The Stone of Madness: Embrace your fears in this 18th century prison break sim

1.17.2025
By Francisco Dominguez, Contributor

The Stone of Madness is a surprising departure for The Game Kitchen. Whatever you thought was coming next from the studio best known for the Blasphemous series—a pair of gothic Metroidvanias with a sharp sense of style and a deeply Andalucian sensibility—you almost certainly didn't expect an immersive sim stealth tactics title.

Director Maikel Ortega and Lead Level Designer Enrique Colinet previously told us the genre pivot was still rooted in the studio’s commitment to showcasing Spanish culture. The Stone of Madness pairs a nationally beloved genre—the stealth-RTS popularised by Commandos and Mimimi titles like Shadow Tactics—with the 18th century setting of The Abbey of Crime, an influential 1987 murder mystery title for the Amstrad that was never released outside of Spain.

After playing the prologue, plotting my own prison break from an asylum in the isolated Pyrenees mountains, it became clear that the studio's genre shift was just the first of many surprises. I sat down with the two masterminds behind The Stone of Madness to uncover their plans for the cast of five inmates, and the many mysteries of the dynamic monastery they’re itching to escape.
 

Unconventional approaches and unexpected consequences


Colinet says with pride that “failing is fun." And it’s a good thing that it is, because I failed often during my demo! The Stone of Madness gives you control of three inmates, and you’re simultaneously responsible for preserving their hit points, shielding them from various phobias, and stopping guards’ suspicions from rocketing out of control. It’s a lot of resources to manage—a sophisticated tabletop-style push-and-pull between competing incentives, underpinned by an immersive sim’s dedication to giving players countless ways to navigate the problems that arise.

But Colinet assures me you’re free to find your own pace, thanks to the absence of true fail states and the game’s day-by-day structure.
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“Whether you select easy or hard mode, it doesn't matter—the game will be as hard as you want it to be because you can focus on really small objectives every day that passes in the monastery," says Colinet. “If your objective that day is to open that door, then that can be it. You can just focus on a single thing per day, and that makes the game way easier to handle for people that aren’t used to the [tactical stealth] genre. But of course, if you’re more hardcore, you can try to complete several objectives in one day.”

When night falls, it brings a chance to spend action points to recover health and sanity, lower suspicion, and conduct helpful actions like crafting new items, smuggling illicit wares, and drugging guards so you can explore unimpeded all morning. Ortega stresses this is key to success. They envision the game as a heist, and preparation is key.

“That's really important to play the game comfortably, getting used to the cycle of the monastery—playing during the day phase, then going to the cell during the night phase, spending your resources, and then planning for the next day,” says Ortega.

Despite those reassuring words, I’m still embarrassed by a memorable blunder. For one objective, I simply had to speak to Agnes, the blind witch. I tried—but unfortunately for me, I’d chosen Eduardo the mute. Eduardo immediately lost the threads of his remaining sanity, collapsed, and was incapacitated for the day.
Stone Of Madness Eduardo
My attempt to engage in a simple conversation both removed Eduardo from the day’s action—depriving my party of his strength, which allows him to create bridges, move obstacles and distract guards—and also unlocked a new fear, claustrophobia, one of several unpleasant surprises that can further confine a character’s actions. And all this from a nonchalant attempt to say hello! I hadn’t been so embarrassed since I failed my Savoir Faire check and died straining to retrieve Harry Du Bois’s necktie from a ceiling fan in Disco Elysium’s opening.

It was a stark demonstration of how these characters’ distinct skills are paired with equally distinct weaknesses, phobias whose proximity drains their sanity at alarming speed. It’s by design, Colinet explains. Their teamwork potential is paired with sources of friction. “Sometimes, in order to help one character, you are creating an inconvenience for another character,” he says.

So while complementary skills aid your progress—like Alfredo lighting the way with his oil lamp so that Eduardo can face his fear of the dark, or the child Amelia worming through narrow grates that bar passage for adults—these profound weaknesses coalesce into a fascinating layer of constraints and trade-offs. I found myself regretting a reckless killing spree with Leonara once I realised the pacifist Alfredo was now too scared to rejoin the group, meaning I had to ferry bodies elsewhere to appease my squeamish padre. I’d sabotaged my own plan with an unfortunate domino chain.

In fact many players (myself included) may find that violent means aren’t the most expedient solution. Violence is an option, but one that comes at a cost—the guilt of murder depleting one of Leonara’s scant HP, or a temporary knock-out expending whichever resource you’ve used to all-too-briefly daze your victim.
Stone Of Madness Leonara
“One of the things we want is for people to try unconventional approaches that don't require knocking out or killing guards. That's usually the easiest solution because you’re removing the obstacle—but there are so many tools that you can use that don't remove an obstacle but distract them or temporarily create a passage for you,” says Colinet. “I think those kinds of solutions are more interesting once you can pull them off. They feel rewarding to players. But of course, if you want to just stone every guard or kill every guard, you can do that!”

Colinet’s preferred method is creating panic. Using a distraction to cause chaos can result in inmates, nuns, and friars alike running screaming around the monastery and pulling guards away from their positions. It works, though the outcome can be unpredictable. Colinet recalls a time when this method led his character not one step closer to freedom, but into the waiting jaws of a bear-trap, shoved by a panicking inmate into a fate as agonising as an Inquisitor’s cruelest whim.
 

Ain’t no mountain high enough


The Stone of Madness was initially started by Teku Studio, who now collaborate with The Game Kitchen on the title. Teku Studio's previous title, The Candle, is a puzzle game with an ornate painterly aesthetic, and their strength in this area is evident in The Stone of Madness’s Goya-esque visuals, baroque with a striking contrast between lights and dark that suits its stealth gameplay very well. No wonder Blasphemous’s pixel art wasn’t even considered.

The developers are fond of the Broken Sword games, a classic point-and-click adventure series with an affinity for historical fantasy. The Broken Sword games were known in part for their rotoscoped characters, a technique where video footage from live actors is traced over to produce realistic animations. It's an old technique, used (for instance) in the original Prince of Persia, and the results can be impressive—but the process is never easy.
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For The Stone of Madness, the team performed their own rotoscoping, acting out each motion while recorded by a camera that they dangled from the ceiling to mirror an isometric perspective. That attention to detail is palpable when seeing The Stone of Madness in action—one particular highlight is the satisfying (and weighty) swing Leonara uses to knock out guards with a plank of wood.

While art styles like these often look stunningly characterful, they’ve gone out of vogue in isometric games, which increasingly opt for polygonal graphics—from Disco Elysium to The Thaumaturge. After working with the bespoke demands of rotoscoped artwork, Ortega understands exactly why, even if they don't regret bucking the trend.

“It's incredibly painful and expensive,” explains Ortega. “You need a team that's really focused on that kind of graphics. If you don't, it doesn't make sense. It will always be more efficient to go 3D because, in our case, every scenario is hand painted. Every single decision that leads to changing a part of the environment forces our main artist to destroy a beautiful part of the scenario and repaint it. If the level needs to change, the painting needs to change, and that's really inefficient!"

As lead level designer, Colinet is doubtless responsible for many frustrated artists. Regardless, he makes a strong case that over-optimization risks losing the distinct character and painstakingly high standards that The Game Kitchen and its audience both treasure in their releases.
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“Game development is about creativity. It's about trying different things and offering different things and, sometimes, you just need to do things the hard way,” says Colinet. “There is a game, [Unravel], that has every character done by embroidering the character in yarn, which is crazy! It's definitely not ideal, definitely not efficient, but that's the beauty of it. It's hard to be unique if you don't get just a bit crazy.”

The Stone of Madness releases January 28 on the Epic Games Store.