Stay?

Are you an ending chaser? Do you love replaying your favourite games over and over to find every possible ending or pathway? Do you like puzzles and exploring the consequences of your actions? If any of those sound like you, then you’ll freaking love Stay.

Without spoiling too much, the game is heavy focused on repetition and puzzle solving. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re into that kinda of stuff you’ll love it.

This is another game that I would most likely have skipped if it weren't for the Free IF Playoffs. The moment I see "dating sim" in the description of a game, my interest drops to zero. Still, the intriguing provenance of this game, which was apparently produced by an outsider who has never participated in the online community, was enough to warrant at least loading it up.

With a blithe disregard for the tags on IFDB or other reviews (which I like to read after I've tried a work), I did so. My minimal interest was not increased by the Harry Potter-like feel of the opening chapter. A short time later, the game seemed like it was going to be over before it had even begun. Interest took an uptick when it became clear that what seemed like an end was actually just the beginning.

Here's where we get to the spoilery part, and like other reviewers, I recommend that you play the game before proceeding.

This is a time-loop game, and in terms of story structure it is well done. I agree with Passerine that author E. Jade Lomax has an excellent sense of how to anticipate changes to the player's viewpoint over time in a way that works well, though I felt that it failed to adequately convey how the protagonist must have felt after enough loops to span a normal human lifetime and more. After a period of exploration, one necessarily begins to treat each iteration as a chance to conduct one or two key experiments in how to affect the timeline. (Spoiler - click to show)As a memorable in-game description of science puts it, the player begins the process of "grinding the particles of the world down to answers and making new questions with them." The way that the description of events changes with the growing understanding of the total situation is remarkably smoothly implemented.

It does seem as though the opportunities for significant change are few and far between, but this is something of a necessity in a time loop of such scale. This is Groundhog Day writ large -- a Groundhog Decade or more. The time loop trope seems inherently more powerful in interactive fiction, where the player must guide the protagonist's discoveries and planning instead of being a mere observer, and Lomax explores many interesting ethical questions along the way. To achieve the implicit objective, the PC must become an interloper who lies, steals, commits acts of destruction that likely result in the death of innocents (and certainly result in large-scale destruction of property), and more. (At least, it seemed like that was the case; perhaps there are options to avoid such questionable trade-offs.) Are the "failed" timelines inherently unreal? Do your harmful actions somehow not count in them? Do the ends truly justify the means when trying to "win" the game?

In addition to the big questions, there are smaller ones. For example, a key NPC will more likely than not (Spoiler - click to show)go on a magic-induced rampage at a pivotal event early on, killing several people and possibly the PC. At a "later" point in the game, the player is presented with a choice that effectively asks whether or not to forgive her for something that she hasn't done in this cycle. Are you judging her for who she is in the here-and-now, or what you know she could be under the wrong circumstances? This question isn't new to time travel tropes, but it felt new here, stressing the way that both the player's and protagonist's perspectives shift due to the "outsider" viewpoint being experienced.

The "key scenes only" approach sometimes feels limiting. I would have loved a more fine-grained treatment of the plot -- one that starts to answer the in-game question (Spoiler - click to show)"How much are you changing things, by breathing and walking and sometimes being a little late for breakfast in unrepeatable patterns? How much is just the universe's randomness?" -- but I recognize that the complexity being managed is already quite large. The choice interface seems like an appropriate decision -- it's hard to imagine the same game with a parser. (Hadean Lands is the closest thing to it, but it has no need to implement NPCs.) To be sure, I'm probably underestimating the total complexity -- my own play took several hours but was far from a completist run, since I opted out of every romance thread. (A special hat tip to the author here: I truly appreciated that "none of the above" was an option for the romance subplots.) Since the PC can develop close but non-romantic relationships with various NPCs, it's clear that that the alleged dating sim aspect is driven by the author's diligence in exploring the potential of what RadioactiveCrow's review calls the "human connections" of the situation space.

This game is very good, but I'm going with 3 stars instead of 4 because there are a few places where it slipped a gear (i.e. seemed to be responding to things that had not happened or had happened differently, due to errors in state-tracking). The writing is a bit flat, as well, with a workman-like functional quality that doesn't always do justice to the scenes being portrayed. Relatively small improvements in either of those aspects would have gotten it over the edge. I definitely recommend this game both as an enjoyable play experience and as a rewarding subject of study in the craft of interactive fiction.

When I first played this game, I’d forgotten what I’d heard about the gameplay, so the main mechanic was a delightful surprise. I recommend playing it that way before reading any more about it (including the rest of this review).

What I love about games with this mechanic is that they give the story a sense of perspective that’s otherwise hard to convey, and not easy to stumble upon in daily life. Stay? has a heartening perspective on the human experience, both from a broad vantage point—whether looking back on a decades-long struggle, journeying to faraway places, or comparing the distant outcomes of different life choices—and from close enough to smell the flower petals on graduation day.

At first the world seemed oddly empty, with large chunks of the player character’s story omitted and certain characters missing the expected dimensionality. But as it looped and branched, the exponential growth of the story made it feel like this world—and probably also our world—was infinite. That sense of awe gets me every time.

Not every time loop game does this, but Stay? manages it with smart design choices: It includes less and less detail as you loop—because you only need to read the same paragraph so many times—but then starts adding in new details that would naturally become salient as you developed into a weary time traveler. New random asides felt perfectly timed for emotional impact, and new choices appeared just when the old options were getting stale. And there are kindnesses like offering a recap at the beginning of each loop, and rewarding the player for trying new options, even the boring ones like “no, I don’t want to hang out with anyone right now.”

Also, the story just felt good. Things are very wrong, but get to know the people and the world around you and you can learn how to put them right. It’s a powerful message, and it’s told through gameplay rather than, say, clunky dialogue.

When a game fundamentally changes the way I see the world by expanding my perspective, however briefly, I will give that game five stars even if it’s filled with bugs and typos. This game has a few, but it’s fine. They just provide further evidence that this game was written by someone who very much understands what it is to be human.

This was a lovely game experience. Usually, when a story buries the lede it doesn't serve it well--in this case, a major hook arriving at what seemed like the end of the story? Absolutely fascinating.

I am a sucker for the mechanic of this game--(Spoiler - click to show)Groundhog Day/loop/repeating days, or lifetimes in this case. (I was glad I didn't know about it going in, so I recommend playing before reading any reviews!) There is something about the way it drives narrative and player experience that will always compel me.

It also felt like a game--something I don't see as much with choice-based pieces. There was a clear mystery to solve and I had to plan my steps to try and figure it out. I had a lot of fun exploring my options.

The writing style is a bit removed, which is not normally my preference, but it's strong and consistent throughout the story and does lend itself well to the game mechanic. The story is detailed where it needs to be and streamlined in other places. I would, a bit, question the "dating sim" aspect of the game as it never felt to me like the relationships were the point of the narrative but rather a natural byproduct of it. Though I wasn't unsatisfied, so I won't question that hard.

Overall, great experience. I'm glad I played.