Let’s take a good look at the upcoming sneaking game from Cynadie Studio, which puts is in a dark and mystique world. Our only chance to survive in this world is to plan everything for the successful sneaking mission. But who we are and what are we heading?

Our hero is a kobold, but not of looser kind, that you can happily massacre in the D&D games. He happens to be a fast, sneaky bastard, and also a trained assassin. The game’s title marks pretty well the gameplay: our kobold must use shadows and darkness to fulfill his mission which is to reach the Heart of the Tree. Besides being well trained he also has special abilities, reaching his goal shouldn’t pose a problem – if we help him to do so – of course. Styx also isn’t alone, since a being called Amber is within him.

You can only get something if you give something!

Amber is a very strong being who blessed our hero with multiple special and supernatural abilities, like invisibility, affinity of using his senses and also the fact that Styx can make a clone of himself and lead it anywhere. Naturally, there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. By using his special abilities, our kobold will be more and more under Amber’s control which means his mental health is deteriorated little by little. Amber can also drive Styx to madness.

What’s the purpose? The road taken or the main goal?

The Heart of the Tree which I already mentioned can be found in the tower called Akenash which is controlled by humans. This tower was built with the help of the elves and became the center of strength, knowledge and sorcery.
The main gameplay is actually about getting through the fortress and reach the wisdom and knowledge of the sorcery. Of course it seems to be easy but you can be sure, that we won’t face an easy task ahead. Styx: Master of Shadows has a big open world where our hero has to overcome a lot of enemies to reach the Tree.

Sneaky bastard!

As you could see from the E3 video below, the sneaking part of the game is very well executed. Besides trying to hide at all cost, we also have to take care about getting rid of the corpses of the guards killed, since we can be caught, if those are discovered.

Besides simply killing the guards we can also choose the option to overhear their conversations or steal money from them like in the Thief games, which are a big inspiration for Styx: Master of Shadow. We have various possibilities at our disposal: we can put out the lights, we can use our clone, or if we just want to kill our targets in an elegant way we can kick them from a cliff. The method chosen is up to us, but the developers are warning the player:

“The easiest looking isn’t always the most secure.”

What we have seen so far from the game looks very promising.

-KozaChris-