Stela is an epic poem of a game that plucks at the heart and makes you yearn for a world that you never knew existed. It’s what this wonderful medium of gaming should strive towards, and for me it’s very nearly the perfect experience.
Including all unavoidable failures and retries, it only takes two hours to play Stela through. In that sense, the asking price of twenty bucks is a bit too steep. However, the game is well done and the gameplay focuses only on the essential as there’s nothing extra to distract you. There are plenty of similar games out here (Limbo, Inside and Little Nightmares to name a few) and despite somewhat unfortunately hollow emotional response, fans of the genre will find a competent puzzle-platformer in Stela. As of writing, no one has clocked the achievement for zero deaths during a playthrough so the game is a perfect challenge for die-hard completionists out there.
Stela is similarly brief but also a fleeting experience that doesn’t make much of an impact while you’re playing or linger once you complete it mostly due to its hollow world. Even its strongest parts — like its deliberate platforming and dazzling visual flair — are diluted elements from Limbo and Inside, two games that it pulls from in nearly every aspect that make the parallels unavoidable.
Stela builds upon the Limbo foundations, but it ends up being too simplistic and doesn’t really use its distinctive features, like the 2’D design of some stages. That, and being quite short and not particularly replayable, makes it fall behind its competitors.