Monday, December 26, 2022

Styx: Shards of Darkness

Styx: Shards of Darkness is the video game that's kept me busy these last few months.

You play as a Goblin who is sort of an adventurer, sort of a scoundrel, and generally just a curmudgeon. Styx lives in this weird underground world full of primitive dwellings built inside watery caves. It's sort of a fantasy steampunk world, with lots of lovely buildings to explore.

Styx is trying to accomplish various quests, with lots of different ways to succeed, so there are lots of ways to play the game, but I find it works best as an ultra-stealthy approach. Styx can crouch down and sneak and hide and avoid all the bad guys who are trying to find and catch him. You have to be patient and wait and watch and learn where the guards are and what routes they are taking and when they pause in their rounds to look the other way or whatever and then you can plan your path to sneak by them and that's fun.

The game play is a little bit platform-y, with various things that you can jump on and hang on to and swing from and so forth, but mostly you end up sneaking around through passageways and windows and rooftops and the like while you figure out where you are trying to go and get there without being detected.

I loved the snarkiness of the game, and the crawling around and exploring, and I loved the overall visual look and feel. The game was easy to understand and learn to play.

Around 2/3 of the way through the game, it started to become all-of-a-sameness, and my attention flagged, but overall I'd recommend Styx: Shards of Darness to anyone who enjoys stealth games such as Dishonored or A Plague Tale or similar.

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