Post-modern style indie game works are here. Arrest of a stone Buddha is undoubtedly a very abstract, very unique game, it looks very obscure, even as a general game and the most basic guidance of it is lacking so that many players are at a loss to start, and even do not know how to advance the game process, and the difficulty of the game is not low. But this does not mean that it is worthless.

Contrast should be the main content of this game is trying to narrate. A killer living in 1976 France is alive only when he is on a mission, and his daily life is dead. The author probably wanted to show us the empty world of a killer, not catering to the general audience, but focusing on his own ideas, which is very rare indeed.

But the gameplay of Arrest of a stone Buddha is really bad. As said before, the lack of guidance, suffering, and almost never-ending battles are very difficult for players to get pleasure from.

Arrest of a stone Buddha is not for most gamers. Its plot is both obscure and the gameplay is not very impressive. But if you are very interested in this post-modern narrative style and like to deduce and understand the plot of the game by yourself, then maybe you can give it a try.

another incredible effort from Yeo. easily my favorite developer in the indie space.

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Arrest of a Stone Buddha is lighter, somewhat less "meaty" title than the previous game in the developer's catalog, The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa (a surprisingly poignant and emotionally deep exploration of a Japanese high school gang leader delinquent's last year of high school, and all that entails). where Ringo Ishikawa was a melancholic treatise on growing up (and what it means for those who cannot or will not try), Arrest of a Stone Buddha is the next logical step in that emotional journey - the existential and monotonous routine of day to day life, where sometimes those days seem to run together, from one to another, and you find yourself just passing time until the Next Thing you have to do, never really engaging with anything in the present moment - just drifting, the world whirling by with your feet barely on the ground.

when i said "lighter", i didnt mean "less engaging" - while Ringo Ishikawa has plenty more for your protagonist do on a day to day basis, like working at a video store, reading in the library or at home, working out at a gym, practicing your martial arts, or just kicking the ♥♥♥♥ out of other high school kids, the protagonist of Arrest of a Stone Buddha leads a somewhat less engrossing life.

this is not a mechanic commentary, but one on the character and the story - you genuinely get a feel and a sense that the protagonist (a hitman) is just biding time between his Contracts, that his life outside of work is mostly meaningless and that he has nearly zero desire for participating with either other people or even with himself. days are spent wandering around your little cul de sac in a French city, where you can have a drink (or three) at the Cafe d'Orchidee, grab some sleeping pills at the local Pharmicie, walk the halls of the local Museum, sit in the park, or - my favorite - catch a movie at the local cinema. the important thing about all of these activities is how UNimportant they are, ultimately. even in-game, their primary goal is to spend (or waste time). you dont get to see what movie youre watching at the theatre, you just get to see your protagonist slouched in his seat, maybe with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, while the projector light blasts across the screen. you cant discern any of the paintings in the museum, or even get little snippets or descriptions of what they might be: its not at all important to your Hitman, so why bother? i think the way this is most effectively established is when buying tickets for a movie. you can talk to the attendant just to the right, who offers you some popcorn. at least in my experience, you never get the chance to buy any. it might seem like an afterthought, but to me it perfectly illustrated the fact that the protagonist is not here because he wants to catch a flick he's been interested in and have an enjoyable two hours. he's just looking for a different place to sit down and wait for the sun to go down so he can pop a sleeping pill and go to sleep.

of course, that all changes once its time for a contract. ill try not to spoil too much, because this is of course where the bread and the butter of the gameplay lay, but for those willing to deal with some potentially frustrating (rarely, IMO) mechanics and (so far) the occasional bug, its a treat. starting off each mission with the actual assassination (which sometimes throws you a very unique and super-cool curveball in execution), the gunplay is fun and reasonably precise, almost like a rhythm game. you move in two directions: left or right. you fire in two directions: left or right. you dont run, or even walk very fast: you keep the same pace you keep while sauntering around your town on your off days. you are a very good assassin, so every shot hits it mark - one shot, one kill on every mook who comes running your way. when you run out of ammo, you just drop your gun and grab another from the closest mook, either kicking them and snatching it out of their hands, or breaking their arm quite graphically at the elbow (its in this manner that you can grab two pistols and wield them akimbo). this is also where the animation shines, either shooting behind you under your arm, or with two pistols, standing arms outstretched like Ah Jong from The Killer. the shotgun is also a beast to use, although i was never able to grab a rifle and try it (if its even possible). but just because you can kill in one shot, doesnt mean youre invincible. even though the random mooks are very poor shots, all it takes is one random bullet and youll go down with a blown out brain or a bloody chest wound, yourself. occasionally, this can be frustrating, especially when a mook just off-screen lands a kill-shot right before youre about to walk off to the next screen, but IMO finally succeeding in mowing down dozens, if not hundreds, or small time hoods makes it worthwhile.

the shootout scenes of course is when youll encounter the most bugs, as well, but quite honestly the checkpoint system is forgiving enough (and the game is short enough) that it really shouldnt prove that troublesome. there were a few times where i had to reload my save because of a glitch or bug that prevented me from progressing (as an example, there's a scene where a train comes by after a shootout that youre supposed to board - i stupidly sat down in a bench before the train came through, which then blocks your view, and i found i couldnt get up from the bench; luckily, a reload brought me back to that exact screen, not ten seconds before). any conversation on glitching or bugs should be taken seriously, but also prioritized accordingly - this is a small, single developer indie game that can be beaten in 5 hours. even an awful glitch that completely wipes your save, while ♥♥♥♥♥♥, is not the same as a game-breaking bug in a 70+ hour RPG or something.

i dont usually write reviews (and i think this is my first on Steam) so youll forgive my verbosity, but as someone who respects indie work and hopes to write their own small game some day, i think its important to do more than just throw a quick sentence or two or a nice rating at a game i enjoyed. games like this deserve scrutiny and honest critique and exegesis. Arrest of a Stone Buddha, like the Friends of Ringo Ishikawa before it, are more than just competent games of their type. they are legitimately explorations of very human conditions and experiences - the melancholy of growing up and moving on of Ringo Ishikawa, and the depressive existentialism of how life can become a dull, flavorless thing that we simply watch pass by as we wallow in mundanity.

in short - go buy and play these games.

I was a big fan on yeo's previous game, The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa. There are a lot of similarities between it and this game but a lot of differences as well. Both are incredibly open ended and offer little guidance for the player. Both have existential themes and emphasize the mundane nature of modern life. Both have a classic River City-inspired art style. Both are pretty difficult.

But the big difference for me between these two was that I really enjoyed TFoRI, but AoaSB...I just couldn't sit through. I'm fine with tough games, but this game is downright unfair. There have been multiple occasions where I made it very close to the end of an area, but then I was killed by an enemy offscreen I had no way of knowing was there. Coupled with the fact that the gameplay gets pretty repetitive as there isn't much enemy variety and it basically ends up just being you mashing the shoot key until all the hordes of enemies are dead. Probably the most annoying thing about this game is the PAINFULLY slow walk speed of the protagonist. I know he's supposed to be some super cool action hero who walks away from explosions and all that, but it makes just trying to get anywhere a huge slog.

TFoRI had a great story about a bunch of kids trying to find themselves and escape the delinquent lifestyle, and that narrative was immediately engaging with fun dialogue and endearing characters. AoaSB didn't really engage me at all with its very dry, stoic protagonist, and no real interesting people or conversations. The world wasn't anywhere near as fun to explore or experience. I remember having fun in TFoRI just messing around the town and talking with several of the interesting NPCs. I thought they'd just be standard NPCs, but many of them had fun interactions with Ringo and cool personalities.

Let me end this off by saying I'm not criticizing this game for NOT being a Ringo Ishikawa 2; I just compared the two to explain many of my issues with this game in comparison to another yeo game that did it better. TFoRI aside, judging the game based on its own merits, it's just not very good.

yeo obviously had a vision for this game, it just didn't connect with me. But I am looking forward to the next thing he makes!

The game is fine. It naturally combines elements from both of the worlds - action and immersive melancholic “life-sim”. Gunplay seems tough for the first time but then it feels in fluent way. The game has its own face and its expressive means. Despite few minor drawbacks, It produces overall positive impression. Definitely worth playing!

This is a hard call.

Is it a good game? Not really. The gameplay is mostly meandering between missions. I like the many pointless interactions you can have with the environment, but it gets old fast. The missions themselves offer almost no variety, a corridor filled with morons running in and getting themselves killed. There is very little fun to be had.

Is it a good story? Not really. Between missions is a single conversation with the same person that offer little insight or character development. There isn't a real narrative nor real investment. Your targets are meaningless to you, as is everything else.

Is it art? Yes. Most of the shortcomings listed are by design and in service to what (I believe) the game is trying to say. It's an interesting piece. And although I enjoyed very little time with this game, my thoughts wander back to it more often than a lot of games I actually did enjoy.

I can't recommend this as a game nor as a story, yet I struggle to think of what could be done differently that wouldn't weaken its impact. If you're in the mindset for a unique depressing experience that only a game can deliver, this is one that's hard to forget.

TLDR: The actions/shooting are good. The soundtrack are cool. The story and pace are a big pile of ♥♥♥♥.

Believe me, the porn you just watched may have better character development than this. You play as a 40 year poor sleepless bastard who makes a living by killing people in France back in the 70s. After every assassination contract, you get to meet an old friend of his(maybe they worked together before) at a park and talk about random things. Yeah, things like his sleeping problems at night, their good old days, and some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ birds at that park.

The writers says they are throwing players existential questions but those questions would always pop up if you fail to present the characters' background or its goal to the audience. I don't know why he kills, why he cant sleep at night, and why the developers make me walk around the city and look to some pixel arts in a museum when all I want is to do is the actions, the shooting, the mafia, the excitement of killing npcs with dual wielding pistols and shotguns.

Or maybe it's just that I missed something in the dialogue, but that's not my fault, they should write a better story.

Am I having a existential crisis? NOPE, I am saving your time.

Update1:
On second thought, maybe that's the point.
To mess you up with meaningless killing and lonely nights, drinking, films,etc.
hence the existential crisis!!!
It's a cool idea, but not an interesting story.

Update2:

It is a good game.

In a sentence: ambitious, but too broken.

While I *really* appreciated the lonely atmosphere, the melancholic music and the visual style references to Sixties/Seventies French noir movies (Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Delon...), especially during the dusk-to-dawn sequences, the gun shooting parts - which should be the core of the game - are too buggy and unpredictable to grant it a full recommendation.

The learning curve is steep, but after a while you'll be completely absorbed by the rhythm and the fast pace of the 2D point left / point right - aim - shoot - grab another gun mechanism.

Unfortunately, since bullets are never visibile on screen (you hear the shots, you see the fire from the guns, but no flying lead particles on display - and no hit counters), there is no consistent way to predict if and when some enemy is going to catch you, nor from which distance: it all seems just random, maybe related to the number of times the bad guys can shoot, maybe not, and the only way to be 100% risk free is to eliminate enemies before they fire - which becomes quickly impossible when you're surrounded by wave after wave of them.

Ok, ok, you may say this is a bold artistic choice - to remind the player that fate exists and the life of even the most accurate and cold-blooded of hitmen was constantly on the edge, tied as it was to unpredictable trajectories and, ultimately, to sheer luck. Or maybe the devs wanted to hint that the burned-out antihero does not really want to see and avoid those bullets, because he consciously puts himself at peril to finally get out of his misery.

Well, maybe so (just maybe), but then it gets worse: e.g. if you try and reach the end of the screen/sequence by travelling and shooting as quickly as possible, sometimes you'll find that you cannot complete the level. Say that you travelled right and you seem to have put to sleep (so to say) all the waves of bad guys and now you hope to trigger the autosave - nope, you cannot advance to next scene, because one of them baddies got "stuck" at the beginning, at the far left side of the level: you cannot see him, but you can hear he's shooting. So, you travel back left to finally dispose of him and *BANG* he centers you from a distance and you have to play the sequence again.

This happened multiple times to me, especially on the beach level, and that's what made me realize that a brilliant concept of a game was becoming an exercise in frustration.

TL;DR: wait for a sale; try it if you're fond of French noir movies and curious about how they translate to videogame, but expect a bumpy ride.

I love my job...
I work with people. Their bones crack, their heads crush like rotten tomatoes. Maybe they see me as an enemy, but they're not my enemies. They're just part of the job.
I don't go to work every day. Usually I just sit in my apartment, sometimes I hang out in the city. I get insomnia, so I have to kill time when I don't want to take the pills. Most of all, I like to stand on the roof of the nearest high-rise and smoke, watching the city change under my feet. But the job is better.
November 1976... I have something important planned for this month. Will it succeed?..
I believe that my hand will not shake when the time comes.

Tldr: Heideggerian Nichts simulator + John Wick

So. I've finished the game, now how do I describe it?

Imagine you're a sentient signpost in the middle of nowhere. Every once in a while somebody comes by and you fulfill your function, and those are the most thrilling moments of your life. The rest of your life, however, is gnawing, crushing, debilitating solitude. Literally everything is dust, nothing matters. You made the wrong choice becoming a signpost, not that it was much of a choice anyway.

That's this here game. High velocity shooter moments, filled with danger, pose, efficiency and purpose go along the long and lonely days of essentially purposeless wandering, drinking, working out, smoking, making loveless love, visiting museums, smoking, going to the cinema, running out of smokes, buying new coat, going to the bar, buying some smokes, smoking, lying in bed unable to sleep, smoking - until a new job presents itself.

It's quite clear why some find themselves relatively unable to get into Arrest of a stone Buddha: those who come for life-simulator like "Friends of Ringo Ishikawa", Yeo's older hit, are probably not the crowd for reaction-based 2D shooters while people drawn into the game by high-octane action from the trailer are immediately thown aback by the slow-burn episodes between the missions, seemingly devoid of gameplay, with almost no dialogue - each lasting for about 10 minutes give or take.

It's the curse of artistic hybrids in gaming - akin to what happened to Pathologic 2: those who seek challenge, aren't so interested in the general experience and those who come for the general experience aren't exactly looking for challenge - they just want to get immersed.

However, Arrest of a stone Buddha is a wonderful little game - both artistically and mechanically polished, expressive and distinctive, and these kinds of games do tend to find their audience over time.
I invite you to be a part of that audience and experience it yourself.

PS
And maybe life is worth living, y'know? Maybe not, your call...

PPS

Yeo, спасибо Вам огромное, замечательная вещь - особенно концовка. Такое тонко схваченное состояние в колбе - это прекрасно, такого в принципе должно быть больше среди игр. Еще не играл в Ишикаву, но в библиотеке уже лежит. Посмотрел Ваше интервью на XYZ, порадовался, что Вы никого не слушаете. Продолжайте никого не слушать! Игры пока ещё не до самого конца стряхнули флёр подвальных развлечений для детей - поэтому отношение у многих играющих соответствующее. Еще раз спасибо!

Despite the great art style, this game is pretty slow and pretty broken. Despite what a lot of reviewers are saying on here, the gun play is actually ridiculously easy once you realize how broken it is. I posted a video of me going through a level of the game to exemplify this in the discussion section for this game, but essentially you can beat the whole thing without dying by just walking forward and shooting and occasionally grabbing a gun from an enemy behind you. This is because there's a bug where enemies behind you can only hit you with their bullets if they are super close to you. Outside of this, the story is pretty bland and not very involved. You can participate in a few activities around the city of Paris when youre not going through mission levels, but none of them are really interactive in any way - even going to the movies is just you watching your character sit in a chair. I understand that there is supposed to be an underlying theme of ennui and nihilism running through everything, but without compelling gameplay to back the theme, it ends up just feeling like a bit of a slog. I still plan on finishing the game since I purchased it and want to get my money's worth, but, as of now, I honestly don't know if I can recommend this to anyone.