"Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones" is a supernatural horror role-playing video game which takes place in the strange worlds of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Stygian will draw the player into a bleak journey from a ruined Arkham to the very depths of the Abyss.
The gameplay experience promises a mix of rich role-playing and turn based tactical combat in an authentic illustrative 2D graphical style. In Stygian, you'll be able to create your character from scratch with a robust selection of archetypal backgrounds with different origin stories, attributes, skills, traits and lastly belief systems which determine how your character replenishes his lost sanity, also presenting unique dialog choices.
The narrative of the game is strongly connected to the works of H. P. Lovecraft. In your quest, you'll use the haunted violin of Erich Zann to lure a fiendish deity and convince the poor wretched protagonist of "The Outsider" to join your party among many others.The heavy burden of fighting a desperate battle with forces beyond recognition will haunt you to the end of the game.
Physical combat will be scarce and difficult, spellcasting will have deep and dangerous consequences, sanity loss will leave its marks on characters as mental illnesses and sometimes the best solution will be running away from the terrors that lurk in the night. Stygian embraces the original themes of pulp and weird fiction, incorporating them into the computer role-playing genre, promising a fresh (or putrid from another perspective) breath of air for role-playing fans.
History
Your former life was in a bliss of ignorance until you've awakened to the darkness waiting to devour our very existence on the doorstep of our fragile dimension. Something terrible left its eons old slumber and the reality as we knew it, collapsed. The city of Arkham was pulled to somewhere not of this world and its residents are in the shadow of absolute terror. As a survivor of the catastrophe you should investigate the strange occurrences in the city and survive the rising darkness physically and mentally, if possible...
Feature List
A hand drawn 2D world which reflects the mood of Lovecraft and the pulp era of horror.
Quests and storylines which capture the iconic themes of Lovecraft. Take part in your favorite horror stories and shape their outcome according to your role-playing style.
Weirdest of the companions will accompany you in your accursed journey. Lonely antediluvian of "The Outsider", a dead WW1 soldier reanimated in the hands of "Herbert West", a psychic narcissistic cat from Ulthar and more will be among your eccentric cast of companions.
Sanity and the mental state of the character will have influence on the dialog options. Mental conditions create benefits as well as hindrances. Sometimes being mad in a mad world helps.
Belief Systems determine what the characters find comfort in and regenerate lost sanity alongside providing unique role-playing opportunities. A rational character gains sanity after completing a research on a mythos creature while a divine one gains sanity after converting a lost soul to the path of God.
A unique spell system which sometimes takes more than what it gives. The black magic of Stygian is very potent but will cost you your mind, health and sometimes your very soul. Being a master of the true occult is unlike flinging colorful missiles from your finger tips.
Turn based tactical combat in beautiful 2D with "Heroes of Might and Magic" like perspective.
7 different Archetypes with completely unique prologue stories and specialities.
The struggle is not for saving the world, that battle is lost already. Find salvation or settle a vendetta in a doomed world.
Last edited by prudislav on Wed, 10th Jan 2018 10:08; edited 3 times in total
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones has now been greenlit on Steam. Expect the kickstarter to launch soon.
Stygian has been Greenlit!
28 May - Lord General Yavuz
Thank you for all your support!
Our next goal is to answer all of your questions directly.
And one more thing: We're going to launch our Kickstarter campaign soon.
I played about 6-7 hours of the pre-release build and I find the game to be great. It has that lovecraftian atmosphere that not many games manage to get right.
Pretty good in the 22 hours I've played. Though they really, really, really need to explain their systems or how some things factor in. Like how does 'handling' affect my to hit? Does it affect to hit or does it only trigger for critical success/failure? Or how/when you develop a mental illness and how it's incurable, though I don't mind too much as the game is meant to be played with a mental illness haha. Paranoia has made my character into a World Eater legionnaire with all the screaming of things that don't really sound like paranoia.
Playing as an Esoteric Bankrupt Aristocrat and just leveling Occult and Speechcraft skills seems to work out fine with the butler as the muscle as well as Sophia for the pew pew.
Dropped the Outsider since his perks seemed bug and even when he's in the distance he still draws aggro.
But combat isn't everything, and only should be a last resort. I've tried to sneak through most combat and in some areas I'm forced to retreat back out of the dungeon to rest lest everyone goes crazy.
As soon as the progressive escape pops up in combat, that becomes my main goal.
Though I hate the Angst system. Wish there was a way to delevel that.
Anyway hope there isn't silly stuff like having to sacrifice a companion to save yourself or whatever. I really like my Butler who I can't ask to leave the party. My first character was the hunter with a dog who I rerolled as he was too combat oriented and I was missing a lot of dialog stuff and quickly accumulating angst and ended up as a Schizophrenic Psychopath from all the horrors witnessed and not understanding when insanity would develop, I had thought it only came up when Sanity was really low but seems that it happens even at 60%. Wonder what companions other classes get.
This is the best adaption of Lovecraft's work I've seen. It's an absolute delight to see his macabre short stories turned into quests or referenced at every step.
I don't think the story is finished tho. The developers said they didn't have enough money for the 50 hours story they wrote. So expect a cliffhanger ending and an expansion or sequel.
Yeah, I heard that was the case when asking about some of the game's mechanics on the forums. It's a pity, but what they have so far has been pretty fun. A bit disappointing, but well I hope they manage to make enough to justify an expansion at the very least.
Just beat it. It's a real shame they ran out of cash. This was just 2 or 3 Acts/Chapters really. But they have those recent Lovecraft games beat by a mile. Hope they can scrape together the cash for an expansion.
Atmosphere, dialog and story are really good, they managed to hit the right marks for a Lovecraftian setting.
Gameplay is serviceable, some things aren't well explained however and there's a bunch of bugs, coupled with the save system and I almost got forced to restart when I was close to the end, fortunately the last autosave was not affected, if I had just walked through another area I'd be fucked. I don't really see the replay value, short of some small things, so I think its been overblown by the devs.
The story isn't over and you don't really get any sort of satisfying ending. the end cutscene doesn't even respect your choices at the end and its generic just for the luxury of having voice acting over and not recording too many variations. I can't say those few lines of voice acting do much for me, the cutscene annoyed me and the fact it was the ending only exacerbated that. It feels like someone gave me an engaging book to read but didn't tell me he'd ripped more then half the pages in it.
What is there is good, but I wouldn't recommend anyone play it now.
Just beat it. It's a real shame they ran out of cash. This was just 2 or 3 Acts/Chapters really. But they have those recent Lovecraft games beat by a mile. Hope they can scrape together the cash for an expansion.
It's more like Issue #1 out of 3 and I don't get why they didn't split the game this way. The main quests are actually unfinished at the end of the game. You find the meaning for only 2 verses out of 4.
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