The Stone of Madness

As I was fumbling my way through the opening moments of The Stone of Madness, I came across a stunning wall painting that tugged at something in the recesses of my mind. I required a closer look, so I zoomed the camera in and repositioned my character to see the painting in as much detail as the top-down, isometric perspective could afford. Aha! This was a gorgeous, in-game recreation of “Extraction of the Stone of Madness” by Hieronymus Bosch. I took to the internet to learn more about this painting, and as I did, the pieces of my experience with The Stone of Madness started to click into place. This game was not aiming for lofty fiction, but rather something that was far more grounded in a dark religious history, disturbing as it was. 

The Stone of Madness is developed by The Game Kitchen, a Spanish studio best known for its highly acclaimed Blasphemous series. While Blasphemous has players platforming their way through grotesque Catholic iconography, The Stone of Madness substitutes gothic horror for something far more cerebral. The developers describe The Stone of Madness as a “real-time tactical stealth game” that blends “intricate tactical mechanics with psychological survival elements.” While a departure from the genre of their previous work, The Game Kitchen still manages to illuminate their game design with the religious inspiration of their native culture. 

The art design in The Stone of Madness draws heavy inspiration from 18th-century romantic paintings and religious symbolism. Every visual detail, down to the frame-by-frame animation, is the work of an artist’s hand. The developers borrow stylistically from Francisco De Goya, with an emphasis on capturing history in creative expression; thus, playing through this game felt like moving through one of his art galleries. This aesthetic is helped by the isometric perspective, which gives players a wide view across the many corridors of the monastery, creating a grand exposition of the objects inside. On the other hand, the character models stand out as more of a sketch than a finished work. The hand-drawn elements clashing with hand-painted dialogue scenes created a tension in the artwork that I had trouble reconciling at times.

Nonetheless, the monastery itself is a feat of architectural genius. Beautiful open-air courtyards, gardens, and terraces contrast dramatically with the labyrinthine passageways that hide secrets underneath. It is a sprawling and exhaustive setting, complete with a cloister, church, refectory library, and cellar, among many other features. The buildings show their age as well, with cracks and rubble to scavenge for mysterious trinkets and letters from past occupants. I found the exploration in The Stone of Madness to be one of its strongest qualities, thanks to the environmental storytelling. It was very rewarding to poke around the various locations of The Stone of Madness because the entire place had such palpable character, spiteful towards my every move. 

The character of the monastery continues with the music and sound design, which are also appropriately eerie. Gregorian chants interspersed with organ pipes are some of the aural highlights, even as much of the soundtrack fades into the background as an inconspicuous mood piece. The voice acting from the narrator is rich and heavy, if a bit underutilised. The sound effects are coherent but get repetitive as players cycle through the same activities and environments many times over. Perhaps the most trying sounds on my ears were the vocal shouts and shrieks from the NPCs that cut through the otherwise brooding atmosphere in a rather obnoxious tone. 

With a stage perfectly set for creeping about, The Stone of Madness delivers on the stealth gameplay loop to varying degrees of success. Players select from a team of five inmates, each with their own tactical abilities, and work their way around the various puzzles and patrols of the monastery. The group will need to combine their skills in unique ways to outwit guards who are quick to attack the inmates (reducing their health points) and send them back to their cell, which resets player progress in the environment. The players will learn many tricks, such as using one character to flip a distant switch to open a door so another character can sneak inside to pick the lock on a chest while still another distracts the nearby guards with a sermon. 

Not all character traits are advantageous, however, as each character is assigned a “disorder” that impacts their utility. For instance, a certain character is afraid of fire and another, darkness, making it all the more challenging to move both of them through the monastery together. If the player is not careful enough to keep these disorders from flaring up, characters will lose sanity, which if neglected can result in even more disorders piling on the characters. It can be quite the downward spiral to suffer a penalty that hastens other penalties, and I found myself adjusting the difficulty of the game to make the sanity system less devastating. This could have been further mitigated by implementing a quick save system, which is a staple for the tactical stealth genre, but it is surprisingly absent here. I also experienced a few glitches that made me reset gameplay since I did not have a quicksave at my disposal. 

Sneaking around the monastery also involves managing the day and night cycle with an eye for time-gated opportunities. For example, the refectory is full of monks during lunch time but quite empty in the evening, making dusk the perfect time to sneak about. Though, as many guards retire for the evening, ghosts called “Animas” appear and threaten character sanity. In this way, players are constantly making tradeoffs when it comes to tactical planning. To cap the day off, the game presents a “planning” phase where players invest the action points of each character to do things like craft materials (there is an inventory system here), improve sanity, heal, and alter the circumstances for the next day. This system kept me engaged across many, many days in the monastery but became rather inconsequential once I had an abundance of items and didn’t need any leg up in the stealth gameplay. 

By and large, the story of The Stone of Madness is what kept my attention the most. You quickly come to realise that this time-worn Jesuit monastery is very unique, not only in the fact it has become an inquisitorial prison but also because it has a seedy history of hiding people with mental health issues*. Across two different campaigns, each exploring different parts of the monastery, players will answer questions like, “Why is the Inquisitor in charge instead of the Abbot? What modifications were made to the design of the monastery? Who has been leaving behind strange inscriptions on the walls? Why are people here referred to as inmates?” The narrative is the slow process of untangling the mysteries of the peculiar setting, and it will take a lot of patience with the plot for things to come into focus. Without spoiling these secrets, I can say that the story in this game is about injustice, both personal and systemic, and how a group of brave freedom fighters turn centuries of oppression on its head by championing truth, legitimacy, and care for the marginalised. 

*People with mental health challenges are not treated as sensitively as I would have hoped in The Stone of Madness. They are the subject of abuse, including beatings that are shown and other horrors not seen, as well as some exaggerated behaviour. While the game positions them as allies, both among the crew of protagonists and outside of them, I would have appreciated more trigger warnings about how mental health is treated in the game, more narrative time spent legitimising their humanity, and resources shared for those who are struggling with mental health obstacles.