At the shores of an uncharted island Mythos, a ship Argo crashes on the rocks. Argonus, a sailor, a chronicler and a friend of the hero Jason, wakes up from the shore, startled by the statues scattered all around him. These statues, lifelike and frozen in horror, bear the visage of his former crewmates of Argo. It is evident, that some sort of foul sorcery is running amok on the isle and for some reason, Argonus is the only one spared of the fate of his friends. And then he sees a colossal statue made of iron striding the sea.
Argonus explorers further, only to find children, men and women unknown to him, all frozen into similar statues as his friends. As he moves further inland, he is suddenly pushed aside by an unseen force and a voice beckons him to stay hidden. Two slithering bodies move past him. Gorgons, sisters of the fabled Medusa, whose visage turned men into stone. Then Athena herself appears to him, conveying what has happened.
Maddened by the fate of their sister, the Gorgons are determined to find the way to Hades, from where they mean to free Medusa. Unrelenting in their hatred, they've gone through every temple of the island, turning every man, beast and monster they've encountered into stone in their wake. It is now up to Argonus to thwart the plans of the snake sisters.
Five gods reside on the island and in order to proceed, Argonus has to find a way to please them. Which basically means you have to solve a varying range of puzzles, some easy, some harder. Perhaps the biggest problem with the puzzles is the ones, which require you to source the island for multiple items, some of which can be somewhat hard to find. That said, with the items you need multiple of, the game does provide more than the puzzles need. For example, at one point you have to make charcoal, to which you need 10 pieces of wood. Most of these you can find already from the beach at the beginning of the game and if you've, in a proper adventure game fashion, picked up everything that isn't nailed down, you should have more than plenty wood long before you even have to solve the puzzle in question. Not that it makes a design of the said puzzle stellar, but it at least shows the designers wanted to ease it up a bit.
As the game is a 1st person exploration adventure, this does also mean, that you do have to travel the locations back and worth after you've found what you need to solve a puzzle. This is at times a bit tedious form of gameplay and can turn the game into a bit of an aimless experience, as you do have to remember what is in which location. It also does take quite a while before the quick travel location is unlocked, so running around is a common occurrence.
This running around is perhaps the single most annoying feature of how the gameplay has been designed. It is enhanced even further when after a while you gain the daimon ability to free the souls of the unfortunate people turned to stone. Though this is more of a voluntary aspect and you don't have to free everyone in order to finish the game.
Another relatively old school design choice is a maze. But in Argonus, there is a small twist about is, as you can alter the maze. At one point, you stumble upon the abode if the fabled Minotaur. In order to navigate it, you have to devise a route through to one of the exits of the circular maze by rotating a wheel map outside the entrances. This, I found out, makes the maze a bit more agreeable puzzle rather than an obstacle to be brute-forced through.
As it does seem customary to the design of the game, you do have to go through the maze a couple of times. Again, it does get easier later on when you finally get the teleport stone, but you do have to return to the maze at least once after that to solve another puzzle. It's not too laborious, but depending on how stuck you are in the game, it is something that can get a bit tedious and repetitive.
Most of the time, the puzzle-solving is tied to using the right inventory items in the right place. This happens simply by getting near the hotspot and dragging the right item over it from the inventory. What makes things a bit easier, is the choice of making the use-interaction visible on the hotspot if inventory item can be used on it. If you only see the examine icon, then looking is the only thing you can do to the hotspot.
You could argue, that this makes the puzzle easy, but this also makes the game more agreeable, as you already are running around quite a bit at times, trying to find the items you need. For example, at one point I had an inkling of that I needed a mallet and tongs. So I knew the puzzle location and the solution, the only thing I had to do was to find the items I needed. So after a bit too much running I finally did find them and could return complete the puzzle.
And that really is the nice thing about the puzzle design, overall, as there is a logic in it. If you see a forge and have to forge an item, you know you need a hammer and tongs, not some obscure thing you'd never connect to blacksmithy. Some of the puzzle solutions also come from Greek mythology, so if you are versed in that, the game is again made a bit easier.
Graphically the game looks fine. I'm not the biggest fan of the sepia tones which govern the graphics, perhaps in an attempt of making the game feel more like an old sword and sandal movie in the vein of Jason and the Argonauts. I do like how the main features of the island look and the location design, especially what comes to the temples, is rather nice.
What really helps the game a lot is the fantastic soundtrack, which enrichens the mystical feel of the island. The voice acting is good as well. Most of the acting is on the narrator, Betsy Brantley, who does a solid job. If you've bought the DLC extras, you also get an audiobook version of the game narrated by her. That also doubles as a walkthrough.
Overall, all the little issues I had with the game aside, I quite liked it. It is a well-made game with some nice puzzles and a solid story set in the myths of ancient Greece. In fact, to base an adventure directly inside Greek myths is somewhat of a rarity. Sure, many games do riff on them, use them as a spice, but to be solely about the myths is rarer.
So that in mind, you do want to embark upon an adventure in myths, Argonus and the Gods of Stone is a good choice. You can get if from Steam.
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