STYGIAN: OUTER GODS

Feels too familiar to work as cosmic horror

- Dominic Tarason

Can a work of cosmic horror still be successful if there’s no unknowns left to fear? First-person survival horror romp Stygian: Outer Gods is superficially an impressive production for a smaller studio, but after playing through the current Early Access version, I feel like I’ve seen it all done before, and better elsewhere.

Set in a universe that can best be summarised as ‘all of Lovecraft's stories put in a blender set to puree’, Outer Gods casts players as a former soldier haunted by spooky dreams and setting off on an expedition to find out why a small coastal village has gone silent. The twist: it's not fishmen! It's witches. But they might as well just be zombies, given how they mostly just shamble slowly towards you, occasionally swinging an easily blocked sickle.

Above all, this game feels like it wants to follow in the footsteps of recent