melkathi

For @bugarup who enjoys the aesthetics of the game

Please refer to this post

So mental conditions seem to have a few effects in Stygian. Schizophrenia gives me a little bit of mental resistance but makes me more prone to catatonia (I guess there is a chance it triggers during combat and costs me action points, as I have seen lunatics randomly have conditions trigger at the start of a combat round). It also though has affected the world - strange creatures only my character can see poking their heads out from corners, some npcs appear to have animal heads. And during conversations, random dialogue options will get crossed out as I read through them, and be replaced with crazy rambling.

When people see right through your nihilism: Kinky Arkham: When you are slightly unhinged: and you start seeing things: and can't control the voices

Things in Stygian are going well for the forum vote character Donald. He is now Schizophrenic and has been cursed by <redacted> so that he cannot say <redacted>'s name. If he is forced to reveal the name, the curse will kill him. <redacted> says this is not a bad thing though, as having <redacted> as an ally can be beneficial under the circumstances we have found us in.

The evidence does look quite damning.

Oh, crud. mea culpa

The crazies in the bank will be a pain regardless.

That may very well have been the case...

At least you can't blame me this time for dragging you into a game

They won me over at "aristocrat gets a butler as starting equipment".

The vote came in with 6/10 votes for Old age, gender tied with 5-5 and nihilistic (4/10) and aristocrat (3/10) both leading. As the male aristocrat had a name suggestion and one female aristocrat vote also specified the patrician background, the result ended up: And you may wonder who that other gentleman is... I HAVE A BUTLER!!! Some starting ritual from my Occult skills: First skill check (after putting on coat and hat) : And there are things in the river!

Off to the theatre. When I get back I'll re-check all the votes for the character while I wait for the game to install

I need to sit down and play Ghost of a Tale.

They'll get unstuck. Quite a few hotels may go bankrupt over this. Thomas Cook pays at the end of the year. So they'll have provided most of a year of services without getting paid. And some of them have had exclusive deals with Thomas Cook, so will not necessarily have the know how to swap to a broader audience. Yeah, never was a healthy business model for those hotels, but still sucks for the staff.

To be honest, I only know burner phones from TV.

Legally middle age starts once you hit 28, apparently. That's when in the architects' association/guild they told me I wasn't eligible anymore to vote for the young engineers committees. My reply was, now that you called me old, I wouldn't have voted for you anyway.

Currently Old Age is leading by a mile, with rational female aristocrats having a marginal lead over other respective choices.

Thought about going to the police. And for the first time in my life thought again and decided that I may not want to get into trouble. The guy who used to sell cocaine 10 minutes walking distance that way, today was selling heroine outside my front door. He also had a broken arm. And yes, I could give the police a full description of the seller and the spotter. I could, if I payed a bit of attention tell them at what time they sell where. Heck, give me a wireless cam and I can find a good spot to get it all on tape. But do I really want my name to appear in paperwork related to drug trafficking, when I, a passerby, have been witnessing this duo for 5 years? The police station is one street over.

Not a what am I playing, but a What Will I Be Playing post: Soon I will delve deep into madness, and obviously I'll drag you down with me (read: Stygian releases this week). As you get to join me in madness, you get to have a say in it! Vote on the forumite character for the playthrough! Things to vote on: 1) Gender: Male Female 2) Age: Age affects starting attributes (bonus for young, penalty for old characters to one attribute) and starting skill points (bonus for old, penalty for young characters) Young Middle Old 3) Archetype and Background: Each archetype comes with a choice of four backgrounds, the first one always the default Academic (Scientist, Researcher, Psychiatrist, Physician) Aristocrat (Patrician, Prodigal, Cursed Bloodline, Bankrupt Royalty) Criminal (Gangster, Thief, Hitman, Con Artist) Explorer (Adventurer, Pathfinder, Mountaineer, Big Game Hunter) Investigator (Detective, Occult Detective, Ex-Cop, Bounty Hunter) Occultist (Secret Society, Mesmerist, Depraved Occultist, Alchemist) Performer (Actor, Movie Actor, Juggler, Busker) Soldier (Private, Military Intelligence, Marine, Bouncer) 4) Belief System: Affects how characters regain sanity - through acts of kindness, self-indulgence, research, prayer, or not at all since all our actions are ultimately pointless. Humanistic Materialistic Nihilistic Divine Rational Esoteric Stygian releases on the 26th (Thursday).

The diversity problem stems from the way the game is designed to spawn attacks: The pandora virus creates nests. Each nest has hatcheries for a specific strain, and therefor all creatures it spawns share mutations. Unless nests are left to grow and combine, each nest creates one enemy type. If you want to face multiple enemy types you therefor have to face combined forces from multiple nests or from a lair or citadel (if that is the highest tier name). So the game design is that early on, and as long as you are able to stay on top of things, enemy forces will always be of one type at a time with one loadout. The issue here is that to the game mutations are just a type of equipment, and therefor in turn conventional weapons are also the same as mutations. So when a nest's strain is determined, the weapons used are also part of the strain instead of being, well weapons. Hopefully they will change that. The balancing will be hard. But that is to be expected from a system with multiclassing. It is far harder to balance abilities for a class, when these can be combined with the abilities of every other class.

Gog will always get shafted harder, since they are a European company and therefore within reach. Steam is safely hidden away in the USA - far away and in a country that will bring us democracy if we interfere with a business interest.

I am rather worried about the tactical layer after this build. One crabman manage to fire a grenade, your soldier's weapon breaks. Have 30 crabmen with grenades at the same time, you either kill them all before they fire a single shot or you lose the mission. So you build your squad very quickly to be able to clear every visible enemy every turn. With an Assault-Berserker and just a bit of planning, you can clear a nest on turn one. But you kinda have to, as otherwise the AI will do the same to you. I fear there may be something fundamentally wrong in the system how different target areas have their own HP. At least in this implementation. There currently definitely is something wrong with enemy diversity. Hopefully they will at least diversify the weapons wielded by tritons - let all tritons from the same nest have the same mutations, but do have them carry different guns. 30+ tritons all with shotguns or all with pistols is boring (more so if they all spam mist) and makes the game look poorly made/thought out, when it can't differentiate between mutations and tech. Overall, the current build gave an initial positive impression that quickly turned to dissatisfaction. And I was surprised to see how much negative sentiment there was in Discord. There doesn't seem to be a single person in there who is happy with the current combat.

Should be able to gift it to their email address.

I remembered my Uplay password as I was resetting it. Same for Epic. I reset my Origin password but have an inkling I may have reset it to what it was.