Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.In a corner of London’s National Gallery hangs a small, shadowy canvas by Francisco de Goya. “A Scene from ‘The Forcibly Bewitched’” shows a priest desperately refilling an oil lamp in the form of a giant, skeletal ram. As painted donkeys dance on the darkened wall behind, his hand covers his mouth in terror. He has been told he will die if the light goes out.Goya’s painting provided the unlikely inspiration behind stealth adventure game The Stone of Madness. There is the sinister, supernatural aesthetic of its 18th-century Pyrenean monastery setting, which the developers drew directly from the Spanish painter’s style. And there is the game’s protagonist, Father Alfredo Martin, a tortured soul whom we must guide around the monastery’s cloisters and corridors hunting — oil lamp in hand — for clues about the disturbing goings-on there.Forget bucolic visions of monks brewing beer and devoting themselves to quiet prayer — this isn’t that kind of monastery. Father Alfredo has been imprisoned in its cells amid a spate of kidnappings, interrogations and deaths as higher-ups search for a mysterious stone said to cure all ailments. It’s up to you to help the poor priest find the truth and make it out alive.Luckily, you’re not alone in this quest. Four other characters, all with their own faculties and faiblesses, are on hand to help. There’s a well-to-do lady named Leonora who can’t stand to be around fire; Eduardo, a hulk of a man who happens to be afraid of the dark; Agnes, elder stateswoman and dispenser of magic and gossip; and Amelia, a kleptomaniac child terrified of gargoyles. Their eccentricities determine where they will and won’t go, and how they interact with the array of monks, nuns, guards and patients who call the monastery home.The Stone of Madness is a stealth game at heart: the isometric perspective, convenient crates to hide behind and the guards’ narrow cones of vision are tropes of the genre. What sets your abbatial adventures apart is having to rely on multiple characters at a time to achieve your goals: distracting a guard with Eduardo, knocking them out with Leonora, all the while flicking a switch with Father Alfredo, say. It takes time to get into the rhythm of cycling between the characters and ensuring they’re all in the right place at the right time. When it works, it’s an intricate dance around a detailed historical diorama, one whose scope ingeniously scales with the abilities you unlock for the characters. But when it doesn’t — because animations interrupt your flow, or visual elements glitch out, or menus refuse to function properly — the spell is suddenly broken. It doesn’t help that the dialogue desperately lacks nuance, and characters often seem to be speaking more for the benefit of the player than to one another. There are times when it feels as though The Stone of Madness wants to break out from its medium and just present a set of images as unique and intriguing as Goya’s. And it almost does — until the artificialities of cutscenes, menus and prompts get in the way of the theatre that it wants you to act out. But none of these features are prerequisites for a game: animations can be toned down, cutscenes cut and menus streamlined. And you’ll likely wish, treading the flagstones of this fascinating monastery, that they were.★★★☆☆Available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch now
