I’ve always been a supporter of indie games, and there is very promising project currently up for funding on Kickstarter, called Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones. This supernatural RPG, based on the worlds created by H.P Lovecraft, looks fantastic with a unique visual style all of its own, and the game itself sounds very much like Darkest Dungeon meets Pillars of Eternity and who wouldn’t want to play that?
The graphics are 2D hand drawn illustrations and perfectly capture the 1920s cultural characteristics combined with Lovecraft’s dark and vibrant worlds. The game promises to be a rich role playing experience with the ability to create your character from scratch and choose from multiple origins, attributes, skills and belief systems. Sanity will also play an important role in the game as your characters will be affected by what they see and experience with their behaviour changing based on their mental state.
The developer promises the following in the completed game:
- A hand drawn 2D world which reflects the mood of Lovecraft and cosmic horror. • Quests and storylines which capture the iconic themes of Lovecraft. Take part in your favorite horror stories and shape their outcome according to your role-playing style. • Weirdest of companions will accompany you in your accursed journey. Lonely antediluvian of ‘The Outsider’, a dead WW1 soldier reanimated in the hands of Herbert West, a psychic narcissistic cat from Ulthar and many more will be among your eccentric cast of companions. • Sanity and the mental state of the character will have influence on the dialog options. Mental conditions create benefits as well as hindrances. Sometimes being mad in a mad world helps! • Belief Systems determine how your characters handle the challenging reality around them and help regenerate lost sanity. Belief Systems also offer unique dialogue options thus extending the roleplaying possibilities that players can explore. A rational character gains sanity after completing a research on a mythos creature while a divine believer gains sanity after converting a lost soul to the path of God. • A unique spell system which sometimes takes more than what it gives. The black magic of Stygian is very potent but will cost you your mind, health and sometimes your very soul. Being a master of the true occult is not like flinging colorful missiles from your finger tips. • Turn based strategic combat in beautiful 2D Heroes of Might and Magic-like perspective. • 7 different archetypes with completely unique prologue stories and specialities to breathe life into the Lovecraftian archetypes.
• The struggle is not for saving the world, that battle is lost already. Follow your personal goals for salvation or vendetta in a doomed world.
It looks to me that they’re already well on their way to providing this. If you’ve played and enjoyed Darkest Dungeon or Pillars of Eternity or even both, then I would strongly recommend that you check out this projects Kickstarter page and back them. There’s a veritable treasure trove of pledge rewards up for grabs as well as the satisfaction of backing what promises to be a great future video game title. Also their Kickstarter video is hilarious, if nothing else you should check out their page just to watch that.
