French publishers Bigben Interactive are buying French developers Cyanide Studio, the mob behind games including Styx sneak 'em ups, the Blood Bowl adaptation, and the Game Of Thrones RPG. Cyanide's games tend not to quite come together while being interesting or admirable in their ambition, mid-budget games of a sort we don't see much any more - I'm always interested to see what they're up to. Bigben are glad to be getting a development studio of their own, while Cyanide say this will help them expand and make better games.
]]>Not to let itself be out-done by Humble's very many bundles packed with games, Bundle Stars has put together the 'Nemesis Bundle 3'. Unsurprisingly, this is the third iteration of the 'Nemesis' bundle, which collects a whole batch of games with a penchant for a little bit of the old ultra-violence. Similarly to Humble, this one is structured in a 'pay more, get more' format, starting from 89p / $1.
To get the whole lot you'll have to throw down £8.89 / $9.99. That's fifteen games total, including entries from the Tropico, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Shadowrun franchises and more. You can also get the extra bizarre FaceRig tech in the mid-tier of the bundle if you like pretending you're a raccoon on camera among other things.
]]>A few years ago, I probably would have forgiven Styx: Shards of Darkness [official site] a multitude of sins (and though there is not a multitude, there is one honking great sin). A proper stealth game that isn't low-rent or poorly balanced, with a choice of paths and abilities but which doesn't devolve into routine action - we didn't used to get too many of them.
Recent times have given us new Dishonoreds and Deus Exes and Metal Gear Solids and Hitmen, endless Assassin's Creeds and even a so-so Thief, the game Styx most resembles. Hell, even the new Zelda game has a functional stealth element to it. We are spoilt for stealth choice, and that makes this fantasy wall-hugging sequel a tough sell. What it's got on its side is purity. What it has against it is its lead character.
]]>Styx was a game in need of a little refinement. You wanted to take the little oik and clean his fingernails, boot him into a bathtub, and scrub him down til he shone like an emerald. In his first adventure, the titular goblin (he'd smirk at being called titular) did some decent stealth, stabbing and scurrying through a handful of levels that were solid if unspectacular. It all worked fairly well but it didn't pack any real surprises.
Pleasingly, the sequel Shards of Darkness [official site] looks like it might deliver a polished version of the original, though some of the rough edges are still noticeable in the opening level I played last week.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Styx: Master of Shadows is a solid 6/10 game, but in an underserved genre that will still make it a worthwhile play to many. It's a strict stealth game in which you play a goblin who clambers around a medieval city built in the clouds, where getting caught means almost certain death.
]]>That's the thing about stab-happy goblins: you can never be sure quite when they'll pop up. Styx was meant to continue his merry little adventures in Styx: Shards of Darkness [official site] this year, but nah. Instead, Cyanide's follow-up to the 2014 fantasy stealth game Styx: Master of Shadows will now arrive in early 2017. While we'll need to wait longer to sneak around ourselves, today we can watch someone else do it, thanks to a new eight-minute gameplay video:
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>Murder is a right lark, I'm sure we can all agree, but there's little better murder than murder where no one sees their murder coming and their murder goes undetected. Stealth, I'm talking about. 2014 fantasy sneak 'em up Styx: Master of Shadows was fairly typical for for developers Cyanide - interesting and ambitious but flawed enough to end up frustrating, as our Graham noted in his review. Still, the goblin's sneaky adventure was promising enough that Cyanide are having another crack.
Today the French studio announced sequel Styx: Shards of Darkness [official site], slated to launch in 2016.
]]>Development company Cyanide have long been purveyors of interesting-but-guff fantasy games. Styx: Master of Shadows turns out to be their least-interesting-but-most-good. It's a stealth game in which you play a goblin - the Styx of the title - sneaking around the Tower of Akenash, a medieval city built so high among the branches of "the World-Tree" that ledges stretch down into a cloudy abyss.
It's also a strict stealth game: one in which triggering combat means almost certain death, and where you'll spend your time mastering the shadows by hiding in them rather than pouncing from them.
]]>I - and based on the number of posts about it, the rest of RPS as well - have been quietly hopeful that Styx: Master of Shadows will be a surprise gem in this, the Month Of Games. I worry we've used up our stealth bastard luck on the excellent Shadow of Mordor, but maybe there's some magic left. The goblin main character is delightfully non-standard in his short stature and murderous ways while the rest of the world seems a grimy parody of middle ages Britain. Graham's working away on a review in the run up to the release, but here's a launch trailer that expands on some of the plot.
]]>Styx: Master Of Shadows is a stealth spin-off, framed as a prequel to Of Orcs and Men. While orcs and men blunder about biffing one another, sneaky little Styx the goblin sticks to the shadows, robbing and stabbing as he goes. The game is out on the 7th of October and to prepare perfidious pickpockets around the world, Cyanide have released a video with a developer talkthrough. It's an instant contender for best video because it contains the statement, "In terms of the mechanics of infiltration, we tried to never lose sight of the fact we were playing a goblin".
]]>Styx: Master of Shadows is a spin-off of Of Orcs & Men, but instead of mixing its action and stealth together, Styx is focused solely on the latter. As a magical goblin chap, you pad, leap and stab around an open-level shaped by spawling castles and vertical drops. It's clearly designed to evoke yer Arkham Asylums, Dishonoreds and Dark Messiahs, but heck, it works. I watched the trailer below and those games were evoked all up in here. The video explains the game's clone powers, whereby Styx can create variously powered doppelgängers of himself to distract or trap unwitting guards.
]]>We've cast our shared eye over Styx: Master of Shadows before (I'm scheduled for another five minutes with the eye before Adam takes it to look at a football), our collective mouth muttering that an open-level stealth game sounds nice but its heritage makes us sceptical (I've got 15 minutes with the mouth before Graham needs to "holler at a lad"). See, it's a spin-off from Of Orcs & Men, a game which paired stealth bits with action stuff, only our Jim found the stealth "terrible."
But that was then, this is now, and this game isn't trying to do two things at once. What happens when Cyanide Studio focus on stealth? Have a gander in 13 of minutes of gameplay footage.
]]>Hey everyone, it's Styx! You remember Styx, don't you? You know, from the party that one time? And when he found your lost cat, nursed it back to health, replaced its missing foot with a tinker toy, and returned it to you safe and sound? Oh wait, no, I'm thinking of someone else. This guy. Styx: Master of Shadows, you'll remember, is a stealth-heavy RPG about a thieving goblin who was conceived while his parents listened to "Come Sail Away" on repeat or something. On one hand, a stealth role-player with a focus on vertical level design sounds interesting, but on the other, the last time Cyanide dabbled in stealth was in Of Orcs And Men's abysmal sneaking sections. But hey, at least Styx's first trailer looks pretty solid.
]]>Credit where credit's due: Cyanide is a deceptively productive studio, not to mention a rather ambitious one considering the constraints it works under. It might not be the biggest-budget operation, but the French wearer of many hats and waver of many national flags has recently produced a not-entirely-terrible Game of Thrones RPG, Impire, Dungeonbowl, and Of Orcs & Men. The latter, while depressingly flawed, is most relevant here given that Styx: Master of Shadows presumably takes place in the same world. It stars fleet-footed, dagger-tongued goblin Styx, who is apparently the Very First Of All Goblins. The game will be a mix of extremely vertical stealth and fantasy role-playing, which sounds downright fascinating.
There's just one problem, and I'll let Jim's Of Orcs & Men WIT take it from here: "The game is essentially a series of stealth-then-fight setpieces. This would be fine, except it’s a terrible stealth game." That, um, doesn't bode particularly well.
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