Publisher: The Brotherhood
Developer: The Brotherhood
Year: 2017
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux

Rating: 3

I had no intention of playing Cayne, a sequel to the underwhelming Stasis. But another sequel, Bone Totem, came out in 2023 that is allegedly significantly better. Since I’m planning to play that soon, I figured I might as well play this one, especially since it’s free. Unfortunately, the only major part of Cayne that’s improved is that the punishment of playing is over quicker.

While Cayne is part of the same universe as Stasis and there’s some overlapping backstory, it’s a stand alone game. You play as Hadley, who has just woken up on a spaceship, nine months pregnant, on a bed with a grotesque scientist telling her he’s going to extract her baby using a machine that looks like a torture device. After taking care of him and escaping still with child, you must find your way off of the ship, which includes taking care of a bloodthirsty mutated human on your way out.

Like Stasis, you’ll see a slick isometric presentation. The cold exterior and gory science experiments at least rival that of its predecessor and deserves all the praise. The music also remains appropriately moody while allowing the spooky sounds of a near derelict ship falling apart to take center stage. The Brotherhood sure know how to create an atmosphere.

Sadly, pretty much every pitfall of Stasis remains. Full descriptions of important objects will appear as you hover the mouse over them, including details that Hadley couldn’t possibly know. Having more knowledge than the character you’re controlling is terribly awkward. On top of that, if you try to look at an object in the bottom right corner of the screen, the name of the object obscures the description. I know the game is free, but come on.

Also back is the god awful voice acting. Sarah Anne Williams, who voices Hadley, has been nominated for several voice acting awards for her work in other video games. So it makes me wonder if the voice directing is poor or Sarah just couldn’t do anything with the script. Hadley will voice out loud the “You can’t do that” messages when you try to use an item somewhere you cannot, and she has the most cringey lines to work with, including, “Come on sister,” and, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” She’s also directed to regularly huff and puff and moan in pain (no doubt due to being close to giving birth) and the noises all seem exaggerated.

The rest of the characters on board are a little easier on the ears, though their screen time is limited. Early on a disembodied voice speaks to Hadley no matter where she is on the ship and gently guides and encourages her (though without any helpful tips to provide). I may have just missed it, but after playing I still had no clue who this character was or why he was there.

The puzzles themselves generally involve a lot of locked doors on the ship in addition to combining inventory items. Some of them are entertaining to solve and often require you to glean information from crew member histories. As in Stasis, everyone’s PDAs are just lying about, undamaged, for you to read. While they bring a lot of (gross) flavor, the history of the ship and the reason Hadley is there remains a bit too vague for my tastes.

Sadly, some of the most difficult puzzles are right at the beginning and involve using a protein powder in ways so unintuitively that the moon wouldn’t find them logical. And while some of the inventory combining is fun, I solved half of those puzzles by just randomly smooshing objects together and hoping something useful would come out of it.

One of my favorite parts about Stasis was all of the gory deaths you could accidentally (or purposefully!) trigger. There’s only one way to die here and it’s easily avoidable, though admittedly entertaining as it comes with a gorgeous cutscene. What’s perhaps amped up is the perverseness of the ship’s scientists, especially since Hadley has to interact with some of the most disgusting and unethical experiments. While I could stomach them (barely), it could definitely turn off players who have any aversion to the genre.

I was also annoyed by the ending, though honestly I didn’t care enough about Hadley’s fate to get too worked up about it.

If you really enjoyed the first game of the series, you will probably like Cayne as its glaringly similar in many ways. If you didn’t like Stasis, then you can safely bypass Cayne, even if you intend on playing Bone Totem.