The story of Argonus and the Gods of Stones Tat weaves a story of old and new myths and legends in an exciting way to present a classic adventure. The developers of the game are Zojo Studios.
Argonus is the son of the man who built the Argo, the ship that carried the legendary Jason and the Argonauts. As the story of 1242 BC Begins, Argonus sails aboard the ship when it is attacked and the eponymous hero falls into the sea. There he is rescued by Athena and dragged ashore on a nearby island, where the real game begins. After watching the impressive march of a giant stone warrior overhead, Argonus ventures inland and discovers that everything is not all right, as both the population and the other survivors of the attack on the Argo have been turned to stone.
When you explore the island and find out what happened to the people. You will encounter a number of Greek gods and goddesses, although Athena is the only one that you will actually run into. The rest are represented in temples, each of which has a statue dedicated to one of the deities. As you approach this sculpture, it comes to life, filled with the essence of the god or goddess that it represents.
The island is also home to other inhabitants of Greek mythology, with creatures such as griffins, harpies, and the Minotaur. The skeleton warriors are impressive and help with some of the puzzles in the game. The developers refer to Ray Harryhausens and the film Jason and the Argonauts as an inspiration, a fact that is most evident in the appearance and movement of these skeletons. The jerking of stop-motion animations is not apparent.
This is a 100% adventure game where the action moments are only shown in cinematic cut scenes. There are some good head nuts for puzzles that often require information and items from all over the islands to be solved. One such opportunity is to drive a herd of harpies through a complex series of seemingly distinct steps, the main cue of which requires that one challenge be overcome first.
Special care should be taken when talking to the gods. Each of them gives Argonus the assignments that it needs to carry out and, in varying degrees, gives indications of what needs to be done in order to carry out its tasks. Each god can only be asked once to give the assignment and will not speak again until this challenge is completed. This means that it can be easy to overlook or not understand the meaning of what the gods have to say.
For example, you have to free the trapped souls in the statues to advance on the island. It is useful to take notes on where the statues are located. Some sort of indicator would have been useful to tell when a statue is nearby.
Navigation is via mouse and keyboard, as is typical for first-person 3D games, or with the game controller, both of which work equally well. The island is huge, but big enough that you can run from place to place. Fortunately, the game features both a hold-to-run button and, even better, a toggle run option. As you wander across the island, small gray circles appear on distant things that you can interact with. As you get closer, they glow amber and can be examined with a left click and sometimes used with a right click. Most puzzles are inventory based, so interactions mainly consist of picking up items or using items already collected by dragging them from an otherwise hidden page inventory onto one of the hotspot circles.
On an island there are hardly any differences between the places visited. Several small villages shape the landscape with modest buildings. The temples are larger and made of stone and marble. In between there are various forms of wilderness, whether sandy beaches and churned seas on the coast, tall, windswept grass or dense forest areas. These locations could feel very repetitive, especially since they were all created in a drab, desaturated, almost sepia-colored palette, but surprisingly, that's not the case. Both the positive and negative space have been used well so that each area feels different, even if it can be built from the same basic building blocks as another region. A sparse forest winding on a cliff feels very different from the almost cave-like path through denser and more claustrophobic vegetation around the Temple of Hades.
One of the most famous places that you will visit is the labyrinth. Fortunately, it's a maze with a trick. At the entrance, a small model of the maze can be manipulated, and the goal is not to find a way through the maze, but to pave one. The maze is arranged in concentric circles, and rotating on the model changes the structure itself, moving different doors.
Argon involves a number of mythological elements. They mostly take into account the events on the island passed down by the gods and can be as helpful or vengeful, as honorable or as promiscuous as they are in the actual legend. At the same time, the developers did what all good storytellers did with these myths over time: they took the various details and tweaked them to tell a new and engaging story.
The famous muse of eloquence and epic poetry serves as the sole voice for the entire game, save for a certain number of optional comments from Argonus or when the gods themselves speak. Calliope has everything from telling the story to describing simple household items while examining items in the villages. The voice actress for Calliope is pretty good, speaking in slow, measured tones with a North American accent that is calming. The text is very reminiscent of the written myths on which the story is based. You want to find out more about who or what was responsible for petrifying the villages - and just as importantly, why. The motivations of the "bad guys" are completely believable, especially in the context of the mythology from which they are inspired.
The sounds of Calliope are not the only audio accompaniment throughout the journey. The sound effects are well done and a suitably mythical orchestral soundtrack underlines most of the adventure and adapts to new situations. It leans more toward the fantastical and adventurous, with legendary creatures battling each other, choral voices rising as you approach one of the temple gods, and beautifully blending into the Background retreat if you just wander around the island and take in the sights. A simple ambient sound guides you to important areas on the island.
The game has some nice user-friendly details that make for a solid and fun experience. Argonus enables free storage. It also takes advantage of its loading screens. The island is divided into half a dozen areas with a fast loading screen between them. Rather than offering game tips while you wait, these screens offer snippets of the backstory of Argonus and its origins in chronological order. The story never passes the point where you are yourself.
Another welcome feature is the in-game map, which you can access at the touch of a button. Instead of using it for quick travel, this map marks the locations of the most important puzzles as soon as they are completed. When you click on these, Argonus himself shares his thoughts on the work he's done, while stylish pencil drawings are sketched to illustrate these challenges. These considerations are the only point in the game where you hear Argonus' voice, which is too bad as the actor comes across well with his voice.
The narrative consists of five acts, which are referred to here as "books". After a “Director's Cut” update, the game reaches its final climax in an interactive epilogue after the start. The developers have added a new addition that combines various elements of the story into an emotional conclusion.
Conclusion
Argonus and the Gods of Stone offers an interesting island area for hiking and exploring, and reveals an exciting secret that's full of action and intrigue along the way. Various quality of life features make this a solid gaming experience across the board, and while a few puzzles are easier to solve. Overall, it's a fair but challenging puzzle experience. It has the fantastic elements of Greek mythology, the weight of ancient times and is a really great adventure. There is definitely a recommendation for puzzle enthusiasts.
