Are you ready to delve into a role-playing game of horror, loss, and madness set in the strange worlds of HP Lovecraft? Mark your calendars, because Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones is set to wrap its grotesque tentacles around PC gamers this September 26.
What should you expect from the game? Well, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, you can anticipate a visit to the town of Arkham in the 1920s. Players create their own characters based on one of eight different archetypes of cosmic horror, each with unique attributes, skills, and belief systems that determine how characters cope with the twisted reality of their current world. Players participate in an open-ended narrative designed to help them make sense of the mysterious events that have taken place as they journey from a doomed Arkham into the depths of the Abyss.
Stygian remains faithful to its subject matter, featuring strategic and intense turn-based combat from a 2D perspective. Players are going to face a wide variety of challenges, from fanatic cultists to the most horrifying monstrosities that may compromise your safety and well-being. Players engage in demanding physical combat or exhausting spellcasting contests to win over these horrors and pursue their own goals, whether its salvation, vengeance, or something darker.
Key features of Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones include:
- A hand drawn 2D world reflecting Lovecraft's themes of cosmic horror and dread.
- Enemies, environments and storylines inspired by Lovecraft’s iconic original works. Take part in quests inspired by your favorite stories and see them play out according to your own decisions and role-playing style.
- Choose from eight main character Archetypes, each with its own origin backstory and specialties.
- A host of weird companions to accompany you on your ill-starred journey: the lonely, antediluvian 'Outsider', a fallen soldier of the Great War reanimated by Herbert West. Recruit these and other outlandish beings to your crew.
- Your character's Sanity and mental state influences their available dialogue options, offering both advantages and hindrances. Sometimes it pays to be mad in a world gone mad!
- Stygian's Belief System determines how your characters cope with the warped reality of the new Arkham, as well as the rate at which they regenerate lost Sanity. Belief Systems also offer unique dialogue options, expanding the breadth of role-playing possibilities.
- A new kind of spell system which sometimes takes more than it gives. Being a master of the occult is not as simple as flinging colored missiles from your fingertips. The black magic of Stygianis potent but may cost you your mind, your health, and possibly even more.
- Strategic, turn-based combat from a 2D perspective, similar to the classic Heroes of Might and Magic games.
- The struggle in Stygian is not to save the world, for that battle is lost already. Pursue your own goals in these end times: salvation, vendetta, or perhaps something darker.
The turn-based cosmic horror CRPG is tagged at $29.99 on Steam, and your soul, if you have one.
