Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There is a monastery located high in the mountains of Europe. Grisly secrets lurk within its fortified walls: inhabitants afflicted by strange diseases; bodies dropped from towers, chickens pecking at the bits of splattered brain. Scariest of all? The sheer hypocrisy of those who profess love to God and their fellow humans yet never miss an opportunity to subjugate – with words, cane, or an object much sharper – those more vulnerable than themselves.
The Stone of Madness reviewDeveloper: The Game KitchenPublisher: Tripwire InteractivePlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out on 28th January on PC (Steam, GOG Epic Games Store), PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch
The Stone of Madness may be set in the 18th century, a full 350 years on from Umberto Eco’s masterful monastic mystery The Name of the Rose, yet the game is clearly indebted to the literary phenomenon. Actually, the game approaches the novel via an unusual source, a 1987 adventure video game adaptation called The Abbey of Crime, “one of the most important games made in Spain,” said The Stone of Madness director Maikel Ortega.
What we have is not so much a straightforward adaptation as an interpretation twice removed which attempts to translate the spirit and structure of Eco’s book into video game form. Naturally, there is a mystery to be solved, one involving nefarious clergymen. But you are not playing as a detective (or equivalent) parachuted into these sacred halls, but as a cast of inmates imprisoned within them. That’s the other big point of departure from Eco’s book: this monastery, rendered in ravishing, illustrated style, doubles as an asylum which, of course, is just another word for a prison in this historical setting. Here come lashings of agony, guilt, and heresy!
The Stone of Madness – Story Trailer | Gamescom 2024 Watch on YouTube
On the face of it, The Stone of Madness is a departure for Spanish studio, The Game Kitchen. Its previous games, 2019’s Blasphemous and its 2023 sequel, were robust, immaculately crafted works of homage to 16-bit action-platformers, elevated by genuinely depraved Catholic art. The Stone of Madness is an isometric stealth adventure with a dollop of immersive sim (and just a little less blood). It sees The Game Kitchen furrowing a more distinct mechanical path, and mostly executing on it.