Stela is supposedly about a young woman witnessing the final days of an ancient mysterious world. I don’t believe Stela is the young woman’s name and based on the amount of running, jumping, and hiding for her life I did as I was controlling the young woman, I don’t think she was doing a lot of witnessing either. I can’t really blame her though when there are swarming killer beetles, creepy slenderman looking creatures, and furry snow sharks chasing and stalking her at every turn. And when they are not, flaming arrows raining down from the sky or ancient death traps impede her progress. So in short, its an atmospheric puzzle platformer.
Stela doesn’t do much to change the game with its approach to the atmospheric puzzle platformer space. If you’ve played games like Inside or Journey, you’ll have a general idea of what to expect with Stela. The player is thrust in to a world filled with old beauty, the environment tells a story of a ravaged society and places you in control of a young woman clothed in white. Like many of these games, you aren’t really given a quest and more a direction to set out in and being as Stela is a side scrolling platformer, that direction is to the right.
You don’t get much time to take in the remnants of the old society though as very early on a swarm of beetles will chase after you, and if they catch you well… it’s not pretty. As the woman journeys across the world, she’ll meet up with the aforementioned beetles, creepy slenderman looking creatures and burrowing snow shark/wolves that will eat you whole. There are also other creatures that lurk in the depths (and heights) that the woman’s journey will take her to.
Getting past these deadly beings employs a few different approaches. Sometimes it’s as simple as outrunning a monster seeking to consume you but often it requires a slight bit of thought. The solutions to advance are never overly complicated and they do a good job of making you feel accomplished when you figure out the solution. This isn’t rocket science, nor should it be as these types of games are trying more about conveying an atmosphere while trying to propel you forward, but it is always nice to have a game elicit a feeling of success in its obstacles.
Aside from the puzzles, Stela has a decent amount of platforming to successfully navigate and control wise the jumping feels pretty good. The game does struggle with providing a sense of speed though. There is no run button but the character will occasionally seem to increase speed as you are running across the different biomes. It never seems to correlate to anything though and it could very well just be an optical illusion, that said it doesn’t always feel great and can sometimes leave you just a touch frustrated in some of the chase sequences until you figure out you missed, or mistimed, something that will allow you to progress.
Lack of running aside though, the game plays about how you’d expect. It’s nothing mind-blowing but it is entirely serviceable. And for Stela, serviceable is pretty much all you need because that game does a great job of placing you in this world. The world created here is haunting and it looks great but what really ties it all together and makes the place a truly beautiful nightmare is the soundtrack. From soft tracks that are creepy and unsettling to the bombastic terror inflicted tracks, the entire soundtrack will fill you with dread and tension as you attempt to navigate and escape the world behind you.
I do wish there was something more to explain the world we see in Stela. Why is the young woman running across this desolate landscape. Where is she going, and when she gets there, why do the things that happen, happen? One of the final achievements I unlocked in my playthough has a description of “Fulfilled your destiny” but I was never sure of what the woman’s destiny was, it was just a quest through a haunted, decimated remnant of a society long gone that ended in a trippy bizarre way. Ultimately, this is fine because the journey was enthralling in its own right but I do wonder what this world was and I wish there was just a little more context than what was given in the description.
All in though, Stela is a short game (my first playthrough took me about two hours) but the best ones of these usually are. And if you like cinematic and atmospheric puzzle platformers, Stela is a great addition to this subset of games.
This article was written with material provided from the developer for the Xbox One. For more on our review process, please read here.
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