Stone Simulator – Just Be a Rock

We’re not here to debate whether Stone Simulator is a “video game.” We’re here to find out if Stone Simulator is the best dang stone simulator it can be. 

2 minutes in. A fairy comes from above, presents herself, and flies off with a wheee.

I didn’t buy something called “Stone Simulator” to find a first-person shooter, or a real-time strategy game, or an RPG. I wasn’t looking for action, adventure, or even action-adventure. I didn’t want triple-A indie, hardcore or casual, massively multiplayer or sports-related. I wanted something different. Perhaps evocative. Maybe absurd. 

5 minutes in. Fog rolls in. An enormous kraken scuttles across the landscape. My rock emotes a shrug emoji.

If you’re reading a review for Stone Simulator, it’s quite possible you’re not looking for something easily categorized either. You’re looking for something unbound by rank or file. Something undefinable that can’t even be cross-referenced by a column A or row Z. You, like me, want something more poetic than playable. Something ambient rather than interactive. Someplace you can sit and spin instead of point and click.

8 minutes in. A glowing wolf. A howl. An explosion of sparkles. My rock asks, “Was that a song, or a threat?”

Allow me to briefly explain what the game is: You are a rock. 

I will now go into the details of gameplay: Spin camera, zoom.

The lack of interaction is a feature—not a flaw. I can’t WASD. I can’t left click, right click, or double click any object in the game, let alone myself. I can only observe. In a “game” (remember I use that term loosely here) where observation is the totality of the interaction with your environment, then even sitting still and taking your hand off the mouse is a move.

12 minutes in. The asteroid rises in the night sky, following the moon. I begin hovering. Back on the ground, I think it was all a dream.

There is a mind-blowing quote from Robert Capa, an early 20th century war photographer and photojournalist. Capa said, “If your photos aren’t good enough, then you’re not close enough.” While Capa meant photos, I take it to mean a lot of things in my life. Writing. Gaming. Parenting. Loving my wife. If it’s not good enough, then I’m not close enough. That doesn’t always mean physically. But in Stone Simulator, when spinning the camera is half your move set, then zooming in and out is the other half. So, zoom.

15 minutes in. First sunrise. No Steam Achievement. But more butterflies than I remember.

When those are your only two interactions, then every ambient element is magnified. Weather. Creatures. UFOs. But even more than those fleeting things, objects around you with more permanence are worth absorbing as well. The cattails at the water’s edge. The reflective oasis. The clutch of trees behind you. (Is there a “behind you” when you’re a rock?) Your favorite patch of jagged peaks. Your favorite stretch of open sky. You’ll learn where the lightning hits the hills, when to catch the sunset through the trees, and which path the moon takes across the stars.

20 minutes in. A second rock appears. Not just similar, but a clone. A mini me. It picks a fight and leaves.

When you can’t move anything but the camera, to Look At or Look Away defines the majority of your experience. When you missed that last bit of absurdism happening on screen, did it trigger your fear of missing out? Or did it trigger a zen-like acceptance? What part of my emotional arc am I in after being bullied by a replica rock? Boredom, curiosity, awe, confusion? Did it make me reach outside of Stone Simulator to examine similar scenarios in my own life, or was I immersed in Stone Simulator and taking everything at face value? Too many question marks. That’s what Stone Simulator does to you.

28 minutes in. “In the rain I become shiny. Almost polished.”

Along with the quote about being “not close enough,” there’s another quote from the book How to Read Literature Like a Professor that sticks in my brain: “Whether cleansing or destructive, rain is never just rain.” Now, in life, precipitation is just precipitation. In and of itself, it’s nothing more than weather. But in a way—not just in sickness—we’re all feeling under the weather. 

Locally, in late August, the dog days of summer are still happening outside. Triple-digit weather when things should’ve started cooling off weeks ago. So, hearing the rainfall in Stone Simulator and watching the droplets streak down the camera lens is refreshing. In-game, it’s hard to tell if the rain is cleansing or destructive. But my stone feels shiny, polished. What’s a little polishing from the rain if not some friction, some small amount of hydraulic erosion, that the rock must endure for that shininess? Again with the question marks. In my head, Everything But the Girl sings, “And I miss you like the deserts miss the rain.”

32 minutes in. Fireflies at dawn (and there’ll be shooting stars by dusk).

It surprised me that Stone Simulator is a satire. It is potentially meditative and profound in Dzen Mode (not a typo), while it’s ridiculously profound and absurd in Events Mode. Well, it’s not absurd for a video game, but some people will tell you that Stone Simulator isn’t a video game. Either way, loading screens are captioned with lite humor and attempts at jokes: “You’re not lazy. You’re geologically patient.” Or “Your best skill? Staying perfectly still.” Neither are wrong, however.

37 minutes in. A little leafy shaman creature summons a storm that appears and disappears within a minute. It leaves a cloudless blue sky behind.

I wasn’t distressed seeing the UFO. Or the Lovecraftian Nautiloid. Or the stone giant. But the visuals and sound during that shaman-induced storm were enough to cause me some concern. The sky went dark in the middle of the day. Lightning punched the ground. Thunder smashed the hillsides. The rains came down but came down sideways. Somehow the loudest thing was that little shaman laughing during his invocation. Later I will encounter more storms. I won’t see the shaman again, but I know he’s out there.

I don’t feel safe again until the soundtrack calms itself.

42 minutes in. Shooting stars. Hundreds of them. A thousand. Heading for the sunrise.

Only you can answer if Stone Simulator is for you. I could give this “game” a high score or a low score, but that wouldn’t matter. You already know if you’re into ambience as much as you’re into first-person shooting. You’re aware if video games to you are digital poetry or just pixelated pointing-and-clicking. You’ve got an inkling if you only want your simulations to be hardcore—or ironic.

52 minutes in. A fog and a plague of flies. Buzzing in whatever ears I have.

Again, I can’t tell you if Stone Simulator is for you. But I can tell you that Stone Simulator accomplishes what it sets out to do. Without bugs or glitches that I could find, this is one of the oddest Simulator-genre games you can scroll through in a Steam list. Some would rather power wash the rock. Or use a pickaxe on the rock to turn it into some other Minecrafted thing. But that cannot happen here. No matter what strange occurrences serve themselves up in your horizons, you can only ever observe. 

You don’t move. But the world does.

1 hour and 2 minutes in. Autumn leaves fall at night and turn the world orange.

I didn’t move. I didn’t win or lose. But I watched. I waited. Stone Simulator doesn’t reward your attention with experience points or skill trees or legendary gear. It’s not a game in the traditional sense. It’s a space. A place. Some moments. And for a few hours, I was part of it. Not as a player—as a presence.