Stygian: Reign Of The Old Ones Is An Extremely Effective Lovecraftian Creepfest

As Gamescom becomes a distant, fond memory, we’re still working our way through the backlog of titles that we played which are yet to hit the market. Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones is a 2D RPG Horror title which immerses the player in the most frightening aspects of the work of HP Lovecraft (like it’s not all f***ing terrifying). Players are able to select from 8 archetypes, which function as classes that provide inherent abilities going in to the game. Whilst these are important, it is pretty much a guarantee that whatever class you take you’re going to have a difficult time (I, for instance, selected a soldier and died in combat in a pretty gnarly early area). In each of these 8 archetypes players can then select their background, with the option of a neutral background providing no bonuses or negatives, or, for the more adventurous amongst you, three other personal stories that can provide big positives and crippling downsides.

The exploration is done by clicking on the terrain to send your character to where you want to go, following on from which players can click on NPC’s or interesting objects to interact with them (as a side note, holding down the alt key draws attention to objects or quest items you may have missed). The game really starts to set itself apart in the way it deals with its own story and the dialogue options therein. The player, in my case at least, really does get a sense of the desperation and misery of the people of Arkham. Without wanting to give too much away, there is a fantastic looking overarching story which should keep players wanting to find out more right up until the end.

The combat is turn based, with combat movement dealt with in hexagons, with each tile corresponding to one unit of range in either attack or motion. When this game releases in 2019, it should provide an excellent alternative to the open-world monstrosity that is The Sinking City, perhaps even offering a more interesting, claustrophobic approach to one of the masters of storytelling.