis on the collection of useful (and even hazardous) items, as well as the implementation of risk, punishment, spells, and additional lore in the world (the temples should've been a dumping ground for lore). Shadowgate was exciting because you could get torn apart by a werewolf- but there was literally nothing dangerous too it, or damaging to the player's experience, and is one of the most memorable things about the game. Standing under harpies who refuse to murder you feels dumb, and while I appreciate the point and click approach to events in the game, waving a sword at any of these creatures would surely get a wimpy protagonist killed. This is a good build, but the gameplay just isn't there. It isn't fun to play.

I liked this adventure and the spirit of Mythos, legends and gods. Really loved the architecture of the osland, its shores, stairs to temples etc. Now I can implement some of story's details into TTRPG, for example, DnD.

For fans of Shadowgate

Увлекательное приключение с прекрасным мифологическим сюжетом.

not a bad little adventure game. took 5.8 hours. worth the play through. but those suckers force you to watch the credits before the final end of the game can be played. tricky programmers.

Drecksspiel, Drecksgrafik, Drecksperformance, Stottern ohne Ende, Unity Engine sei Dank. Da hätte ich das Geld auch gleich verbrennen können. Crappy game, crappy graphics, crappy performance, endless stuttering, thanks to the Unity Engine. I could have burned the money for this crap right away.