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

Kitchen Utensil

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Valtiel

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Jun 27, 2017
Messages
116
Finished the demo, i'm pleased, atmosphere is cool and I was soon dragged in it. To be really good this game must deliver on reactivity and combat encounter, the design statwise looks promising, but as it is combat seems it could become annoying by the end, I hope it will not be the case, I want this game to be good.
Art style is good to me, just wondering why the small framing of the scenes.
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth

Update #28

Feb 7 2018

Possible Release Date, Merry Folk and Steam Demo

Greetings to you! Greetings to you all children of the ancients, bearers of the pristine blood, dreamers of our beautiful end!

Let's begin this update with the production plans of the year.
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We know that some of you can't wait for the full game and believe us, neither can we but we now much better know how much time and effort we need to realize the true potential of Stygian.

We began this project with estimations. None of us have developed a game with such scale until Stygian and at this point in the development, we can easily say that all of the team became much more proficient in their specific areas of development so we can make much more precise calculations on how much time and effort is needed to create the experience we have in mind for you.

That's why you see the year 2019 as the release date on our Steam page. We don't want any more postpone declarations during the production because we know how some of you feel about them. We know the feeling as gamers ourselves but we also know the feeling of playing a game which could not live up to the expectations. Stygian won't be that game. That's why we released a demo so you can see how much time we spend on details and the creation of a living, changing (although in a horrid way) real world.
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You can download the latest version of the demo from Steam
Enough blood and tears! As mentioned above, our Steam page is now online and you can download the latest version of the demo directly from there. It is more polished and has some visual updates when compared to the KS build. Any comments are welcome!

Now, let's travel back through the alternative history and have a look at the current state of our madness inducing children's book "Merry Folk from the Stars" from 1920's. Some of you may remember it as a backer reward from our campaign. Here are a couple of the illustrations that will glorify its unholy pages.
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Ada Tuncer is the talented artist behind Merry Folk
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Star Pharaoh will take his children to the land beyond the stars
You'll be able to find this madness induced little book inside the game as well. It was distributed to the book stores across the States and became a best seller among children and their parents alike.

Of course... that was only until the dreams began...

Excuse me? Do you also see them?

Team Cultic
 
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Brayko

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Played the demo. It was pretty great. The writing is fine it's the atmosphere that's more important in this scenario, otherwise we'd be stuck with Wasteland 2 or Pillars of Eternity tripe.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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Messages
35,653
Demo thoughts:

When it comes to dialogue, I hate how the introductory text slowly fades in instead of appearing at once and also how whatever you're reading disappears when you click next. With the latter, it's both jarring and it means you can't scroll up to reread.

With regard to buying/selling it'd be nice to have a button to streamline the process so I don't have to fiddle with figuring out the exact amount of cigarettes I need to supplement whatever I'm trading.

With my 16:10 resolution, some of the combat gui is cut off. Not that big of a deal, considering the keyboard shortcuts, but probably something to address for professionalism purposes (see also 5:4 resolution people angry that they can't even play it because the level exits are cut off).

You can't go wrong with providing the option for faster animations for movement and combat.

Other than that, pretty intriguing. In one of the first conversations you can have, a bartender calls you a cuck, and having sex with prostitutes restores your sanity. Quite a few interesting character concepts to mess around with, and it looks like you might be able to get by with one who's lousy at combat as long as you can pay your bodyguards.

Edit: I replayed with a speech and stealth character and didn't see a single combat screen. :cool: But who knows how long that will last of course.

2nd Edit: Replayed with an investigator. Psychology only got used once as far as I can tell and it got the same result as the speech check, which has far more checks. :\ Investigate only had one check, but it lets you skip having to pay that guy to break through the wall.
 
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Plane Escapee

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Played the demo up to the third "Struggle" in the bank when it unfortunately bugged out and left me unable to click anything. Great experience up to that point though. Best time I've had with a RPG since Underrail. The dialogue could do with some slight improvement in certain places.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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Two more thoughts in response to posts I went back and reread:

With regard to constant loading screens, you guys know this uses Unity, right? You're lucky they're as fast as they are. This is as good as it gets. I'm okay with needing to push a key to continue because otherwise I wouldn't be able to read the helpful advice.

Additionally, anyone complaining about the amount of combat in the bank is a fillerphobe. There are only four battles in there, and two of them require you to initiate them yourself (talking to the obviously crazy teller, and entering one of the back rooms, followed by getting too close to try to get to those safes). Also keep in mind that just because you didn't invest any points into stealth doesn't mean you still shouldn't try it out anyway; the stealth value is a combination of the skill and some stats, so you can potentially get past them as long as you keep your distance. You'll miss out on loot, but you'll get the same xp you would have received if you had killed them all or entered combat and escaped them if you exit a level while in stealth mode.
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
IT HAS BEGUN!

Greetings Brethren of the Cult!

It seems the underground cults around the world are rising to the surface one by one!

Glorious monuments of the Grandfather Cthulhu are appearing everywhere.


We hid our true intentions in the video. It is still early to truly unveil ourselves. Not yet, but soon...

Cult brethren! Let's share the news! Let's put fear in their hearts! Make them doubt their false gods! Make them tremble!

The links are as follows:

Facebook Video

Youtube Video

Reddit Page

Until we meet again, at the fall of humanity...

Team Cultic
 

Tygrende

Arbiter
Joined
Aug 2, 2017
Messages
872
I already posted this in the Game News thread, but since devs seem to read only this thread I think it's a good idea to repost my thoughts here.

Beat the demo, loved it. I can already tell there's a high chance it will be my 2019 GOTY, unless Underrail: Expedition gets delayed again.

That said there's one thing I disliked

You cannot access the safe hidden behind the poster in the bank without paying 50 cigs to the key guy first (or convincing him in a different way), even though the 3rd manager note clearly tells you that it's right there while the other two say the safe is numbered 0 and contains the possessions of the Dismal Man.

Feels a bit forced and immersion breaking, especially if you're materialistic.

By the way, has anyone managed to trigger those red madness-induced dialogue options in the demo? I tried lowering my sanity to 0, but that just ends the game. Maybe it needs to be very close to 0?
 

Roguey

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That said there's one thing I disliked
As I noted above, you have to pass an investigate check to get it for free. There could be other ways of getting it as well (strength plus weapon maybe?), but I already had my fill going through it three times.
 

Tygrende

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Aug 2, 2017
Messages
872
As I noted above, you have to pass an investigate check to get it for free. There could be other ways of getting it as well, but I already had my fill going through it three times.
You can get it for free with an occult check as well. You can also convince him to accept cigs as payment with a speechcraft check. That's cool, I like that.

But that's not the point. The point is that if you decide to explore the bank before getting this information from him, the bank manager notes contain all the information required. There's no actual reason to backtrack and talk to him, he doesn't say anything new. Makes no sense. Another issue is that getting this information from him is what triggers the angry mob attacking the Outsider and the madman getting shot in front of the bank. So even if you were allowed to interact with the poster without talking to him, you would lose the opportunity to recruit the Outsider for no good reason.

The core of the issue is that this questline is clearly meant to be 100% linear, but you can also do things out of order and end up in a situation that makes no sense. I think the easiest (not the best though, in my opinion) way to fix this would be to either remove/change the 3rd note or make it impossible to enter the bank before getting the info from the key guy. A better solution imo would be to allow the player to interact with the poster after reading all 3 bank manager notes, make the "madman gets shot" event trigger on your first visit to the bank and "angry mob bullies the Outsider" event trigger when first entering that particular map after talking with the Outsider for the 1st time.

It's not a very serious issue, but it detracts from the experience nonetheless and could be easily fixed.
 

Scrawled

Cultic Games
Developer
Joined
Mar 20, 2016
Messages
78
As I noted above, you have to pass an investigate check to get it for free. There could be other ways of getting it as well, but I already had my fill going through it three times.
You can get it for free with an occult check as well. You can also convince him to accept cigs as payment with a speechcraft check. That's cool, I like that.

But that's not the point. The point is that if you decide to explore the bank before getting this information from him, the bank manager notes contain all the information required. There's no actual reason to backtrack and talk to him, he doesn't say anything new. Makes no sense. Another issue is that getting this information from him is what triggers the angry mob attacking the Outsider and the madman getting shot in front of the bank. So even if you were allowed to interact with the poster without talking to him, you would lose the opportunity to recruit the Outsider for no good reason.

The core of the issue is that this questline is clearly meant to be 100% linear, but you can also do things out of order and end up in a situation that makes no sense. I think the easiest (not the best though, in my opinion) way to fix this would be to either remove/change the 3rd note or make it impossible to enter the bank before getting the info from the key guy. A better solution imo would be to allow the player to interact with the poster after reading all 3 bank manager notes, make the "madman gets shot" event trigger on your first visit to the bank and "angry mob bullies the Outsider" event trigger when first entering that particular map after talking with the Outsider for the 1st time.

It's not a very serious issue, but it detracts from the experience nonetheless and could be easily fixed.

Really good observations and spot-on recommendations. We really want to return to those areas to heighten the sense of immersion once we complete the core material. We hope we'll have the chance. Thanks for the time and effort Tygrende!
 

Tygrende

Arbiter
Joined
Aug 2, 2017
Messages
872
Really good observations and spot-on recommendations. We really want to return to those areas to heighten the sense of immersion once we complete the core material. We hope we'll have the chance. Thanks for the time and effort Tygrende!
Thanks for reading, glad to see you take player feedback into consideration. Keep up the good work.
 

Forest Dweller

Smoking Dicks
Joined
Oct 29, 2008
Messages
12,196
When it comes to dialogue, I hate how the introductory text slowly fades in instead of appearing at once and also how whatever you're reading disappears when you click next. With the latter, it's both jarring and it means you can't scroll up to reread.
This is definitely a problem if true. They need to fix this.
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
New Kickstarter update : New Features are born from the Nameless Void!

New Features are born from the Nameless Void!

Greetings fellow stargazers!

In this update, we wanted to focus on some of the features that you weren't able to experience in the demo but will get to see in the full game. Without further ado, let's begin!

Darkness Mechanics

Darkness itself will be one of your adversaries in Stygian. In a dimension without sunlight you'll be needing the company of your good old lantern more often than not and of course this will come at the expense of your precious Kerosene.

If you find yourself in darkness without a light source you'll start losing sanity. If you enter a combat scenario without a party member carrying a light source you'll have serious disadvantages against enemies (especially the ones that can see in the dark; such as Pickman ghouls).

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There are two levels of darkness in Stygian: Dark and Pitch-black. Pitch black represents a supernatural level of darkness that drains your sanity, even while holding a light source. Please note that we are not responsible for the strange visions you may see in pitch-black environments. Question your own dark past...

We're also planning some pretty neat mechanics for pitch-black combat scenes if the production time allows.

And keep in mind that darkness will have some important effects on user experience in exploration as well, such as not being able to interact with the environment objects that you do not illuminate.

Localization

We've been neglecting the construction of a good localization foundation for far too long... Not anymore! Madness should be spread to other innocent tongues like wildfire!

For the last two weeks, we've been busy doing our bests to prepare the systems that will make the lives of Stygian's potential translators much less miserable. We may have just saved ourselves from being the target of a lot of potential curses, hexes and malignant rituals. Pheew...

And here is our very first localized screen:

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Turkish localization will follow the English release
Item Comparison

Are you among those who like to min-max your combat potential? Do you find yourself comparing every little stat out there to maximize the pain you'll induce to your enemies? Then this system is for you! (You'll die anyway...)

Whenever you check the statistics of a weapon, you'll be able to see which stats are higher or lower than your currently equipped weapon's, thanks to green and red coloured indicators.

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If you like a deeper comparison, you can always see the stats of your equipped weapon with a simple right click and examine both items' properties in detail.

Faction Mechanics and Hiding your Identity

The factions of Stygian will remember the rights and wrongs that you do to them. If you offend the Mob by attacking one of its members inside a populated area, they will come after you. You'll be seeing bounty hunters patrolling the main hubs and almost all the mob members that you encounter will trigger combat.

If you offend Mob in an isolated area (such as the distillery outside Arkham city), you have to kill every single enemy in order to prevent the spreading of the word. If at least one enemy can flee from the combat, they will come after you.

Thankfully there is a way around that: hiding your identity. If you (and your party members) wear masks before things get hot, your enemies won't be able to identify you. Ever wanted to be a masked vigilante? This is your turn. Just remember the fate of Betsy Ross, the last vigilante of Arkham. Such a sad tale it is...

This takes us to the end of our update ladies and gentlemen.

Until we see each other in the interweaving tunnels of forbidden data once again.

Team Cultic
 
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