Developer – Misterial Games

Publisher – Fulqrum Publishing

Platforms –   PS5, Xbox Series S|X,PC (Reviewed)

Review copy given by Publisher

NOTE:

The following game is being reviewed in an Early Access State, the game may change after the release of this review, this review reflects the game at the time of publishing. 

Stygian: Outer Gods is the latest game in the Stygian franchise by the developer Misterial Games. Stygian is currently in early access, but even at this point its quiet great! This is first person horror game set in a Lovecraftian universe, with a nice mix of RPG elements and reminds me of games such as Call of Cthulhu, Resident Evil, and In Sound Mind. I absolutely love games like this and was eager to jump at the opportunity to take a look at the early access release.

The game opens in a rocky surrounding with monoliths, a shrine of some sorts to a mysterious god. After interacting with these monoliths you suddenly awake in your office from this horrific nightmare. You are man named Jack, a veteran and an explorer of sorts, that has travelled the world seemingly inspired by occult activities. You have been invited to explore Kingsport, a small port town, by your friend Victoria who has funding from Miskatonic University to investigate strange occurrences there. Packed and ready to go, you look at yourself in the mirror and are prompted to answer questions about yourself and what you see the mirror. In pondering the truth behind your reflection, you are able to make changes to Jack’s special traits and abilities. By answering these questions about yourself and your background, Jack is given bonuses but also faults to his character. These changes can be an increases or decreases in certain skills like Lockpicking and Occult Knowledge, damage resistances, and Jack’s health and sanity. After approving your choices for your character build, things start to go awry as EYES saw your choice. This is a common theme in Stygian, every action you take in the game can have good or bad impacts to your character as these all seeing EYES appear to be watching you at every turn. Victoria shows up unexpectedly and explains the truth behind the invite, Victoria wants your help and protection for this expedition to Kingsport. This journey is dangerous of course, and you are the only one Victoria trusts enough to travel with her to ease the fears of her overprotective father. You agree to depart and in typical Lovecraft fashion, everything falls apart. After a month at sea, your ships crashes in a storm and you wash up on the shores of Kingsport. Jack has been separated from Victoria and most of the crew and sets off to explore the town and solve the mystery of Kingsport.

Quickly we are introduced to a series of systems in the game that are all necessary for your survival. The first of these systems is crafting. At work benches spread throughout the town, you are able to combine different resources to create items such as bandages and lockpicks. The first accessible crafting items are minimal but over the course of the early access but does expand to a few more very helpful items especially ammunition. Progressing a bit further, you see a corpse that has a knife sticking out of its neck, this is your first access at weapons to fight with. There are a variety of weapons that you will gain access to such as a Pistol, Shotgun, Rifle, Axe, and Sledgehammer. Most of the early access will be spent with melee weapons and sneaking around enemies trying not to disturb them, but closer to the end you will gain access to the guns which is a game changer in pacing. I enjoyed the mix of combat and pacing, sometimes it made more sense to go the stealth route to avoid wasting precious ammo, but other times I just wanted to park a round into the enemy’s skulls. In terms of enemies, that are quite a few all over town, but they are limited to just a few types of enemies. Mostly you will come across hags wielding sickles, and wild undead dogs throughout the playthrough, but in the later half of the early access the game takes a turn introducing these undead men that remind me of the movie The Descent. Playing at the hardest difficulty the game had to offer, the tension was high in fighting these enemies. While there were only a few types of enemies, I feel like the game didn’t suffer from it.

As you play the game, you will come across different NPCs and quest giving corpses that can provide you with guidance and next steps to help your progression. These quests are typically hidden items that you need to find, like hidden keys or golden skulls and completing these quests will provide additional benefits like adding additional skills Jack can use. These skill cards can increase your lockpicking abilities, allow you to speak to the dead, increase your melee damage, to name a few. I found myself focusing on things like Lockpicking and Occult knowledge as I wanted to be able to access as many areas or dialogue conversations as I can throughout the playthrough. These skills give you access to more resources which are extremely helpful in your survival as the game can be difficult at times as saving is sparse and limited to certain areas of the game and upon death you will lose all progress since your last save. Being able to craft as many bandages and collect many more resources was game changing.

Technically the game is a bit hit or miss unfortunately. My gaming PC is pretty decent but it hard a hard time running Stygian without stuttering, even when adjusting the settings to way below what I know I can handle. I think at one point I dropped everything to low and I still experienced stuttering. This seems to be a common complaint on the forums but it was nothing game ruining from my perspective. I can run most games on Ultra settings without issue so I truly think these issues are on the games end. Something of note was that they recently released a performance patch that I have not yet tested, so they are definitely working on fixing these issues but its something to note. I was able to break the game by jumping to certain areas where I wasn’t supposed to be going and bypassing certain requirements of the game progress which ended up crashing the game and pushing me back to my last save. At this stage, its best to just stick to the path that you know they are directing you to go unless you are purposely trying to see what you can get away with. These are all common issues with Early Access games, but for the most part the game is just fine.

The game looks great and has an awesome aesthetic that I always enjoy in video games. It’s dirty, bloody, and grimy and I like seeing interpretations of occult themes and the lore behind the game. The character designs are very serviceable and everything is well put together in terms of the story and the puzzles. I really enjoyed playing Stygian and seeing where the developers would take me next. At the time of writing this Early Access review, the game took me about 6 hours to complete, but they make it clear that it wasn’t the ending of the game and there was much more to discover. I am very excited to see where the game goes next, and I am now more interested in playing the first game of the series even though its a completely different style than this just to see how everything has changed and progressed with the series. As the game moves into full release, I will update this review to encompass all of the added features and changes.