The Stone of Madness Review – A Dark and Unforgiving Escape

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Oh, we all long for real-time tactical stealth on the battlefields of…a Spanish monastery where you are being held captive by Jesuits for witchcraft and possibly heresy?! Let’s say this isn’t exactly well-trod ground to begin with, but coming from the folks behind Blasphemous, that’s to be expected. Rather than setting up sick noscope headshot across the map or positioning your assassin for a quick kill, you are carefully setting up your team of outcasts and alleged heretics to…take out that gargoyle so you can disable the guard so you can find out just what in the world is going on here.

The Stone of Madness
Developer: The Game Kitchen
Price: $29.99
Platform: PC (reviewed), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review

Survival, Stealth, and Sanity Under Siege

If that all sounds appealing, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that it’s as stylish and atmospheric as a game like this should be, with hand drawn art and moody music that sets the tone of oncoming madness and increasing desperation as your little band’s bodies and minds slowly wither away.

Large Eduardo is surprisingly quiet and can move boxes and break down walls, but he’s afraid of the dark.
Amelia is tiny and sneaky, able to sneak through tunnels and pick pockets…but she is terrified of gargoyles. Fortunately, there’s…oh, god, this is the worst place for that kind of thing.
Agnes is a witchy old lady who can cast curses, but you know, that’s also a downside considering you’re a heretic hanging around with witches. Allegedly.
Leonora can climb walls, pick locks, and drop ropes. She can also knock out and even kill guards, though her guilt will lead her to harm herself if she does…but she is also terrified of fire. Fortunately in this time period…oh no
Lastly, Alfredo can put on a priest’s robe and blend in with the rest of the clergy. Of course, they do object to you doing that, what with the heresy and everything.

Your motley crew can only venture out in groups of 3 during the day, so I am sure you’re already seeing how these various skills and phobias interlock. Or if you haven’t played Darkest Dungeon, well, remedy that. Daytime is for taking them out to explore, look for clues, find new resources, and work on escaping. The night is for planning, recovering health and sanity as best you can, and scheming. Staying up late can wear people down, but can also provide potential opportunities to aid in your eventual escape.

This push and pull continues to the base mechanics: everyone in the crew has health, suspicion, and sanity to manage, and they’re always being nibbled away by being in captivity even if you’re not out trying to figure out what the monks are up to. There’s always the temptation to push just a bit more, with the prospect of driving one of your people incredibly insane or adding to their ongoing troubles.

The interplay of those mechanics and phobias also works out in crew selection: Not only do I need to consider the team management and everyone’s health, sanity, suspicion, and fears, but I also have to consider that in the context of solving the puzzle or completing the mission. For example, not only do I have to get them to the area in question, I have to make sure it’s not full of gargoyles or get rid of the gargoyles if they ARE there (spoiler: they are), or find a way around, and I can only take three at a time and…hmm, no, this is going to take some planning and trial and error.

That is, unfortunately, where things can go awry: With decaying health and sanity, the trial and error gameplay and bugginess aren’t exactly forgiving. Controls can be finicky, which is rough when you’re running from guards and trying not to get caught. Some puzzles are just plain hard to figure out and sometimes they’re broken when you do figure them out. Sometimes, it seems like it just wasn’t playtested and sometimes that autosave just won’t autosave. BEWARE THE JANK, YON TRAVELERS, I say.

A Brilliant Idea, but Rough Execution

But if you’re willing to put up with that sort of ongoing pressure on your health and sanity (oh, how very meta), it is, at least, an intriguing experiment and a certainly unconventional game in a genre that usually tends to be more about 360 noscopes and sick kills than reckoning with the fragile mental health of your band of heretics who may or may not be falsely accused as they seek to escape a monastery. One day, they’ll make that The Name of the Rose Black Ops they keep hinting at, but until then, this is what we’ve got.

The Final Word
The Stone of Madness offers a unique blend of tactical stealth and psychological survival, set in an eerie Spanish monastery. While its mechanics create engaging tension, the game’s difficulty, trial-and-error structure, and technical issues might frustrate some players.