Stygian: Outer Gods Steam Charts & Stats

I picked up this game looking to have a survival horror fix met. It has been met with.... Mixed reception. Its mere existence will ruffle a lot of feathers as this publisher has just severely reduced the scale of another early access game they had in the works called Stygian: Reign of the old ones in order to make the full release with a completely unresolved story. I've not played it myself but Grim Beard does a good video if you want to know more about the publishers reputation with early access. Not the developers I need to add, but the publisher. Let me start by saying that this did scratch the itch enough for me to make it to the end of one playthrough, however my experience in the latter half of the 5-6 hour experience we have right now was LEAGUES better than the first half for reasons I'll get to. There were a LOT of criticisms I had throughout that playthrough that I will be focusing on here in the spirit of those things being improved on full release. First of all there is a lot of EA jank here. To be expected, there is a warning on the steam page for a reason. To give you my worst offenders; The optimisation is not great for a game that looks like it should be on the last console generation (I have an rtx 3060 so I am by no means top of the line but this game should not be challenging me to hit a decent framerate on high settings for how it looks); The hit detection, enemy AI, stealth mechanics, and overall melee combat experience is awful. Anger inducingly awful in the first two hours. Being hit through stairs and floor by an enemy underneath me in a different room, getting hit by enemies 3 steps away from me while not being able to hit them unless my character model is actively walking against them, getting spotted by enemies through a fence that I couldn't see them through, getting detected by sleeping dogs just because their character model is facing me (I had the silent walking perk and could only sneak past this stupid dog by SPRINTING as I left its FOV quicker that way). I cannot express how many times I died because my melee weapon just would not hit an enemy that was having no problem attacking me from equal to AND further distances. Lucky for me, unlucky for the games distance to being a finished product, enemies are completely locked into their attack animations so I learned to cheese their AI in all non-dog combat encounters. I would not have played this game for longer than an hour if I couldn't do this, that is how bad the melee combat is. This is not Thief; combat encounters in large part are not even slightly avoidable even in the first village area that you explore. Enemy placement simply does not allow for sneaking most of the time. I think in this entire starting area I only successfully avoided combat with 4 of the 15(ish) enemies as the line-of-sight detection completely overrides everything even when it should seem obvious that you can silently walk past. Is an enemy sleeping? distracted while eating something off the floor? Obstacles between you that should obstruct their view? Does not matter. Move in front of them within the set distance and they WILL spot you, leaving entire areas borderline impossible to sneak through. Even this was not consistent throughout my playthrough, with some enemies actually staring right at me but because their BODY was slightly facing away I recieved no detection. You know it is roughly implemented when the detection cone does not even move with the idle animations of the enemies. If stealth was a viable option I'd treat this game like thief and just see it as intentionally bad combat; but this is not the case here; too much of the combat is unavoidable. There ARE enemies a couple of hours in that change this up a bit by relying only on sound and add a decent amount of tension (as long as you haven't picked up the stealth master perk), but their pathing is so telegraphed and simple that they pose almost no threat at all. When these enemies are added to the hub world after their initial encounter there were only a couple that I did not simply walk around with no fear at all. By this point I also had a shotgun so I could just walk up to them and blast away. All aspects of enemy interaction need serious work before the full release. Gunplay completely changes this. I wish the revolver had been introduced earlier because it would have made the opening trek through the village bearable. Combat after you collect the guns becomes very satisfying, with the rate at which you find new ones rewarding exploration beyond the beat and path, ammo stingy enough that you prioritise crafting more but not Amnesia the bunker levels of stingy to the point where you do not want to fire them at all. The sound design around firing them is perfect and gives them the weight they need, the slow reloading adds tension when you use them and the noise triggers surrounding enemies to investigate. Honestly I started enjoying the game leagues more once I had one, and it is insane the disparity between how much I wanted to tear the game apart before I found one compared to how much I wanted to defend it after. So the graphical presentation here isn't fantastic, it does have good 'stand back and look' environments but everything up close is very much from the previous console generation. Character models are definitely the worst affected here with just about all of them looking 360/ps3 era. But not everyone is here for graphics of course. They could still have the environments produce an intense atmosphere right? Well, kind of. The first village area does not quite succeed in this. There ARE good moments of environmental storytelling that speak to the horrors going on here, and some drip-fed story beats that add context to what you're seeing in a neat way BUT I was not tense or scared for a single second. RE Village's hub area worked so well in the early game because you did not feel safe. You felt in constant danger at all times because you never knew when the next 'inhabitant' was going to come running out and provide a tense and difficult fight. I've already covered how the stealth and combat are not even close to good enough to provide this kind of tension, and honestly if the enemies were less predicable I'd have ragequit the game over more engagement with it. The ambient noises like creaking gates, wind banging windows open and shut, the noises of unspoken horrors in the distance are only halfway to good. It just does not attempt to build tension as you move between and within the destroyed corpse ridden houses. The graphics aren't able to supply the lighting that would be needed to add anything to these environments and nothing special is attempted with the content of the houses and fields besides a few corpses. Those that ARE interesting drain your sanity which does nothing but add annoying noises and warped visuals so you spend no time in them appreciating the effort. It all just feels quite generic. This is extremely disappointing as it makes the experience feel so empty. Like it's being made purely for the genre it is in and not with any passion to produce good gameplay. The environments are just... OK. Which should be a crime in a SURVIVAL HORROR game that is supposed to be ALL about its environments. I'm not expecting dead space levels of lighting but you have given me a lighter I'm never using because all of these houses where horrors are meant to be happening are so bright. I get a lantern later for truly dark areas and the atmosphere here is much better but that was THREE HOURS into the game. There is also a setpiece right at the end of the current version of the game that is borderline PHENOMENAL in using sound design to create a tense and scary atmosphere so, unfortunately, they have proven that they can DO IT. This makes the first half of the game even more disappointing. This game is 3 hours bad and 3 hours good. It's up to you if you want to push past the bad.

This game taught me that hot girls are more dangerous than eldritch entities

ANYONE WHO SAYS THIS GAME IS BAD HAD A TERRIBLE SENSE OF WHAT MAKES THESE NOT SO KNOWN GAMES REALLY GUUUUD. THE FEEL OF THIS GAME IS SO GOOD, THE SOUNDS REALLY CREEPY AND ERIE. ALOT TO FIND AND MANY SECRETS TO UNVEIL. I CANT WAIT UNTIL THE FINAL RELEASE. RIGHT NOW ITS ONLY ABOUT 11.5 HOURS IF YOU SEARCH EVERYTHING. THIS AND ETERNAL EVIL ARE MY 2 FAVORITE INDIE HORROR GAMES.

A really cool project. RPG elements allow for different builds and approaches to how you interact with the world. It's visually stylish, has great sound, and tons of potential. Keep in mind it can have some roughness around performance and the occasional bug. But I didn't encounter anything unmanageable.

So far I have been thoroughly enjoying this experience, the gameplay, the exploration, the world, the ambiance. The character building is pretty fun using the discoverable cards along with choosing what your character will be good at in the beginning, or choosing base stats with no starting buffs and nerfs. The small puzzles are welcome and I hope for more of them and harder ones, along with more variety. If I had to ask for more, I would ask for a few things to make the experience a little better; - The combat is a little clunky with weapon speed being kind of confusing. The Axe, Sickle, and Knife all have a similar attack speed even though their speeds are noted in the description. I believe each would be better if they had tweaks to the speed such as the knife being really fast and getting a lot of hits in a few moments, then the sickle would be a little slower then the axe being even slower. - I think there should be a way to travel between safe-houses to assist with grabbing some missed items. In the mines there is an occult totem that shows the way to a hidden cache, but if you interact with the artifact next to it you lose access to that cache and all previous items which could be fixed with a transport system. - The map needs more details in my opinion, showing icons for things you have seen like totems, items, chests, etc.. The lack of these icons made the back-tracking just a little more tedious than normal but would be a very welcome edition. - As much as I like the cards I feel like there should be some sort of leveling system for increasing total health, total stamina, and total sanity. - This is a small want that I doubt fits in the game at all, but clothing items along with the amulets that also give effects would be pretty cool. All-in-all I think this is a pretty fun game with engaging gameplay and exploration that will only get better with the time and effort the devs have already been putting in. Keep up the good work and try not to burn out.

Hope to see more of this game in the future, I enjoyed what is here so far. With a bit of polishing up this could become one of the best Lovecraftian Horror Games out there

For a game in early access it feels mostly complete and I sunk quite a few hours already. Pleasantly surprised by the level design and the story. Stygian has excellent resource and inventory management. The gameplay mechanics are easy enough to jump right in and start playing. Sort of reminds me of Resident evil as well but with Lovecraftian elements. I honestly can't wait till they complete this game. The story has me hooked.

This game has the cultist seal of approval. During the early access; it's still very rough around the edges, with both the mechanics and performance. But the foundation and the gameplay are there, and they are superb. I found that the longer I played, the more fun I had. The graphics and design also look amazing. There is a lot of potential here, definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Finished my first (and probably only) playthrough prior to more updates being dropped - it's a really fun game, highly recommend for survival RPG + Resident Evil / horror fans in general. It reminds me a lot of Evil Within 2. Some aspects I really appreciate are: - The setting - A well realized location that ISN"T huge - it makes a ton of use of the space the village has, which I think is excellent for a survival horror. It's creepy and the sound design is great. - RPG elements - While not a full bore "level up, loot enemies" action RPG, it has a limited but very rewarding perk system that make playing in the world that much more enjoyable. I took the one that makes you silent and the backstab perk - I didn't use much ammo with those - Melee combat - The one and two handed weapons all have different feels and weight. Melee combat is very rewarding - Static objects - even though I ran out of room in my inventory and storage chest, you can drop things on the ground and they stay static. I play super carefully so I had a lot of spare stuff - I was able to leave it in the central safe hut near the gate - Safe-room saving - I've seen some people complain about this but I actually really appreciate the save system. It's unlimited but you have to go to a safe room to do it. This allows a heightened sense of tension when you're deep in the sh** and desperate to get to the next safe area. Some things that needs some work: - The hitboxes aren't great - lot of times I feel like my melee weapon should've connected, my ranged weapons should've headshot, etc., and they just didn't. This especially sucks when it costs you your life, which can happen very easily - which leads me to - - Combat Difficulty - I don't mind the fact that any enemy takes like a fifth your HP even if you block, but the combat's a little too janky for this at times. I think combat overall just needs an overhaul - Merchant(s) - The equipment variety the merchant offers isn't great (could we get ammo added?) and you can't sell things back to them. I'd like to at least be able to sell obvious survival gear like tonics Overall, I definitely recommend in its current state, and hopefully we'll get a good chunk more

Enjoyable game, I look forward to playing the rest of it. There is, however, only about 5 hours of game currently. Good atmosphere, sound design, exploration and level design. The melee combat is quite simplistic, but the stamina management gives it some depth. Basically you need to bait and punish every enemy. You can hit and be hit through walls, which is a little annoying - certainly not a deal breaker though. The performance could be a bit better. It ran fine on my rig, but i got some random stutters after a certain point. Not sure if it was a memory leak or because of the environment. I restarted the game and it seemed alright, but I didn't go back to the same locations so I cant be 100% sure. Anyways, this is a quality game. If you like Lovecraftian stuff and survival horror, I can most def recommend it.