KickStarter Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones - a Lovecraftian Computer RPG

[Florian Gheorghe]

this game is freaking awesome! Can't wait to play it tonight!
At how well this game runs, I bet it can be ported on every platform.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Scrawled

The demo does not scale properly with 5:4 aspect aspect (specifically, 1280x1024 resolution) as a result of which the leftmost and rightmost parts of the screen cut off. This means that I cannot advance past the second screen of the game (after following the Dismal Man downstairs) as I literally cannot click on the screen's exit points.

Otherwise I am excited for the game, keep up the good work!

 

[Prime Junta]

Ctulhu is not a giant octopus. The descriptions of Old Ones in the Lovecraftian mythos tend to be along the lines of the mind trying to make sense of something it can't grasp. Ctulhu is simply too alien to describe accurately.

If a film were to be made where Ctulhu arrived and they tried to nuke it, the right way to do it would be if it became apparent that the wrong coordinates had inexplicably been input and they'd just wiped New York off the map - besides, the people involved had been having nightmares lately etc.

I believe the canonical view is that if you nuke Cthulhu, he'll reform in 15 minutes... but now he's radioactive.

Reference: in Call of Cthulhu, the half-mad sailor steers a freighter straight into him. It doesn't take long for him to reform.

Generally speaking, Lovecraftian creatures seem to fall into four categories: conventional, non-corporeal, transdimensional, and cosmic. Conventional critters include the Elder Ones, the Mi-Go, the shoggoth, the ghouls from Pickman's Model, and the conical critters that project through time. The colour out of space is non-corporeal. The strange vampirical things revealed by Tillinghast's device in From Beyond are transdimensional. The likes of Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, and Azathoth are cosmic creatures. Conventional creatures are killable, although often extremely hard to kill. Non-corporeal creatures might be, but we have no idea how we'd go about it -- conventional weapons would certainly not work against them. Transdimensional creatures would probably be killable but you'd have to reach their dimension first, and we wouldn't know how to do that. And cosmic creatures are effectively godlike in power; any corporeal form they might take is more like an avatar than the creature itself, or else so vast in size that you might as well attempt to kill a star, or a black hole.

 

[Haba]

If Cthulhu wakes up, the world ends. It is simple. No need to think about nuking anything.

The mere attempt of trying to categorize cosmic horror shows complete lack of understanding of what is "Lovecraftian". It is the fear of the unknown and unknowable. That is the whole god damn point of it.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

will this be the incline we are all waiting for?

 

[Prime Junta]

The mere attempt of trying to categorize cosmic horror shows complete lack of understanding of what is "Lovecraftian". It is the fear of the unknown and unknowable. That is the whole god damn point of it.

That's drastically reductive of Lovecraft's work. Sure, some of his stories were based on just that -- the Colour out of Space, From Beyond, The Lurker in Darkness for example. Others however were not: At the Mountains of Madness wasn't about fear of the unknown, it was about isolation, the thrill of discovery, existential dread -- what happened to the Elder Ones will eventually happen to us -- and eventually simple physical terror of being pursued by shoggoths. Pickman's ghouls weren't about the terror of the unknown and unknowable, they were about being creeped out by gross monsters chomping on rotting corpses. Herbert West: Reanimator likewise. The Rats in the Walls was about degeneracy, guilt, and madness. And so on and so forth.

 

[Infinitron]

Re: the idea of Lovecraft being about the unknowable. The Mythos' most iconic story, The Call of Cthulhu, is basically a kind of by-the-numbers detective procedural that methodically reviews the evidence for the Cthulhu cult. In fact pretty much all the most famous Lovecraftian stories are about investigators.

The stories that are thoroughly weird and unexplained, like The Music of Erich Zann or The Evil Clergyman - less famous.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

so they are doing this game with only 70K and T:ToN had 4 million.....

 

[Haba]

Re: the idea of Lovecraft being about the unknowable. The Mythos' most iconic story, The Call of Cthulhu, is basically a kind of by-the-numbers detective procedural that methodically reviews the evidence for the Cthulhu cult. In fact pretty much all the most famous Lovecraftian stories are about investigators.

Yes? Obviously. What would be a better combination, investigative mind trying to investigate something that cannot quite be explained. Yet in the end even the most brilliant scholar or successful detective will be left with unanswered questions/insanity. It adds to the futility of it all.

That's drastically reductive of Lovecraft's work.

I don't even know why I have to explain this, but Lovecraft's works != "Lovecraftian". Yes, he wrote poems, letters, philosophical works, scientific writings etc. as well. And yes, there are other prevalent themes as well, such as racism(!).

 

[Scrawled]

Roguey

Hey Scrawled, any chance you're putting together a launch trailer for the demo? Or at least a launch Kickstarter update?

Does this suffice Infinitron:



Any "imminent" news concerning Stygian on the horizon?

 

[Infinitron]

Later today.

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't even know why I have to explain this, but Lovecraft's works != "Lovecraftian". Yes, he wrote poems, letters, philosophical works, scientific writings etc. as well. And yes, there are other prevalent themes as well, such as racism(!).

the fuck is this I don't even

Nobody's talking about his letters, poems, philosophical works, or scientific writings. We're talking about the core of his published fiction.

A lot of it just doesn't fit your simplistic idea of it being only or even mainly about fear of the unknown or unknowable. If Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and Shadow over Innsmouth don't qualify as Lovecraftian then you have a very peculiar definition for it.

If I had to condense "Lovecraftian" into a simple definition, I would say it's about the horrific realisation that humans and humanity are not at the centre of the Universe or indeed in any way important at all. That compared to beings that have come before us, will come after us, and still exist everywhere around us in the greater Cosmos we are utterly insignificant; that none of those godlike powers or incredibly advanced beings give the tiniest shit about us, except perhaps to the extent an entomologist gives a shit about a bug under his microscope. So Lovecraftian cosmic horror isn't about the unknowable, it's about how tiny, puny, short-lived and stupid we are.

This was pretty radical in a context where Christianity with its idea of Man as the living image of God and the crown of Creation was still the dominant mode of thought, much less so now as even Christians will have been exposed to modes of thought that don't put humans at the centre of everything.

 

[Background Character]

Gonna reinstall steam just for THIS

 

[fantadomat]

If Cthulhu wakes up, the world ends. It is simple. No need to think about nuking anything.

The mere attempt of trying to categorize cosmic horror shows complete lack of understanding of what is "Lovecraftian". It is the fear of the unknown and unknowable. That is the whole god damn point of it.

Undercover cultist detected! Nuke it for orbit!

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

so they did manage to include the cool lightning effects in the demo.

 

[Roguey]

All right, animations are looking faster. Pretty reasonable download size too.

Too bad I might be receiving Tyranny later this week or next so I'm going to have to wait to see how the bandwidth situation is.

 

[fantadomat]

All right, animations are looking faster. Pretty reasonable download size too.

Too bad I might be receiving Tyranny later this week or next so I'm going to have to wait to see how the bandwidth situation is.

This looks far better than tranny.

 

[Background Character]

Just finished the demo it's like 2 hours long (and I took my time reading and exploring all I could) and I though it was pretty good that being said I hope you like loading screens

Completed it with a Criminal guy and now gonna try it again with a Explorer guy AND I'M GONNA KEEP GOING THROUGH ALL THE ARCHETYPES

IT'S AGE OF DECADENCE ALL OVER AGAIN AND NO ONE IS GETTING OUT ALIVE

 

[Rahdulan]

Damn that was good. I do think it could've used less successive battles in the bank part, though. Really tempted to try it again with another archetype other than Investigator, but I'll hold off until I get the game proper. Clicking to get past every loading screen is a chore that's only going to get worse as you play more and more.

Can't wait for the complaints that people can't read those handwritten notes.

 

[Zombra]

Clicking to get past every loading screen is a chore that's only going to get worse as you play more and more.

Counterpoint, I appreciate it when a game doesn't just jump right in after loading. Does space bar also work?

 

[Rahdulan]

Any button will do, but loadings are basically instant yet every area transition is accompanied by one.

 

[Jinn]

I do think it could've used less successive battles in the bank part, though.

This beat em' up hallway of battles was my main issue with the backer demo too. Kind of dissapointed they haven't taken such critiques into consideration for the release of the public demo, but the rest is such incline my hopes remain high for this beautiful game.

 

[Kaivokz]

Really liking the character creation--interesting choices that other games don't have. Some tooltips might be helpful on the Archetype screen to eliminate the need to flip back and forth to assess your options. The stat page is very easy to read. It's useful that related skills are highlighted when mousing over attributes, skills, and their derived values. The UI seems to have been designed with care--I approve.

I tried a rational academic:researcher with 10 mind & will w/ all points in science/occult/medicine for the demo, I only started with one spell that debuffed enemies, but the outsider + the devil spaniard were more than enough to clear the bank. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to craft anything? Is "research" implemented yet? So I didn't get to test that out, unfortunately, to see if I could craft enough booze/drugs/etc. to counteract bad combat stats.

Spells also seem pretty interesting with various "complications" and so on, but might make it difficult to know what sort of character would be a good spell caster (e.g. if all the good damage spells have negative effects for low agility, and so on).

I'll buy it.

 

[Rahdulan]

I do think it could've used less successive battles in the bank part, though.

This beat em' up hallway of battles was my main issue with the backer demo too.

I just hope it's a singular example of early design and not something that will remain a constant throughout the game because it will seriously impact the flow of "dungeons" if it is. Maybe we can get some dev comments.

 

[Projas]

It really doesn't help the tediousness of the battles that the animations are slow as shit. Otherwise the game looks pretty solid, the skill based dialogue options in particular.