With the release of Styx: Shards of Darkness just on the horizon on March 14, fans of last year’s cult stealth smash hit are eager to see the next chapter in Styx’ sardonic adventure. After completing one hell of a hands-on demo at What’s Next de Focus in Paris last month, I was impressed. Styx: Shards of Darkness seemed to have hit that sweetspot between challenging and accessible that makes for a fun stealth game. And a lot of that sweetness can be attributed to the stellar level design.
“It's all about exploration, stealth, swiftness and immersion,” said Julien Desourteaux, a level designer at Cyanide Studios who worked on Styx: Shards of Darkness . “It's totally what we wanted to deliver.”
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The tutorial on offer at the event had Styx traversing a series of connected platforms set inside a harbor in the mouth of a cave. There were plenty of craggy walls and rope-swinging shenanigans, but the real star of the level was the wooden buildings riddled with crawl spaces and entryways. Nothing felt linear or forced, which Desourteaux says is by design.
“It's like a Rubik's cube. You can try it this way or that way and it's not one solution per puzzle,” he said. “There is always a different solution.”
For Desourteaux and the team at Cyanide, the thrill of game design comes to fruition when they see the different approaches players take to infiltrating these levels. Styx is not a brawler, the game doesn’t feature any kind of Dishonored-esque bloodbath solutions for getting caught. So instead of combat, players have to get creative. And the creative solutions from the original game in the franchise, Styx: Master of Shadows , helped inspire the design for the sequel, too.
“We learned where were our strengths and where were our weaknesses. That's why we did a sequel, it's all about improving what we had before. We are not trying to create a huge revolution on this sort of game,” Desourteaux said.
Of course, no matter how creative players get, the real star of the game is Styx himself. The wisecracking Goblin brings a lot of personality to the stealth genre, which is too often populated by reticent protagonists with a penchant for melodrama. Styx is more of a pop culture personality, and Desourteaux made it clear that everyone at Cyanide adores working on a project with a lead this strong.
“We like to call him a perfect mix between Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones and Deadpool. We want to push it further, sometimes he will talk to the player and break the fourth wall. He'll say things like "oh you're playing like shit." All over the game you will discover more of his personality, what he likes and doesn’t like. I think it's great,” he said.
Players will finally get their chance to hang out with Styx again when Styx: Shards of Darkness releases on March 14 for PC, Xbox One and PS4.
