STYGIAN

Hello travellers!
STYGIAN is a 2015 adventure horror game made with RPG Maker VX Ace by Gustav (also author of the 2013 game Leave, that is present on this site too, and being short, it will be reviewed in the future) in 2015 and a prequel of the Cat in the Box is an RPG horror adventure game by the game author, released instead in 2020. This game was translated by ForgoneMoose and posted here on Rmk.net in 2020 (Gustav stresses that STYGIAN, despite the same date of release was made five years before Cat in the Box, so it is by no means a reflection of their current skills), but even if it's set on the same universe of the other games, this is still a self contained storyline, even if there is a common point: no one of the character has a name, no one (not even in Leave)!
All clear? Let's go!


Oh well, that's really reassuring, my friend. Suuuuure!

This game starts with a young unnamed blue-haired man on his way to meet his parents, that suddenly wakes up in a strange world. He soon meets two other characters, a man with glasses and a young woman, and both are trapped like him inside this strange world that appears to be a maze-like realm
Anyway, as you can probably expect (since this is a adventure HORROR game), they're not alone inside this place: a tentacled monster (that's also unnamed, but since the protagonist have no names, why a monster should have one?) is chasing them around, and wants them dead. But escaping this place won't be easy since our trio has to solve a series of puzzles and complete some tasks ... but where are them, and how this story will end?
Oh yes, the game has two endings: a bad ending (that's pretty easy to avoid), and the good, true ending. Oh yes, and at the end of the game a password is displayed, and that's for a a password protected zip file in the folder. Are you curious now? Well, play the game and find out what's that about!

Now, the game: I cannot talk much about the writing since it's a translation, anyway the game is well translated, there is maybe one line that was not translated, but well, it's a single case. So that's good from this point of view, and I also liked the story, that's good. And the ending too.

The gameplay is pretty simple and basic, and that's ok for a game that took me just one hour and 30 minutes to see both endings (probably much less if you already played the game and/or just want to see one ending). This is a classic adventure game made with rpgmaker where you explore various locations collecting useful items and use them to solve some puzzle, occasionally escaping from the deadly monster, since this is a rpgmaker horror game and it's obligatory to have some chase sequences, isn't it?

Now the graphics: it's clear that Gustav at the time, in 2015, did not have the skills that created Cat in the Box, and this is noticeable by some imprecision and lack of polish especially for some animations, the monsters isn't also that impressive creature you could probably expect, anyway concerning maps I think that it's a pretty well done job. I also liked a lot the character art, the portraits, these are all well made! Now what? let's see the end of the review.


Hey my friend, what did you see? Oh yes that's the...

Final Verdict
Stygian (nothing to do with the horror rpg Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones) is a pretty nice game, and while not as good as Cat in the Box (that would deserve a better rating, at least 4/5 in my opinion) it's still a solid experience, with just small flaws that aren't detrimental to the player's enjoyment. Clearly it's probably aimed to those who like classic rpgmaker horror games, with classic puzzle/exploration/chases that you may have found in other similar games, so you can't go wrong this this!