Controls are unbearable
I read many promising reviews and was excited to play Stela. I spent 10 minutes trying to move the wagon and close the gate at the beginning. Sometimes it worked but most times it didn’t. It was really frustrating trying to learn controls while rat things swarm you to death every 10 seconds. Idk what they were tbh cause the colors are so dull you can’t see anything. I really wanted to experience the music and details others talked about but you lost me in the first 2 minutes. For anyone looking for a similar game with far superior controls, beautiful color and details, and incredible music, I highly recommend GRIS+, also on Apple Arcade.
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Criminally Underrated
This game is unfairly and simply criminally underrated. If you love Inside and Limbo, you’ll love this one. The controls are no way as bad as some reviews have made it out to be. I kept waiting to experience the issues others did and never had a single issue. Any “control” issue I had was just simply the result of playing a game on the phone with touch screen. This is expansive and engaging and I loved it. I’m a big fan of these sort of games and the puzzles. My one fault is they were maybe too easy and a little simplistic but the soundtrack was amazing and graphics were too notch. Didn’t want the game to end. Much like Inside and Limbo though, it’ll take you a bit to figure out what’s going on. But that’s the joy in playing these games IMO. Give this one a chance.
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Good concept with just a few bugs.
This game had a lot of bugs and glitches that frequently caused me to restart the app, as I’d get stuck on a level after being killed by a shadow skeleton, but the game still recognized me as dead after resetting me. Or a shadow skeleton couldn’t access me when trying to hide from it, and the game would just kill me off since it couldn’t reach me. The music was beautiful and the graphics were very high quality. Some amount of logic was needed, I wish the game didn’t hint so much to what was needed though. This is a mix of Inside, Tomb Raider, and Journey. My biggest complaint was the controls. If playing on a phone it’s easy to jump off an edge and die when moving forward, as the very slightest deviation upwards causes you to jump. Overall, definitely worth a play!
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Absolutely beautiful… but almost unplayable
I got caught on the chain at depths and she just won’t grab onto it, with multiple other times where I got caught in bugs bc she couldn’t interact with the proper things. All-in-all the interact feature just really doesn’t work. If there was an interact button and a joystick with a jump button (all on screen), the controls would be much more understandable. I tried the double tap and it says that she’ll jump towards the tap but she doesn’t do that either. Sometimes she will jump vertically instead of moving, and that got me killed in the forest.
I am literally stuck and unable to continue in the game but it has genuinely good ideas, art, music, and atmosphere.
I am literally stuck and unable to continue in the game but it has genuinely good ideas, art, music, and atmosphere.
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This should be a great game, but it isn’t
The artwork is beautiful. The scenes are breathtaking. Sadly, Stela suffers from very uneven gameplay. A lot of reviews compare Stela to Playdead’s Inside and they are right to do so. Inside is beautifully balanced in terms of story, puzzles, and moments of danger. Stela has mastered none of that. You just die a lot. Some sequences last way too long and are repetitive. As always, the artists deliver a gorgeous visual experience. The gameplay is woefully under considered. Stela seems completely blind to gameplay experience. Being constantly killed is not fun. I get that you want me to figure out the puzzle, but I don’t have any understanding of your universe! About three quarters of the game through, you begin to understand that everything is a trap (whatever) then at the end is a Rubik’s Cube puzzle? The whole experience is delight mixed with aggravation. It’s like having dinner with a really attractive person who’s annoying the whole time.
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