Still There – a heavily based, story-driven narrative game that was developed by GhostShark and published by Iceberg Interactive on November 20th, 2019. Take on the roll of Karl Hamba as you seek pure isolation among your spacecraft, The Bento. As you go about your daily goals aboard your ship, be sure to pass the time with additional tasks to avoid going insane. Despite feeling lost and empty, perhaps you might consider playing chess with your virtual companion or even experiment by converting your urine into pure, drinkable water. Throughout the gameplay of this title, you will encounter sad themes such as loss and grief, which may provoke intense emotions from the gamer. All in all, I definitely recommend this title, but I also suggest that you have a lot of patience because this game is quite daunting and infuriating at times.

While playing Still There, I must say that the story narrative is truly captivating. With heartfelt emotions, the game drives itself in a point-and-click adventure style narrative. With lots of dialogue and choices to choose from, the story will unfold in dramatic ways. Furthermore, the game presents itself with several challenges and puzzles that are truly difficult. Even though the player is granted an instructional manual to assist them aboard their ship, you MUST familiarize yourself with all 14 pages to ensure that you can successfully operate every switch, lever, and button on The Bento. Unfortunately, this is where I found the most difficulty to be with truly enjoying the game. As a result of the Nintendo Switch’s graphic limitations, this title can be a real pain to play handheld. I would strongly advise to play this game while in the dock, in order to have a much clearer and broader picture displayed on your tv or monitor. Nonetheless, the puzzles felt intuitive and necessary toward advancing the plot and I didn’t get the sense that they were gimmicky or simply a waste of time.

So many buttons to press… Where do I possibly start?

On top of all of that, Still There has a beautiful soundtrack player throughout the entire game. In terms of setting the atmospheric surroundings, the audio composition truly immerses the player within the game and sells itself even further. If there was anything that I could suggest for this game as a whole, I would say that I wish that the game was a little bit longer in content for the asking price point. What makes this game duration long, will depend on how long you spend attempting to solve all of the puzzles throughout the game itself. Even though this varies from person to person, I still feel as if the puzzles themselves suffice and complete this game in its entirety. Overall, I highly recommend this game to multiple puzzle-solving gamers out there and those whom are looking for an emotional narrative.

Still There
Developer: GhostShark
Still There - Announcement Trailer
Publisher: Iceberg Interactive

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