Still There

Man, what a piece of art Still There is. Unfortunately, I don't say that in an entirely good way, but luckily, not in an entirely bad way either. I went in expecting a somewhat technical game about operating a complex machine with bits of story woven in at intervals. I got... almost that.

Still There is mostly a point & click game, meaning it's more about finding the right things to click, rather than solving a puzzle, and definitely not about getting to know your intricate spaceship controls well. While the controls of the spaceship look complicated, they are like that mostly because there are a lot of them. If they were all properly labelled, the game would become quite a bit easier, but then it also wouldn't take you much time to complete it. Additionally, the same controls aren't used many times, meaning that by the time you might learn them, you won't need them anymore. It's probably for the best, considering the puzzles don't have a lot of substance to them once you know what you're doing. On the other hand, I can't say I had any fun at all with the trial and error of finding things out either.

So the puzzles aren't very fun. Sadly they make up for about 80% of the game. This does include the time spent looking around inside the spaceship, which I must admit is intricately crafted. This is half of why I called the game a piece of art. The spaceship may be illogically complicated and the puzzles may lack actual substance, but they look really good, which is also what made me want to try this game in the first place. That's not a bad thing, but I'm afraid it also doesn't nearly compensate me getting bored of doing them.
The other half of art is the story which is sad and is mostly told in a very slow and abstract manner. Maybe that style would work somewhere else, but I feel that due to the story making up for such a small portion of game time, and the game being short overall, it comes together to less than a 50-page book equivalent. Something that short can't afford to tell itself that slow. In the end, I can't say it made me feel much.

In conclusion, I would most definitely not recommend Still There for the gameplay or puzzles. But there is definitely a charm to the game that is rather rare to find, and that I think might appeal to some people. I don't really resonate with it enough myself to say who those kinds of people are, but maybe if the idea of staying in a lonely, claustrophobic space ship, being affected by emotional trauma, and spending your days doing overly time consuming and convoluted tasks is a vibe that speaks with you, you could give it a try.