Diorama 'em up Quiet As A Stone skips onto Steam
A monolithic mood
Fans of pretty little scenes, dolls' houses, landscaping, and clicking on things might fancy a look at Quiet As A Stone, a game I have for several months struggled to explain well. These wee rocks are floating in space, right, covered in trees and grass and rocks and things, and you can click to cut grass and break stones to get scenery pieces like plants and trees and walls and new rocks to redecorate the scene as you please. It's a quiet and pleasant curio, and it's now launched on Steam with a big update.
I like it. I've played bits on and off since Quiet As A Stone first launched earlier this year on Itch. Sometimes I plant gardens, build ruins, and erect mysterious circles of monoliths. Sometimes I look around the different landscapes, watching day and night and rain and shine come and go. Sometimes I just click on stuff to cut grass and smash gems because clicking is fun.
It is strange, the intersection of moody dioramas and clicking. If you want to redecorate scenes, you will need to click to cut grass and smash stones to discover new objects to place. But it's not a clicker game, because the only progress is... getting to make more-elaborate dioramas? Which I'm okay with.
The Steam release in late November was accompanied by an update with big performance improvements and, far more important, wee campfires crackling away in many scenes.
It's made by Richard Whitelock of Distant Lantern Studios. He started Quiet As A Stone in 2015 to help "work through a few ideas" for his other projects, including the pretty and deadly tourism 'em up Into This Wylde Abyss, then fell deep into it. I'd forgotten all about Wylde Abyss; now I'm reminded how much I want to wander with a camera while slowly freezing to death.
Quiet As A Stone is out now for £7.19/€8.19/$9.99 on Steam and Itch.io. If you bought it on Itch, you should now have a Steam key to redeem.
Here's Whitelock mucking about with an older version back in January:
