Stonewall Penitentiary

Where has Stonewall Penitentiary been all my life? This is a fantastic whodunnit kind of point-and-click adventure game and it is one of the best that I have played in the last decade or so. It is like a true crime type thriller that keeps you guessing all the way until the end and even when I got to the end and I was asked to guess who the killer was, I was still not 100 percent sure that I really knew who it was! This was such a great experience and it is the kind of game where I highly recommend that you know as little about the story before you play as possible.

A Man Down On His Luck

The character that we play as in Stonewall Penitentiary is a middle aged man called Will. Will lost his son a few years back and ever since his life has been going downhill thanks to depression and alcohol! To make matters worse, Will has woken up in a strange prison cell, naked and with his hands tied together! He has no idea why he is here or even how he got here, but one thing he does realize is that he is not alone! There are six other people also locked up in here, each of them with something to hide.

The 7 Deadly Sins

There are seven characters including Will in Stonewall Penitentiary and the idea is that one of these people is a killer. We find out that a man called The Judge has brought us here and is tasking us with finding out who the killer is and revealing our deepest and darkest secrets. What if the people do not follow? Well, he is going to kill someone each hour until the truth comes out. I must admit, as much as I was digging this awesome story, the parallels to the Saw series of movies (and the Saw video games) cannot be ignored. I would say that is the best way to look at the story, if you like movies such as Saw, you will get a huge kick out of the story being told here.

Pointing, Clicking And Surviving!

The gameplay of Stonewall Penitentiary is that of a point-and-click adventure game. You will be doing a lot of chatting with the other survivors and in this regard, the game has a real visual novel style to the gameplay. The writing is great and because of that, you get very invested in this part of the gameplay. It is honestly really well done. However, you also have your adventure game gameplay too where you have to click around, find items, figure out what things do, and solve puzzles. The puzzles range from having to unlock things to finding out what items go with what. On paper, the gameplay sounds quite standard for a point-and-click adventure game, but when paired with the fantastic setting, story, and characters it really is very exciting.

Telling A Tale

The art style of Stonewall Penitentiary is something that I liked a lot. The developer states that the aim here was to have a kind of graphic novel look to the visuals and it does have that. However, I think that the best comparison for the visuals is the Tell Tale, The Walking Dead games, and The Wolf Among Us. That is a very good comparison by the way as I think those games look fantastic. The game does have voice acting and to be honest, the voice acting is a bit of a mixed bag. I think that the story here is great, but some of the voice acting is really quite comical and it can take you out of the moment.

Pros:

• This game tells an epic whodunnit kind of story
• The characters are all very well written and interesting
• The point-and-click adventure gameplay is very entertaining
• I loved the graphic novel style of the visuals

Cons:

• The voice acting is not that great in some places
• It is probably not the kind of game I would play through more than once