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

[Salvo]

Where can i learn the spell to talk with the ghosts of dead people?

Spoiler

Start the stabber quest and make sure to follow every lead.

Hm, ok. How do i get into the Indian village without going redneck rampage?

The only way to handle it peacefully is if you have

Spoiler

a high enough melee skill to block the indian's strike and do it. That will garner his respect and allow you some breathing space.

 

[Starwars]

I backed this game and I'm pretty disappointed all in all.

Good:
-I like that it feels pretty unique. It's not a game to look for if you want "the next big cRPG". But it may well be worth looking into if you want something that feels pretty unique to play, yet retains *some* stuff that you may like from games like Arcanum or Fallout.
-I like that there is a certain focus on roleplaying. Restoring sanity by roleplaying your character is a pretty good mechanic I think. Don't know how different actual outcomes are to character builds but creating a character and playing it is pretty fun.
-The artstyle is kinda nice.
-I like that there's a pretty big focus on items
-The writing is... alright at least. I guess this should be more in a "mediocre" section. It's pleasant enough to read but there's absolutely nothing here that grabs me in any way. The main story is not interesting whatsoever. The characters you meet along the way can be fun to interact with though.

Bad:
-It's a sluggish game. I don't mean that in the sense that it's slow to unfold, but it feels sluggish to play. Sometimes it doesn't quite register when you click a container, the load times aren't horrendous but there's a *lot* of running back and forth through the same areas.
-The combat is bad. The slow speed really brings out the worst in it though. But enemies are also not very interesting to fight.
-The game is unfinished. Both in terms of how it feels as a game as a whole. It's plainly not done. But also in terms of how it feels to play. It can be pretty buggy. When I played yesterday the whole UI stopped working at one time, I've had the lantern not work properly when I switched to it, lots of small niggly things that just gives you the impression that "we lost our way somewhere along the way and had to really clamp down and try to finish what we had"
-I guess this will greatly vary but the whole "Lovecraft sack of goodies" does not do much for me. So yes, we have the Whisperer in Darkness quest, we have the Silver Key quest, we have the Outsider companion etc etc. I mean, it's still more fun in this game than other Lovecraft inspired games I'd say but it detracts more than it adds. It does not feel very creative in that sense, it feels like "ok, let's throw this story in HERE, and let's throw that story in THERE".
-The game has a fair amunt of "this part/area will not unlock for you until you have *this* quest in your journal". It feels very linear in that sense even though there is some freedom here and there.

Not the worst game I've played by any stretch of the imagination and again, I like that it feels unique. There are many good ideas here, and some well executed ones as well. But yeah, I'm pretty disappointed overall. If they ever finish the whole story, maybe it will feel more worthwhile overall but as for now it just feels like a kinda charming but broken little game that I would quickly forget about unless I had a big interest in horror themed settings and cRPGs.

 

[Mortmal]

The real problem with bugs is that you don't know if they're actually bugs or your character (or you) going mad

Off topic, there was a Commodore 64 game called Bozo's Night Out, about getting home from the bar. Every level your character would be drunker and drunker, the controls would get less responsive, and the graphics got glitchier and glitchier. It was as if the programmer had made some buggy code in the past, learned how to reproduce it, and deliberately made it a feature in this game. So fucking good.

wow, i remember that one, yes that was so long ago .You end up seeing pink elephants and ghosts ont he street.

 

[TheWorld]

Bought it and just started it. I didn't kickstart it and was not sure after reading your some opinions but I'm a big fun of everything related to Lovecraft, and I'm hoping the developers are going to work on it and at least improve the bugs and the speed (which seems to be a big portions of the criticisms). The beginning is pretty nice actually, but after a single command I can already see that I don't have the patience to finish this game if they are not going to do something to speed it up.

 

[Mortmal]

Good ideas and a little off ? Oh no best roleplay elements since fallout, maybe better, awesome writing incredibly atmospheric , really best thing since arcanum without any irony .Then bordeline unplayable and unfair combat with slowness, unresponsiveness, cluncky menu and mechanics. A pain to target, sometimes it makes you loot when you just want to move your character, sometimes it just freeze. The borked save system doesn't help especially when your last save was 3 random encounters ago .
Its so infuriating, so brilliant yet so ruined...

Absolutely lovecraftian, I can feel the despair in this post.

yes iindeed and wait for the end you'll experience true despair too.Those guys have everything to make something of the same level than fallout/planescape/arcanum if not better, yet i am pretty sure they fell short cause of lack of money.

I'm already feeling the despair, the game crashes after

Spoiler

killing the last migo after the witch house

so I had to redo the fight and it crashed a second time. Ill wait until the game is a little more stable to play it

Just flee the fight it works. You can avoid completely fights next, doesn't matte r you have 30 min left of game.

 

[luj1]

Bro, maybe you don't like video games luj1 . Of course it's not going to mimic the classical work to a tee. It's a video game. Enjoy it for what it is rather than shit on it for what it's not.

Not sure what you're on about Fluent. We were talking about what makes a game "Lovecraftian". It's not name dropping, it's not tentacles and it's not fainting from seeing a dead horse. Wanna know a game that's "Lovecraftian"? Clive Barker's Undying. And it accomplishes that without making everything banal and dropping Lovecraftian terminology at every corner. That's cheap. It's unfortunate that most people are too shallow to understand this.

 

[luj1]

Also am not shitting on this game. I already said it's average. The best thing it has going for itself are unique core systems. Other than that I'm not seeing anything of interest. Not shitting on games is what brought upon this age of decline and apologetic cucks.

 

[Young_Hollow]

Unfortunate consequence of the lack of avatars: felipepepe getting blamed for defenses of the game made by other people. He's said nothing about bugs or the game's length.

Yeah, what's with the lack of avatars?

 

[Egosphere]

Don't know who to believe here. Fluent says he has not encountered a single bug . Jokes aside, i do get that people will have different experiences, but man is this game buggy on my end.

So far, I've encountered 4 different bugs:

1) When I went to the house of spectres before visiting the indian or finding a secret passageway into waxface's place for horatio, both of those quests became greyed out as if completed, but I could still get xp for exploring those locations

2) When I encountered the cop (the one with the dead horse) in the street, the spanish guy who was hitherto my companion, left me. I found him in the pub and told him to join me once more. This made the cop turn into a giant, and appear in every single location as an inactive npc until I completed his warehouse quest.

3) Can't rest now, hopefully this will fix itself if I reload the game a few times

4) Can't complete a combat turn when fighting the masked thugs in the cultist's locale. Really annoying, since the fight was about 2/3rds completed.

edit: oh and I couldn't unequip the lantern at one point yesterday

 

[Infinitron]

Bro, maybe you don't like video games luj1 . Of course it's not going to mimic the classical work to a tee. It's a video game. Enjoy it for what it is rather than shit on it for what it's not.

Not sure what you're on about Fluent. We were talking about what makes a game "Lovecraftian". It's not name dropping, it's not tentacles and it's not fainting from seeing a dead horse. Wanna know a game that's "Lovecraftian"? Clive Barker's Undying. And it accomplishes that without making everything banal and dropping Lovecraftian terminology at every corner. That's cheap. It's unfortunate that most people are too shallow to understand this.

Isn't it clear that this isn't exactly a standard Lovecraft setting? It's right there in the title - the game is set in an "End Times"-type scenario where the Old Ones are Reigning. Subtlety has already gone out the window.

 

[Egosphere]

Linking to Steam when the game is available on GOG is also a pretty big red flag.

No, really, I like Pepe, but take a look at his reply in the twatter discussion:



Standard apoligistic crap:
- didn't find any bugs, therefore there are no bugs!
- it doesn't have to be 100 hours, because obviously there can be only very short or very long games!

felipepe's on record stating that his dream rpg would be very short, but with lots of replay value. So I don't see that as shilling.

 

[Background Character]

So I "solved" the mystery of Tongues of the Dead and

Spoiler

it's fucking worthless

Spoiler

Turn out, the Outsider (or anyone with occult, maybe not like there's anyone else) can learn the spell, can cast the spell in combat, can't do it in exploration only your character can and most of the time it's completely useless since the only thing you can do is take ectoplasm from dead people. Only story related thing was the guy stabbed, haven't found Betty yet but if I do I'll take her ectoplasm

finding a secret passageway into waxface's place for horatio

So there was a secre passageway, is it the trapdoor to the right of the building and you need to pass some investigation check? That's my best guess

 

[Child of Malkav]

Is the perk Shadow Followed good? It says it increases stealth value (the stat?) and reaction (?). I took it and didn't increase my stealth stat. God, this fucking game. So good but so bad.

 

[Beggar]

This game feels like it's made for android to play while waiting at the doctors office. No grand scale, nothing unique or special. Just casual management with comix style "art".
I was hyped because RPGcodex was hyped. Is that type of thing now called a good game? Was it worth waiting for?
At best it's just good for what it is. Nothing more.
Verdict: decline

 

[Egosphere]

So there was a secre passageway, is it the trapdoor to the right of the building and you need to pass some investigation check? That's my best guess

My occultist never actually found it, but I figured it must be there somewhere.

 

[Alienman]

This game has an almost infantile and over the top tone, lacks a sense of measure and is "Lovecraftian" (dumb term) in name only. I'm especially not going to go in depth w/ someone who spams BUY THIS GAME on twitter.

As a Keeper of Arcane Lore who runs a Call of Cthulhu game every other Saturday I call bullshit. This game and CoC actually have quite a lot in common. And while yes, the game is cartoonish, it is still Lovecraftian in almost every possible way. You're being purposefully obtuse because you decided you'd look cool in Big Boy pants on the Codex.

Kinda hard for the game to not be "lovecraftian" because it is Lovecraft, literally, you even get to meet his self-insert. Playing through the game was like going through his most popular work. Maybe that was the purpose of it all?

- "Oh hey look, the colour out of space!".

 

[V_K]

So there was a secre passageway, is it the trapdoor to the right of the building and you need to pass some investigation check? That's my best guess

My occultist never actually found it, but I figured it must be there somewhere.

It's a spot check in there. You can use the gaze spell if your senses/investigation isn't high enough. Or bring Sonia, I think she's a rare example of a companion who can pass non-combat (spot) checks for you.

 

[the mole]

spoilers, I'm on the final fight, do these enemies infinitely respawn, I know how to make only one spawn at a time, I'm assuming I have to let them kill me

 

[the mole]

Don't know who to believe here. Fluent says he has not encountered a single bug . Jokes aside, i do get that people will have different experiences, but man is this game buggy on my end.

So far, I've encountered 4 different bugs:

1) When I went to the house of spectres before visiting the indian or finding a secret passageway into waxface's place for horatio, both of those quests became greyed out as if completed, but I could still get xp for exploring those locations

2) When I encountered the cop (the one with the dead horse) in the street, the spanish guy who was hitherto my companion, left me. I found him in the pub and told him to join me once more. This made the cop turn into a giant, and appear in every single location as an inactive npc until I completed his warehouse quest.

3) Can't rest now, hopefully this will fix itself if I reload the game a few times

4) Can't complete a combat turn when fighting the masked thugs in the cultist's locale. Really annoying, since the fight was about 2/3rds completed.

edit: oh and I couldn't unequip the lantern at one point yesterday

another bug which is extremely frustrating is if you try to open your inventory, and accidentally move on the grid and end your turn, youll be locked in the inventory decision screen forever and cant move, youll have to reload

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Linking to Steam when the game is available on GOG is also a pretty big red flag.

No, really, I like Pepe, but take a look at his reply in the twatter discussion:



Standard apoligistic crap:
- didn't find any bugs, therefore there are no bugs!
- it doesn't have to be 100 hours, because obviously there can be only very short or very long games!

felipepe's on record stating that his dream rpg would be very short, but with lots of replay value. So I don't see that as shilling.

Well this game is very short, but i'm not sure if the replay value is real or an illusion, since i don't think it has that many outcomes for quests and the main story.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Really don't care about your obsession with this boradgame knock off..

Ashton Smith was far more talented than Lovecraft. Find a new hero. Learn how to use commas. And learn the difference between RPGs and boradgames (sic). You drooling, mentally-straining dumbfuck.

 

[Background Character]

spoilers, I'm on the final fight, do these enemies infinitely respawn, I know how to make only one spawn at a time, I'm assuming I have to let them kill me

Spoiler

The meteorite? or the

Spoiler

mi-gos on the elder thing planet?

For the first one you need to dig out the meteorite 3 times and then attack it for the second one

Spoiler

I just helped the elder thing fight the mi-gos on the overmap after that I kept going left of the map and waited for the mi-go scouts to pass so I could complete the game with the less combat possible since it's a bugfest and then I killed the Outsider. Poor guy

.

It's a spot check in there. You can use the gaze spell if your senses/investigation isn't high enough. Or bring Sonia, I think she's a rare example of a companion who can pass non-combat (spot) checks for you.

Mystery solved, danke

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Btw, I have to put this game on the shelf until it's been significantly patched. I tossed my character who progressed as far as the Blasted Street because he wasn't combat oriented and I really couldn't proceed. Then I sped through the game with a new character only to come across a game-breaking bug wherein I have all the items for Stanley but no line of dialogue to continue the quest. Jesus christ on a crutch you'd think with the amount of time it took for this game to release they'd have something that fucking basic under control.

 

[RNGsus]

Ahhh i don't remember Lovecraft creating some board games,don't see what it have to do with this game. The game is closer with the expanded mythos,but it is not something i would say is Lovecraftian as the original stories. Still the game is pretty good and fun,but i wouldn't call it a fair depiction of Lovecraft's work.

Yeah. I don't remember "Lovecraft creating some board games" either. What I do remember is that Call of Cthulhu is one of the longest-running and biggest PnP RPGs of all time though, you fucking slobbering retard, and gee I wonder if a cRPG might be taking cues from it along with the works of everybody you love and everybody whose name is Derleth. I seriously wonder sometimes...are any of you out there even fucking trying?

I am saying that this game is not very Lovecraftian,as it is not close to the original stories.

How so? And spare me the "y-you haven't read Lovecraft" because I have and my dick is bigger by a mile.

 

[the mole]

spoilers, I'm on the final fight, do these enemies infinitely respawn, I know how to make only one spawn at a time, I'm assuming I have to let them kill me

Spoiler

The meteorite? or the

Spoiler

mi-gos on the elder thing planet?

For the first one you need to dig out the meteorite 3 times and then attack it for the second one

Spoiler

I just helped the elder thing fight the mi-gos on the overmap after that I kept going left of the map and waited for the mi-go scouts to pass so I could complete the game with the less combat possible since it's a bugfest and then I killed the Outsider. Poor guy

.

It's a spot check in there. You can use the gaze spell if your senses/investigation isn't high enough. Or bring Sonia, I think she's a rare example of a companion who can pass non-combat (spot) checks for you.

Mystery solved, danke

I'm finding it difficult to keep the elders alive, this time I only kept 1 alive, and so far it seems like the same situation, infinite waves, does the fight actually end or are you supposed to do something special