Standpoint is a first person puzzle game based upon the five stages of grief, inspired by other titles of a similar nature such as portal, q.u.b.e and the like, standpoint allows you to explore the world through the eyes of whatever entity you happen to be exploring stages based around the five stages of grief.
It would seem that you are a thought process traversing the inside of someones mind as they progress through the five stages, all too quickly loss is overcome as much in life important things can be lost in the blink of an eye with no explaination, there are secrets to be discovered which might aid you in the process of understanding exactly what has been lost and the nature of your place in this world, but it could be easy to miss these factors as it can be easy to miss the important things in life which help you understand.
There are 20 levels in total and while you may feel this is a little short the puzzles can get rather challenging very quickly, and this also allows the developer more freedom to introduce new elements every level and give a more diverse experience whilst still following the main themes for the different area’s, where denial focuses on denying you access to area’s in some form, or even denial of solving the puzzle in the way you would initially wish, then onto anger where it could be very easy to get frustrated and lost as the puzzles are designed to be very devious and frustrating in a successful manner which has left me in a state of not being able to progress beyond this before the major release but not at a state that I would never want to quit the game entirely leaving me to come back another day and try again to progress. This is what you want with a puzzle game really, if the puzzles were too easy to solve out of the box especially on a game where there are 20 levels you would feel cheated and dissappointed to complete the entire game so quickly, instead this has the right balance of challenge whilst somehow managing to theme the levels rather well to the emotion desired, not only in the level design but also the temprement and nature of the narator who appears to be the same voice actor for maggie from tinykeep so particular associations can be made while playing both games together.
I am unsure if there will be alternative endings depending on how many secrets you find or wether you get some but not all, however if you want to hear the full story of what is going on you will probably want to find all of the secrets which are hidden away in sometimes easy to see locations, but in later stages are hidden to a much less obvious degree.
If you enjoy games of this nature this is definately another you will want to purchase, not only because of the different mechanics of gravity and mind bending qualities which work without fault, but also by buying the game and showing the developer you enjoy games of this nature it encourages sequels or more games of this nature to be made.
From what I have been able to complete so far the story does follow the stages of grief well, perhaps if you find no secrets you might be left more confused as to what is going on, but if you do find them the secret hidden memories do fill in the plot very well for such a brief insight into what has caused the grief or the joys which have been lost in the past, and if anything the game itself does a good job of highlighting depression and grief and bringing the subject out of the shadows, perhaps even allowing it to become a platform for people to talk about more openly, or even see they aren’t the only one holding these things inside or feeling these emotions, and that it is all part of the process of recovering.
Of course the five stages of grief can naturally cycle and jump, it would have been clever to put warp zones and mix the stages of grief a little, however being lost in anger I can not state outright this doesn’t occur, but it could perhaps be something for a sequel where the character relapses into grief and cycles in some form, the length of time to complete levels and stages though can be a clever way of associating the fact that different stages of grief are overcome by different people in thier own times and no set length.
Standpoint is available on steam march 5th http://store.steampowered.com/app/322550/?snr=1_5_1100__1100