Whitestone

Review

You play as Jack, and your friend Geoff has got you a job aboard the Sunchaser working in the Archaeology department as an apprentice. The Sunchaser is on a voyage to the Artic, but it won’t be held back by seas of ice, as the Sunchaser is an airship. With the help of your friend Geoff, you hope to learn and also have a bit of fun on the journey. However, things soon don’t seem to make sense; Geoff doesn’t seem to be around, and no-one even knows him, yet he is the one who got you the job on the Sunchaser. So, where is he and what is going on aboard the Sunchaser?

On your first day you are shown around the Sunchaser where you introduce yourself to the staff. Your day on the Sunchaser is divided into morning, afternoon and evenings. You’ll wake up in the morning (most of the time, lazy git oversleeps a bit) usually to someone calling you, and you will then head off to work for Professor Clarke. He’ll send you off to do a couple chores, after which you can spend the rest of the day left to your own devices. You may have other objectives to complete but if not, you can do whatever you want, such as visiting the Library to read books and learn new information.

The Sunchaser is divided into different floors; you have the Commons, Main Deck and Lower Deck. In the Commons you will find places like the Library, Infirmary, Dining Room and Ballroom.

At the end of day, you head back to your quarters where you can crawl into your pit and get a good night's sleep. Just remember to save your current progress by visiting the white door which opens if you walk towards it. I discovered the hard way that this is how you save your progress; instead of walking to the right (which opens the door), I went left after crawling out of my pit to start work. It wasn’t until a bit later when I needed to leave that I couldn’t see how to save my game; there’s no save button in the Settings or anywhere else. There is a Load Game in the options which has Quick and Normal Save options to load, but I couldn’t find out how to save my game. So, after a bit I thought, well it has Quick Save so maybe the game is being saved automatically for me. Then I hit on my next problem, trying to exit the game. I found the exit button (Y on game pad) in the Settings, but no matter how many times I hit the Y button the game just would not close. I have had buttons not working right away while in-game so I was thinking this was the case here, too. However, it got to the point where I was almost bashing my fist down on the Y button, but still the game would not close. So, I went old sk00l and hit ALT+F4; the bloody game closed then.

Later that night I decided to carry on playing. However, upon starting the game and going to Load Screen, I noticed that my game hadn’t been Quick Saved as I had hoped. So, I had to restart the game from scratch, which was a bit of a pain as I found the beginning of the game a bit slow.

Jack starts suffering hallucinations while on the Sunchaser and you will switch between being on the Sunchaser and in your hallucinations at various points in the game. Jack will fight horrors while hallucinating; you have a pistol and axe as weapons, and you can buy more from the Magician and Pablo.  The Magician and Pablo will sell you other items as well, which may be of interest.  Alternatively, you can sell anything you don’t want to them. While in these hallucinations, things on Sunchaser don’t go as smoothly as they should, and you quickly become a person of interest to the authorities.

You can interact with other crew members and characters throughout the Sunchaser. Some may have a task for you, and while some of the tasks must be completed within a certain time frame, other tasks can be ignored. If you respond favourably to characters, you’ll gain increased affection.  However, you can also lose affection if you don’t make the right choices. You will have choices to make depending on the situation.

Professor Clarke gave you an Alchemical Cube which you can use to craft items such as potions, bullets and other things. You will need to find the right resources; these can be found during hallucinations by breaking barrels or other items, as well as from defeating monsters who may drop sacks of loot while lurking about. The loot could be resources such as Sulphur, Copper bullets or even a few pennies. You can then use the pennies to buy various items, new weapons and resources from the Magician and Pablo if you spot them on your journey.

Along with his weapons, Jack also has Elements Powers at his disposal. These can be upgraded with the right resources and used to help you to defeat your enemies.

I did find the game a bit slow to begin with, but it became more interesting the further I got into the game. The artwork is good, and I haven’t had too much in the way of problems. I mentioned earlier the slight problem with saving the game and losing my progress, however, there are a couple other little problems I’ve encountered. One of the problems is that sometimes when pressing a button on my gamepad nothing works, they are just unresponsive, only for a second or two but still a little bit annoying at times.

The other problem I have noticed is that the Achievements are not working. Now this isn’t a really big problem for me but there are those for whom this may be a game breaker. Hopefully they will sort the problem out with some updates in the future.

In the options you have settings for AV (Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Master Volume and Resolution), Game (Colour Mode, V-Sync, Player and Enemy Outline, Minimal Shadows and Lights), and Controller options with five Controller Type gamepad layouts.

That reminds me, setting a new resolution doesn’t seem to save, and no matter what changes I make, the difference is negligible.  

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

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