Styx: Master of Shadows smuggles 14 minutes of footage out of E3

News
By published

I'm all for fantasy worlds that don't demonise their gobliny or orcish races, so I remember being pretty curious about Cyanide's Of Orcs and Men back in the day, despite middling reviews eventually putting me off. I have a feeling Styx: Master of Shadows is going to be harder to resist. The third-person stealth game takes Of Orcs' sneaky goblin Styx and gives him his own game set in a massive tower. I mentioned it back in January , but now a big dollop of in-game footage has appeared, giving us a proper look at how it actually plays. I have a few concerns, but it's nice to see a stealth protagonist - shuns the sunlight, lurks in the darkness - actually looking the part for once.

Huh. The AI seemed a bit braindead there, but that might be because this is a demo and things tend to go very right in those - I hope in the full game it's not quite as easy to creep past the tower of Akenash's many workers and guards. I like Styx's various gobliny powers a lot though, including his ability to spawn a clone, acidic vomit that can be used to fatally poison wells, and his general small form factor allowing him to hide in vases, under tables and the like. It's not an open world game, but each level appears to be Dishonoredian in scope, with a bigger emphasis on vertical exploration. I'm cautiously impressed, even if Styx looks to be a very traditional stealth game in many other ways.

Styx is out "late Summer", according to Trailer Man, which I guess means August or September. (Thanks, Blue's News .)

Tom Sykes
Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.