Commandos-Like The Stone of Madness - real-time tactics game about escaping an 18th century monastery madhouse - coming January 28th

[Infinitron]

The Stone of Madness is a hardcore real-time tactics and stealth game set in a Spanish madhouse in the late 18th century. Located in the Pyrenees, a timeworn Jesuit monastery is home both to a madhouse and an inquisitorial prison. Five mysterious characters have been imprisoned between its walls under different pretenses. Plagued by cruel punishment, madness and despair, they will soon devise a plan to escape this place.

Escape the Madness
Using an isometric perspective take and alternate control of your characters and aid their escape. Depending on how you play, their sanity will deteriorate, gaining them a “Stone of Madness” and triggering new disabilities and negative effects such as paranoia, dementia or bouts of violence. Explore your surroundings, find clues and tools to help you achieve your goal. Be careful though, if you’re caught being somewhere you shouldn’t be the guards will not be kind…

Character Progression & Regression
We all have our strengths and weaknesses and our heroes are no different. Each character starts with various traumas and phobias. Depending on how you play, their sanity will deteriorate, gaining them a “Stone of Madness” and triggering new disabilities and negative effects such as paranoia, dementia or bouts of violence. This in turn increases the game’s difficulty. Characters can also unlock positive skills or reverse the negative effects on their sanity by finding “Stones of Clarity” which are scattered throughout the monastery. Some actions may exacerbate phobias and other mental conditions or even trigger new conditions to develop.

Discover the Secrets of the Monastery
Choose from several different escape plans to execute, each with its own stories, objectives, special characters and other surprises. While exploring the monastery you may come across items or clues that can aid different escape plans or future attempts. These items can unlock new content for your future play-through's.

You have no memory of this place...
Each new game generates a different monastery thanks to a semi-procedural system. Everything from the monastery lay-out to item location is variable making each play session as fresh as the first.

Day/Night Cycle
Time is continuous in The Stone of Madness; Day & Night phases are split with actions to complete during the day and preparation activities (healing/crafting/resting) at night. Most actions can be completed during the day while others, are better done at night with fewer eyes watching. But there are reasons you should not go prowling at night...

Stunning and Original Artwork
The Stone of Madness' visuals are heavily inspired by 18th century artist, Francisco De Goya. Everything from scenery, to clothes and even character faces are influenced by De Goya's works. Combining his styles with our artist team's sketching and animation has resulted in numerous hand-painted scenes and hundreds of traditional-style animations that is both eye-catching and enhances the isometric-perspective The Stone of Madness uses.

Features Overview

• Master Tactician– Plan and execute your escape in real-time, utilize each characters’ unique abilities and escape the Monastery.
• The Prisoners – Play as five unique and flawed characters, discover why each has imprisoned.
• Secrets of the Monastery - Explore the monastery and you may come across items or clues to unlock new content for future play-through's.
• Character Progression/Regression – Each character has special skills and unique flaws that can help or hinder or progress.
• Endless Escapes - There are multiple escape plans to attempt by exploring the monastery. The monastery map also changes with each play-through, moving key and items to other locations.
• Stunning and Original Art - Exquisite hand-painted and original works inspired by 18th century artist, Francisco De Goya

The Stone of Madness takes inspiration from;

• Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
• Desperados 3
• Broken Lines
• Darkwood
• Commandos

 

[Zyondyne]

It's honestly a pretty good premise for a game.

Art is looking good, atmosphere seems promising.

Can't really figure out yet what the gameplay is about, but overall seems like a fresh idea.

 

[Infinitron]

Hey, it still exists. Now published by Tripwire Interactive.

From the team that brought you the Blasphemous series comes The Stone of Madness: a tactical stealth adventure game set in an 18th-century Spanish Monastery with a lovingly hand-drawn art style inspired by the work of Francisco de Goya. Located in the Pyrenees, this time-worn Jesuit monastery is home to a madhouse and an inquisitorial prison. Five prisoners - plagued by cruel punishment, madness, and despair - pool their skills and resources to face their phobias, stave off insanity, uncover the mysteries of the Monastery, and find a way to escape.

Coming to PC (Steam and Epic), PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch Early 2025!

 

[Lemming42]

Looks interesting, so it's like Commandos but with a focus more on stealth and navigation rather than smacking guards in the head?

There was a decent game absolutely nobody played called Crookz: The Big Heist which was basically Commandos except all about using people's abilities to get past security system puzzles and timing concurrent actions perfectly; seems like this might be slightly similar.

 

[luj1]

Neighbours from Hell gameplay

 

[asper]

I'm interested and cautiously optimistic.
Liking the artstyle and the premise. Trailers show gameplay.
Wishlisted

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamespress.com/Tripwire-Presents-Brings-Newly-Revealed-Rogue-Waters-and-The-Stone-of-

The Stone of Madness will also join Mix Seattle event on Aug. 30, providing attendees with the first opportunity to play The Game Kitchen’s mind-bending new stealth adventure title outside of Europe. The Stone of Madness is in development for Windows PC via Steam and the Epic Game Store, PlayStation®5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch™ system with a target release window in early 2025.

 

[Strig]

Looks interesting, so it's like Commandos but with a focus more on stealth and navigation rather than smacking guards in the head?

There was a decent game absolutely nobody played called Crookz: The Big Heist which was basically Commandos except all about using people's abilities to get past security system puzzles and timing concurrent actions perfectly; seems like this might be slightly similar.

It probably owes a bit to Commandos, but I see similarities with a much older game, from the setting, to a decidedly adventure game feel of the puzzles. Honestly, the resemblance is uncanny, and I doubt it's a coincidence. Someone on the dev team has to be a fan of Escape from Colditz.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Looks interesting, so it's like Commandos but with a focus more on stealth and navigation rather than smacking guards in the head?

There was a decent game absolutely nobody played called Crookz: The Big Heist which was basically Commandos except all about using people's abilities to get past security system puzzles and timing concurrent actions perfectly; seems like this might be slightly similar.

It probably owes a bit to Commandos, but I see similarities with a much older game, from the setting, to a decidedly adventure game feel of the puzzles. Honestly, the resemblance is uncanny, and I doubt it's a coincidence. Someone on the dev team has to be a fan of Escape from Colditz.

Which looks very similar to The Great Escape.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Not entirely sure about that style of art. It just looks a bit off to me. It just looks that little bit too progressive.

 

[Luka-boy]

To me it's also evoking some memories of La Abadía del Crimen.


Wait, there´s a remake of that one?!

 

[JarlFrank]

This looks great, but...

You have no memory of this place...
Each new game generates a different monastery thanks to a semi-procedural system. Everything from the monastery lay-out to item location is variable making each play session as fresh as the first.

Why the fuck do they have to shove procedural generation into EVERYTHING these days? FFS

 

[Haba]

This looks great, but...

You have no memory of this place...
Each new game generates a different monastery thanks to a semi-procedural system. Everything from the monastery lay-out to item location is variable making each play session as fresh as the first.

Why the fuck do they have to shove procedural generation into EVERYTHING these days? FFS

With it you can add artificial length to a mechanically simple game. Without having sadistic difficulty w/o saves like in the good old days.

If this was a early 90s French game, you'd have to start the entire thing from beginning if you died. Then when you git gud, you complete the entire game in less than 30 minutes.

 

[Infinitron]

Coming January 28th:



Demo available.

 

[Lemming42]

Wow, this game is bizarre. It has some absolutely superb ideas but it's actively difficult to play, like everything about the interface and controls is just imprecise and wrong. You have to cycle through mini-menus just to select actions, it's like playing Little Big Adventure or something. Activating objects is hard as fuck because clicking both moves you and interacts, which doesn't sound bad until you try to do it and realise that objects have extremely vague hitboxes and that it's not possible (or doesn't seem to be possible, at least) to click them through your character sprite. They should definitely have taken some lessosn from Mimimi regarding polish and user friendliness.

The actual game seems very interesting though, you can see the obvious Commandos influence but it feels like something far beyond that. Each of your people have weaknesses - one is afraid of the dark, another is afraid of fire, one objects to violence and can't deal with people being killed in front of him. Definitely going to keep an eye on it.

 

[gooseman]

art looks worse than pictures from 4 years ago?

 

[Lagi]

Woah... the demo is compelling. The setting is very unexpected(?). Characters are interesting. Non-combat gameplay is great. "Conservative" graphics.

Fiddling with the menus is not so bad. Its add to the tension, as you try to lit your lamp. I didn't play stealth tactics game, but i like the controls. The thing with left mouse click being move and interact is a bit annoying, agree.

I'm very inpatient, ending with getting often caught and the loading time after each catch are a bit long (~3 sec). but its a fair punishment, auto-loading is just before being busted.

I need to wait till Jan 2025 ?!



EDIT:
you can interact with space! this works well.

 

[Oropay]

Interesting game. Grew on me. Unfortunately my demo save is softlocked (instant game over upon reload); can't continue it without starting over, which I won't be doing. My overall impression is that this could be a good game but it needs a lot more polish (e.g., selecting objects in the environment needs some fiddling sometimes).

 

[Lagi]

Why?! God DAMN IT?! That was such a good game demo.

This bitch can even climb in her long dress, like Pippi Langstrumpf.

gameplay is excellent. Characters phobias play a big role in the gameplay interactions. When you carry unconscious guard, Alfredo is getting distress (and this is way he cannot touch corpses to hide them!! IT make SENSE!!), or when you near open fire Leonora is getting bad. Eduardo is scare of darkness, so Alfredo need to light up road for him [UI is great! I use alt key to chain character together.] - I LOVE IT!

There is also lots o little details. Like when guard is waking up, Leonora can break another plank on his head. I also like the woman animation of guard stabbing, so... convincing.


---------------
just look at this guy, hope is another party member
[nah he is not... he is not on the main screen. The old lady, and this girl will be]

======================
edit: The demo was amazing. Even the management from the cell fit the theme, and is well-thought-out. Its been a while since I play such a good game. I love it !!

there are 3x stats: Health, Suspicion and Sanity - and all of them have consequences.
Leonora gets beaten by guards so many times she ended in the hospital ward
All my dudes have max suspicion and i need to end day mulitple times before the clock.
Hmmm.... i wonder what happen when your sanity drop to 0.