Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones

I was really looking forward to this game but two major downfalls make me not want to finish it. The game starts out strong with a really in-dept character creation with lots of interesting character options. And then the actual game starts... 1. Not very Lovecraftian. The entire premise of the game is that the town has been transported wholesale into another dimension. The first thing that happens is your character has a surreal nightmare that serves as tutorial. Your character wakes up in the attic of the inn, goes down to the bar, relates his nightmare and everyone is like "yeah, well, who doesn't". I'm sorry, but... One cannot slap some tentacles and a sanity system on a game and call it lovecraftian. There is no tension here between the everyday and the otherworldly, no conflict between insanity and blissful ignorance. The setting is starkly opressive and bizarre, but lovecraftian it is not. 2. The gameplay. Stygian is, at it's heart, a crpg/point-and-click/survival game. Ambitious, combining three genres like that! Let's see how it pans out. Imagine standing in a room, clicking on various objects and reading the well written descriptions, when suddenly the hunger ticks into your rations. Ooops! better rush through the game, I need that cash for weapons and fuel for my lantern, wich by the way also drains in real time. Imagine being arbitarily unable to rest at the inn, franticly searching through town for some other option of recovering health and fatigue, all while - yes that's right - all while the hunger system takes nibbles at your draining cash. I'm sorry, but no. The survival mechanics only detract from the game, and while it's not quite as bad as I make it out, it's an insane design decision in direct conflict with the rest of the game. A highly dissapointing and frustrating experience, 1/5 for me.

Straight up what the title says. As of one of game's last patches the game DOES NOT WORK on Linux systems. You might be able to launch the game once, but after that it will never load. This has been a reported upon issue for more than a year now - https://www.gog.com/forum/stygian_reign_of_the_old_ones/stygian_bugs - yet GOG continues to advertise and sell a NONFUNCTIONAL GAME to its users. Both GOG and the Developer of Stygian have made it clear they do not care about these issues, and that they are not going to fix them. Buy the Steam version - it works for every user. Especially buy it on Steam if you are on Linux so that you can actually play the game, but honestly you should buy the game on Steam anyways so that you aren't supporting the practice of continuing to sell a game that is fundamentally broken. So that's the short of it. This is my entire experience with the GOG version of the game. GOG knows that this is all Linux users entire experience with the GOG version of the game, and does nothing. What else am I supposed to say?

World, atmosphere, music and writing are great. These elements reeked of Planescape: Torment, one of the absolute best RPGs I played. Stygian provided me with eldritch Lovecraftian experience that I will not be able to erase from my broken mind, and I love it. I'm very glad I managed to slog through maddening depths of its unresponsive, nearly broken UI, mind-numbingly slow and unbalanced battle system, loading times straight from early 1920' and non-skippable cutscenes. I really hope that the authors will violently birth perfected continuation. Vastly. Perfected. Continuation.

I've yet to meet a game that has a main storyline that doesn't finish while following it. The surroundings and the feeling of dread that this game gives is amazing, but it just feels really raw and unpolished. It seems that we're (hopefully) on our way towards a "chapter 2". Not a big fan of those. Gimme a fully fleshed out game!

This game is really a pearl when it comes to Lovecraft'ian lore. The atmosphere is amazing and I can't recall a game which gave me a similar experience. Yes, it has some flaws, it is quite short and feels unpolished but remember it is a Kickstarter project and it is the first game of this studio. If you like Lovecraft or horror rpg and you like this type of graphics it will suck you in and give you amazing immersion.