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

[Jimmious]

So if I'm getting this correctly, the game is pretty buggy at the moment?
Damn it, I have time this week and was planning to use it on Stygian

 

[Jinn]

So if I'm getting this correctly, the game is pretty buggy at the moment?
Damn it, I have time this week and was planning to use it on Stygian

Well, there's a patch due out in the next 12 hours sometime, so hopefully that'll fix at least some of the issues.

 

[Prime Junta]

So if I'm getting this correctly, the game is pretty buggy at the moment?
Damn it, I have time this week and was planning to use it on Stygian

It's about as buggy as you'd expect a first-time indie project to be. Don't let it stop you from playing it, just expect some frustration.

 

[Jimmious]

Ok then, I will start whining playing on Wednesday

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Ok then, I will start whining playing on Wednesday

I wouldn't recommend it. Give it a month and see if the devs are prodigious with patching or not.

 

[Myzzrym]

Game looks interesting but I'm seeing quite a bit of negative comments. Did anyone make some sort of review on RPGCodex? (link?)

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Game looks interesting but I'm seeing quite a bit of negative comments. Did anyone make some sort of review on RPGCodex? (link?)

Here's my list-form review. I decided to stop playing until there are some patches. I played about 12 hours of this game across 3 characters. The first two times i had to stop playing due to game breaking bugs. That means i have not finished the story and so i won't comment on it. Take this as you may.

Positives:
- Great art style
- Dense atmosphere
- Nice soundtrack and sfx
- Suspensful
- Numerous "deep-dive" Lovecraft references
- Decent writing (albeit there are numerous spelling mistakes. Grammar mistakes are rare, but then again i'm not a native English speaker)
- Interesting, fleshed out companions
- Fun, lore-friendly itemization
- Multiple approaches to quest solutions.
- Mechanically encouraged roleplay (ie. filling sanity by roleplaying your belief system)
- Viability of different character builds/RP opportunities

Negatives:
- Numerous - some times game-breaking - bugs
- Loading-screen simulator. There is no reason for this game to have as many, and as lengthy loading screens. And yes, I ran the game on an SSD and my machine is on the cutting edge of consumer hardware.
- The game's UI is frequently unresponsive. For example, when you click on a world object to read description bubbles, all other interactive points become disabled for a few seconds. Clicking on stuff never feels comfortable in general.
- Gated content. The game feels on-the-rails, with areas, NPCs, and quests only becoming available in very specific orders, connected to completion of other quests. I imagine this will greatly reduce the replayablity factor in the game, and this couples with...
- ...the game having very few outcomes for your choices. Sure there are multiple ways to handle a given scenario, but the outcomes are rarely different. If this is not "illusion of choice" then I don't know what is.
- Lack of dedicated save/load option. What's the point? The game already eliminates the only reason why this should ever be implemented in an RPG (to block save-scumming) by allowing for multiple auto-saves.
- Game mechanics are obscured to a fault. What determines stealth success? What's the actual benefit of upgrading a stat (eg. stealth), mechanically?
- You cannot utilize your companions' skills outside of combat. Eg. you cannot get the Outsider to craft you drugs using his Medicine skill. This makes putting points in that skill nearly useless for said character (it's his tagged skill, no less).
- Game is Lovecraftian in appearance but not in 'spirit'. The "Cthulhu Elements" are so heavy-handed and gaudy that it completely throws out all of Lovecraft's subtlety and allegorical writing out the window.
- Slog-fest Turn-based combat. It's your run-of-the-mill indie-quality rendition of the system, and it sucks like every other one.

Final words: To me, this is an "above-average" game (6/10). I don't hate it. What it does right really makes me happy, but fanboism is a disease and I can't close my eyes on the game's many faults and short-comings. Definitely a great effort by the developers, and i'm excited to see how they grow from this experience. I wouldn't recommend you pay more than $10 for this game - mostly due to its bugs - but otherwise it's not terrible either. That being said, i did not finish the story so i can't comment on that. It could be that the story ends up being terrible (as mentioned by some other users here), or not. That would certainly factor into my final score, potentially boosting it up to a 7 (A good game) or bring it down to a 5 (an average game).

'Cline Scale: Recline. Doesn't improve the lot of RPGs in any significant way, but it doesn't piss on the genre either.

 

[V_K]

So if I'm getting this correctly, the game is pretty buggy at the moment?
Damn it, I have time this week and was planning to use it on Stygian

It depends. If you're lucky and have a system close to what it's been tested on, it runs relatively smooth. 2/3 of the game in, I've only run into two major bugs so far (interestingly, both in the same encounter), one game-breaking, the other not. Same with the speed - I didn't experience any lagging, and loading screens for me last a couple of seconds at most - on a fairly budget laptop. But judging by reviews, its performance on other systems is a whole other matter.

 

[Terenty]

When i saw developers' photoshopped faces instead of portraits i knew something fishy was going on with this game

Also why is everybody drooling over Lovecraft, his writing is boring as fuck. Edgar Poe is the real shit, the man wrote so many cool stories in every genre imaginable, including horror

 

[Prime Junta]

Also why is everybody drooling over Lovecraft, his writing is boring as fuck. Edgar Poe is the real shit, the man wrote so many cool stories in every genre imaginable, including horror

Poe is leagues ahead as a writer but I don't know how good a basis for a RPG he'd make. Getting bricked up in some Venetian's basement is only fun the first time it happens.

 

[vota DC]

Also why is everybody drooling over Lovecraft, his writing is boring as fuck. Edgar Poe is the real shit, the man wrote so many cool stories in every genre imaginable, including horror

If you compare Lovecraft with others he isn't that boring. Poe is so great that despite the fact many writers are Poe wannabes he is still underrated.

 

[Infinitron]

It's kind of weird to describe as "subtle" and "allegorical" the author who is notorious for passages such as these:

Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguined corridors of purple fulgurous sky . . . formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous overnourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion . . . insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and daemon arcades choked with fungous vegetation.

Lovecraft's stories are each about one particular thing. Stygian is a Mythos-fest that's about a lot things from those stories. There's a word for that difference, but it doesn't make Lovecraft "subtle", lol

 

[Egosphere]

I'll add to the above comment by saying that the combat is quite primitive, from my experience. I haven't yet finished the game, so take it with grain of salt.

Even though I've been playing a spell-caster, there is very little variation in the system. There are many guns, but they all do the same type of damage. There are many melee weapons, but they also do the same type of damage. You can knock enemies down, but they get up in the same turn. You can stack 3 bleeding wounds, but they amount to just -1 damage for each wound, each turn. The guns have a penalty to point blank shots, but you can freely step away from nearby enemies without any 'opportunity' attacks. I haven't tried crafting grenades or molotovs, but my guess is that they'll do similar damage and perhaps give another 'fire' status which will be mechanically equivalent to bleeding.

The spells break up the monotony, but they limited in number and share certain similarities with other weapons. Your first attack-minded spell will simply deal damage relative to your mind level. You'll then acquire a couple of spells that can turn enemies into stone (basically a stun spell, with the caveat that enemies can be shattered when ossified) or deal sanity damage. That's all good and well, but once you buff your original spell to having an area of effect, there's little reason to use anything else, especially since the spell can be cast on any tile. So far, I've steam-rolled every combat encounter simply by rearranging my party to get the enemies serried in front of me, then having 2 occultists spam their damage-over-six-tiles spell. There's very little tactics involved.

Compare this to something like AoD. You have bows (ie. guns), you have throwables, you have nets (ie. stun spell), but you also have an assortment of melee weapons which drastically alter the fight. You can use a shield to knock someone away from you, a spear to keep them at bay, axes to cleave through groups, hammers to bash their armour etc. There's decisions to be made regarding what armour you should wear, weather to block or dodge, where to position yourself in a fight, whether to hit quickly or slowly and powerfully etc. Or Underrail, which is just on a different planet altogether when it comes to complexity of the combat system, with the myriad of damage types, armours, spells, items etc. Even Arcanum, which could be won with nothing other than the Harm spell, had mountains of (badly implemented) combat mechanics. Maybe I'm missing something, but so far the scope of opportunities in combat has been pretty restricted in this game

 

[buffalo bill]

People disappointed with this game should play Infra Arcana, which is easily one of the best RPGs I've played in the last ten years, and perfectly nails the Lovecraft horror vibe. Also, made by a Codexer, and free.

 

[Myzzrym]

Negatives:
- Numerous - some times game-breaking - bugs
- Loading-screen simulator. There is no reason for this game to have as many, and as lengthy loading screens. And yes, I ran the game on an SSD and my machine is on the cutting edge of consumer hardware.
- The game's UI is frequently unresponsive. For example, when you click on a world object to read description bubbles, all other interactive points become disabled for a few seconds. Clicking on stuff never feels comfortable in general.
- Gated content. The game feels on-the-rails, with areas, NPCs, and quests only becoming available in very specific orders, connected to completion of other quests. I imagine this will greatly reduce the replayablity factor in the game, and this couples with...
- ...the game having very few outcomes for your choices. Sure there are multiple ways to handle a given scenario, but the outcomes are rarely different. If this is not "illusion of choice" then I don't know what is.
- Lack of dedicated save/load option. What's the point? The game already eliminates the only reason why this should ever be implemented in an RPG (to block save-scumming) by allowing for multiple auto-saves.
- Game mechanics are obscured to a fault. What determines stealth success? What's the actual benefit of upgrading a stat (eg. stealth), mechanically?
- You cannot utilize your companions' skills outside of combat. Eg. you cannot get the Outsider to craft you drugs using his Medicine skill. This makes putting points in that skill nearly useless for said character (it's his tagged skill, no less).
- Game is Lovecraftian in appearance but not in 'spirit'. The "Cthulhu Elements" are so heavy-handed and gaudy that it completely throws out all of Lovecraft's subtlety and allegorical writing out the window.
- Slog-fest Turn-based combat. It's your run-of-the-mill indie-quality rendition of the system, and it sucks like every other one.

Final words: To me, this is an "above-average" game (6/10). I don't hate it. What it does right really makes me happy, but fanboism is a disease and I can't close my eyes on the game's many faults and short-comings. Definitely a great effort by the developers, and i'm excited to see how they grow from this experience. I wouldn't recommend you pay more than $10 for this game - mostly due to its bugs - but otherwise it's not terrible either. That being said, i did not finish the story so i can't comment on that. It could be that the story ends up being terrible (as mentioned by some other users here), or not. That would certainly factor into my final score, potentially boosting it up to a 7 (A good game) or bring it down to a 5 (an average game).

'Cline Scale: Recline. Doesn't improve the lot of RPGs in any significant way, but it doesn't piss on the genre either.

Thanks GentlemanCthulhu. It looks like a game I'd enjoy, but only after a bit of QoL patches^^ I'll hold off on it for now.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

It's kind of weird to describe as "subtle" and "allegorical" the author who is notorious for passages such as these:

But not ALL of Lovecraft's writing is like that. What you quoted is one out of a number of passages like that, out of a larger body of allegorical subtlety. Besides, that's not even the point. I don't care that the game is drowned in Cthulhu stuff. What i'm saying is that there is no value to the Cthulhu stuff other than being thematic or to entertain. Lovecraft's writing is allegorical because the flavor of the writing masks the author's views on xenophobia, homosexuality, ethnocentricity, claustrophobia, self-flagellate ego-syndromes etc etc.

In comparison, Stygian has a "blackface" character who is stuck in a perpetual comedy routine. I do believe that Cultic Games included that character just to have a escape goat against "journalists" who might want to play the "you are racists for making a Lovecraft game" card, considering that the rest of the game doesn't not feature much virtue signaling. That being said, the story of Stygian, up to the point i managed to play, did not feature any allusions to real life, or allegories, or any sort of political advocacy, unlike Lovecraft's work. So yes, compared to the source material, the story in the game does not have any value besides entertainment. That is why I say it lacks subtlety.

 

[Jenkem]

post blasted street:

Spoiler

went into witch's house(?) or something like that and solved a punch of glyph puzzles and can talk to some black lips but have no idea what to do.. he asks me questions and it seems like no matter what it's game over..

what the fuck do I do?

 

[Van-d-all]

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.

Not really. It's random (-ish).

Spoiler

There's a trap door in French Hill (to the right of that wooden house with intercom) that becomes intractable at random. It might be triggered by the stabber quest, but be it bug or design sometimes you can click it, sometimes you don't. To be 100% sure, after the running crowd in Riverside triggers the stabber quest, you can just keep traversing between Riverside and French Hill and it will eventually work.

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.

IMO it was a gimmick to achieve two things. Firstly a gamification - the inclusion of staple cRPG elements like spells and magic items, that would normally be rare, and probably unavailable for the players to use in a regular CoC setting. Secondly a blatant advertising recognition, for the needs of Kickstarter and the like.

Effectively, said lack of subtlety IS the issue here; the game pretty much goes down a checklist of all Lovecraftian themes from cultists, through dreamworld, then Arkham, Mi-Go up to a point I wouldn't be too surprised if at some point Cthulhu himself came out ant slapped the player with his tentacle dick(s?).

 

[Falksi]

Just tried the demo. Walking eh? In a very dark place too. Exhilarating stuff.

Not for me.

 

[V_K]

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.

Not really. It's random (-ish).

Spoiler

There's a trap door in French Hill (to the right of that wooden house with intercom) that becomes intractable at random. It might be triggered by the stabber quest, but be it bug or design sometimes you can click it, sometimes you don't. To be 100% sure, after the running crowd in Riverside triggers the stabber quest, you can just keep traversing between Riverside and French Hill and it will eventually work.

Nope. At least it shouldn't have been.

Spoiler

The trapdoor is directly related to Horatio's quest to find an unguarded way into the mafia's building. So at least in theory, it should become clickable after you get this quest and agree to help him. If you managed to enter it without talking to Horatio, it must be a bug.

Though to be completely honest, unlike Stanley's and Dumitrescu's homes, there's no narrative, nor mechanical reason for it not to be opened from the beginning. It's not like you can break the game by going inside too early.

 

[Van-d-all]

Though to be completely honest, unlike Stanley's and Dumitrescu's homes, there's no narrative, nor mechanical reason for it not to be opened from the beginning. It's not like you can break the game by going inside too early.

Then it's definitely a bug, as it becomes inaccessible next time I visit the area, just to pop up randomly some time later, and I actually spent some time actively trying to make it happen ASAP. As such, I triggered it before even seeing the dead body, just to use the spell on it.

Spoiler

The fact it has almost exact dialogue as the mute girl, was disappointing though

As for companions, IMO the obligatory ones from Aristocrat & Explorer are actually a downside, since you can't dismiss them and the good old Khalid/Jaheira death trick, actually gives you negative stuff (angst). After all, from among the occult spitting rotting corpses and zombie soldiers why would you prefer to travel along some mutt or a balding fuck?

Also is it me or Sonia has broken dialogue?

Spoiler

I'm literally carrying her husband's brain in inventory, but she had no dialogue about this entire quest, unlike the Ousider that has some lines for almost every major event

 

[Beggar]

Kickstarters are cancer. It costs you passion to make a game. If don't have one, don't even dare to make games. I believe this one had some passion at the beginning of the process , but it soon transformed into a chore work. And then we get this type of crap

 

[Jimmious]

Kickstarters are cancer. It costs you passion to make a game. If don't have one, don't even dare to make games. I believe this one had some passion at the beginning of the process , but it soon transformed into a chore work. And then we get this type of crap

Fuck you dude, you pirate everything but you also have requirements from the developers? Fuck off

 

[Silva]

Some people want to engage with the Lovecraftian mythology and not only it's overarching themes and styles. For these people, dealing with actual mi-go, cho chos, shib-niggurat, etc. is part of the fun, and there's nothing wrong with that. The same way I love actual Planescape with Sigil and Factions and Great Wheel, etc. and not some other multiverse plane-hopping shit that touches similar notes like Marvel or DC verses.

My point being: Yes, we can have works that tap into the overarching themes of Lovecraft, but there's nothing wrong in also exploring the specific mythology he created.

So shut da fuck up.

 

[Beggar]

Kickstarters are cancer. It costs you passion to make a game. If don't have one, don't even dare to make games. I believe this one had some passion at the beginning of the process , but it soon transformed into a chore work. And then we get this type of crap

Fuck you dude, you pirate everything but you also have requirements from the developers? Fuck off

I don't give a shit about developers. They are faggots