Stella's Journey

Stella's Journey is a bit flimsy. Which is apt, since it's about a cardboard box. Although less apt when you consider that that cardboard box shatters in quite an un-cardboard-like way whenever it touches something it shouldn't. Even water.

Rather than controlling the box itself, you're controlling the wind, puffing the floaty card cube by pushing a finger behind it. You need to work your way through the world, pushing buttons, avoiding spiky things, and staying out of the way of rolling rocks.

In principle it sounds like a pretty solid idea. There's a bit of Badland here, and at first glance the puzzles and problems, while simple, feel like they could add up to something a little more substantial.

But the problems kick in right from the tutorial. The wind-based controls just aren't sharp enough to ensure that you're not flapping into obstacles at any given time, and while you can fine tune things, you'll often start correcting your trajectory too late.

One puzzle involves picking up balls in your box to deposit on a button. These balls jump into your box automatically, and tip out when you come to rest on the button. Except they don't, not all the time, and what should be reasonably easy becomes fiddly and annoying.

Then there's the fact that you're not always sure what parts of the world are going to hurt you, meaning you can be overly cautious about a waterfall that's actually just a piece of the backdrop.

There are some nice ideas here, but Stella's Journey doesn't manage to squash them together into a cohesive whole. And even when it does it makes some errors that mean you're never having as much fun as you could be.

When you add that dissatisfaction to the fact that the whole game feels a little unfinished, you're left with an experience that's hard to recommend.