Styx is a single-player choice for anyone who prefers approaching missions from the shadows and exploring vertical spaces over relying on open combat. At ≈ $1.43 from Kinguin, it offers an infiltration-focused adventure with Amber abilities, and the Steam PC version includes full controller support.The offer is ≈ $0.56 below Steam's $1.99 at Kinguin.
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated daily
Historical Low~ $0.002026-01Current Low Across Stores~ $1.70Epic Game Store
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Styx: Master of Shadows
Slip through the towering levels of Akenash as Styx, stealing treasures and completing missions without being detected. Close assassinations, staged accidents and Amber powers such as invisibility or cloning offer different ways to move through the shadows.Steam players rate the game 83%% positive from 9,675 reviews.Released October 7, 2014.
Credits
Developer
Cyanide Studio
Publisher
Cyanide Studio · Nacon
Steam player reviews
83%positiveVery Positive9,675 Steam reviews
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$0.002026-01-15 · EEpic Game StoreBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.
Language support
Language
Interface
Subtitles
Audio
English
Yes
Yes
Yes
French
Yes
Yes
—
Italian
Yes
Yes
—
Show 3 more languages
Language
Interface
Subtitles
Audio
German
Yes
Yes
—
Spanish
Yes
Yes
—
Russian
Yes
Yes
—
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Stealth and Amber abilities
Play Styx as a goblin infiltrating a dark-fantasy tower, stealing, avoiding detection and carrying out missions. Amber powers include invisibility, amber vision and creating a clone.
Controller and languages
The Steam PC version has full controller support. English has full audio; other listed supported languages provide subtitles.
03Frequently asked questions
What is the game about?
You play Styx, a goblin completing missions in the multi-layered Tower of Akenash while avoiding detection.
Can I play solo?
Yes. The Steam PC version supports single-player.
How does progression work?
Skills can be improved across six skill trees, and stolen treasures can fund equipment upgrades.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviews
Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
This is the best Goblin simulator ever made. It's also a damn fine pure stealth game. If you lose stealth you can recover by parrying and trying to hide again, but we all know if you get seen you are supposed to reload your last save. That's how you play a stealth game.Show moreShow less
22.2 hours at review699 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
It's time for a dissenting opinion, get your downvotes ready! I wanted to like Styx, I really did. But it's so rough around so many edges that it's just a frustrating slog. I've got 4 main issues:
- The controls and ledge collision detection aren't perfect. And in an assassin's creed/uncharted style system, like this game emulates - where a missed jump is often instant death, that's just unacceptable. 90% of the time, Styx will grab the ledge you want him to grab, or do the move you wanted, but 90% is just enough to be frustrating as hell. Quick save before every tough jump and maneuver, basicaly.
- The lighting engine is horrible. That wouldn't be so bad, but this is a game all about hiding in shadows and there's no real way to visually determine where the shadows actually exist. Oh, the game has shadows allright, but only some of them function for stealth. The big glowing mark on your arm tells you when you're in shadow, and that is absolutely necessary, because there's no other way to tell if you're hidden. Sometimes the blackest, dustiest corner doesn't provide any stealth-mechanics shadow. Sometimes a super-lighted area will. You can find areas where there's no difference at all in the lighting, right next to eachother - but only half of it's stealth-friendly. There's no way to tell except by your glowing tattoo. I went the extra mile and tested all graphics configurations the game had to offer, see if I could force the shadows to display where they actually were, but no dice.
TL;DR: Styx: master of shadows is all about using shadows for stealth, but you can't visually determine with your eyeballs where shadows actually are.
- The xp reward system is entirely binary. Kill a single man, trigger a single alarm, get 99% of the collectible gold pieces in a level? Too bad, no extra skill-up grist for you. If you're looking to get those bonuses and screw up a single time-- too bad. There is no lesser tier to get, just quick load your frequent quick save or go without. Full reward or No reward. I know some people will get a kick out of the oldschool sensibility of that, but I don't see oldschool as synonymous for good, and there's a reason reward mechanics like this got left in the past.
- Horrible map screen. This one might sound silly, but in a way it's the most important. The levels in styx are massive are exceedingly vertically designed. Styx might have the most vertical level design I've ever seen -- and the 2d maps used are the worst possible way to convey an area from that perspective. It's nigh impossible to tell where you are via the maps, and in a game that prides itsself on non-linear massive levels, this leads to you just having no idea where you are or where to go for long stretches at a time.
Styx was within sight of the 'good game' finish line but faceplanted its ugly goblin mug just short, is what I'm saying.Show moreShow less
8.1 hours at review274 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Introduction
Styx: Master of Shadows is an amazing stealth game with an awesome story. (Even the ending is satisfying) I can’t go too far into the story without spoiling it, but basically you play as a goblin assassin/rogue that has forgotten why he is on a mission to steal the heart of the amber tree. You follow him through his journey learning his past and his true self. The stealth gameplay is amazingly polished and any true stealth fan will love it, but the combat for when you get caught is very clunky. (You will want to be playing stealth throughout the whole game) The first 15 or so minutes (the tutorial portion) is very unforgiving and turned me off of the game, but I powered through and it got 100 times better once the tutorial is over. Most of the in game levels/areas have tons of different ways to traverse the map and you can replay all of the missions. Another really cool thing in Styx: Master of Shadows is the skill system. You can basically level what skills you use the most and these dramatically changes the way you play the game.
Pros
Amazing story and lore
Great stealth elements
Great level design
Nice Parkour/climbing
Great voice over
Awesome ending
Cutscene art style is awesome
Cons
Clunky combat
A few issues with gameplay (nothing game breaking or too annoying)
The beginning is really unforgiving
A few clipping issues
Conclusion
Styx: Master of Shadows is a great stealth game with tons of different features that make this game worth playing. Unfortunately, the combat when you get caught is very clunky, but this doesn’t ruin the game. It actually make the player fight the stealthiest way around. I highly recommend Styx: Master of Shadows to anyone who loves stealth games or just wants an awesome story with a challenge.
Video Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPi4gHdYmmQ
-HiPFiRED
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12.1 hours at review521 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I'm surprised by how...primitive this game is. It's not a BAD game, but it feels several years old already. There are a wealth of things you can't do that I've been doing in stealth games for years. The RPG aspect is extremely shallow and feels incomplete, the motivation to explore the large maps is slight, and the story is very poorly told, dumping us straight into the role of who appears to be the bad guy, brutally murdering seemingly innocent people for some reason he won't tell us (we have a goal, but not a motive). We don't know where we are, or when, or how we got here, or what any of the terms being thrown about mean. The dialogue writing is wretched, throwing in modern profanity in a very awkward "appeal to the cool kids" kind of way, alot of it framed as a flashback for no real reason. The graphics are fine, but the sound is just terrible; the voice actors remind me of Fable, aka, goofy English. Their canned lines are often repeated ad nauseum, and there's no real flavor to any of it. The music is also very lousy and downright annoying, and it's rare nowdays that I feel the need to just turn off the music because it's so bad. Combat, as others have pointed out, is so terrible that you will just never do it, making some learnable skills completely pointless.
But the biggest complaint, really, is just how limited it feels for a modern stealth game. I can hide in a closet, I can hide a body in a closet, but I can't reach out and pull a dude in and kill him and then walk away. Also, you can only put one body in a closet, you can't hide on top of said body, and you can't remove said body if you wanted to, say, set an ambush. I can snuff out torches to make it darker, but only one kind of torch; the other 12 types are apparently magical flame that can never be put out. When hanging from a ledge, I CAN move right and left, but I can't go around a corner, and it's very inconsistent how and when I will be seen while hanging from said ledge. I can't attack a guy from, or even hide a body in, an air-duct sized tunnel or crevice, Adam Jensen style. I can jump on a guy from above and kill him, but it's extremely loud. I can't kill two people at once. I can carry, to start, TWO throwing knives to kill SOME enemies immediately, replacing any notion of ammo conservation and skill for an automatic kill. There is no way to mark enemies and no mini-map, and your "high-contrast" vision has a short range, lasts only 5 seconds, and is of little practical use except to see the details of a dark area (even upgraded, it still sucks). Even controlled, muffled kills can be unpredictable, because it's random which direction the body will fall in, and no, unlike Dishonored, you can't automatically throw the guy over your shoulder, you have to let it fall first. Enemies are often hard to take out simply because the game will put several of them standing on top of each other in a tiny room, two of them not moving, which is an incredibly lazy way of making a stealth game hard, because it's not really believable or natural, it's just obviously a roadblock because screw you player. Games like Shadows of Mordor or even Far Cry 4 have better, more natural stealth mechanics, and those aren't even dedicated stealth games. An expert, I'm sure, can utterly destroy this game with ease, but for most players, cheesing will be the only way to play this game successfully, just abusing invisibility and the clone/decoy making ability, and using alot of throwing knives. That is neither skillful, nor is it mentally challenging, like a puzzle; you just stumble across area after area where your ONLY choice is to use the auto-kill button and then disappear, if you want to be stealthy.
Summary; this is not a BAD game, it's not poorly made or poorly coded, but it just feels dated, constantly making you wonder why you can't do things you can in other games. I do like the vertical movement of this game, something only a few other games really do, but even that feels weird, because you sometimes can climb a thing and sometimes you can't, and you'll see climbing things in the wall that you can't actually get to, and it still just feels kind of limited. In the end, this game is hard to recommend to anyone but die-hard stealth fans, because it's just not a very fun game in general. Despite being a purely stealth game, they still botch stealth elements that other games did right years ago, while those games ALSO gave us alternative play methods. Ultimately, it's just rather boring.Show moreShow less
6.6 hours at review225 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Well, long story short, this is a hardcore stealth game. Would seriously only recommend to those who like the old school stealth games, or are used to bumping up the difficulty settings in the newer ones. It's not a bad game...no, not at all. Just that anyone who's going to be playing this for anything other than stealth will have to endure a mightily frustrating time! I consider myself a semi-hardcore (if there's such a thing even) stealth gamer and I found it just a tad frustrating on Hard difficulty. No complaints though...I'm gonna man up!
Anyways, the biggest pro is that the levels are huge (like really huge...it took me just under 2.5 hours to complete the intro alone!). Lots of routes to take, and there's lots of verticality to it. There are ample number of collectibles to find, and potions to collect and conjure more magic tricks. And you are encouraged to not kill anyone, or not be detected, or steal all loot by unlocking rewards at the end of levels. AI seems to be decent too, if not unforgiving!
The stealth elements are standard from what you'd get in Thief for example. Guards can see you when you are in light and in their line of sight. They can hear you (even tripping over pails and broomsticks). And you can hide in the shadows, where a tattoo on your body will glow orange. However, you cannot abuse the shadows as much as Thief. Even when you think you are in a dark area, if a guard comes too close, he will smell you out.
Story is so-so for me. Too early to read too much into it. Visuals are just OK as well. Some textures look like they're brought right in from 1998 though. But on the plus side, I get to max out this game on my meager GTX 750 and get 60fps most of the time at 1080p. So yeah, it's not at all graphically demanding. Voice acting is mediocre as well. Nothing bad, but nothing memorable either. The same goes for the soundtrack/sound effects.
The controls are a little finicky and you will need to spend time in the early game to get used to them. Certain jumping actions are not properly explained in the tutorial. But aside from the jumping controls, the movement controls of Styx otherwise are solid.
In closing, the game feels like the most brutal stealth game I've played, and I can assure you I've played just about all of them released in the past 5 years. Still it should be a good challenge, and I assume as I progress and get used to the gameplay more, the experience will only get better.Show moreShow less
14.9 hours at review505 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
All the reasons you shouldn't play this game, neatly collected:
The enemy AI is busted. It suffers from the same syndrome every other stealth game did at the time of assassin's creed: all guards are telepaths. If one notices you, every guard on the map will know your exact location and will start heading there.
Everything makes sounds, and the guards find every sound suspicious. From you landing on the ground, spawning a clone, bumping into cluttered rubble that is very hard to distinguish from the environment, to even muffled kills, which in theory, supposed to make no sound. They do, and they're pretty loud to the point it's not worth killing anyone if not with throwing knives.
Skills are useless, since almost all of them support a high-profile combat playstyle, which does not work, since you die in 3 hits, or a single hit from elite units.
The game is buggy and unreliable. Throwing knives will disappear mid-air or miss their target, even though they work off of a lock-on system. Rakash will fail to hide under tables, or grab ledges and will fall, creating sound, alerting every enemy on the whole map.
Then the game introduces insects that are perceptive to sounds, and will hear EVERYTHING you do except for slow-walking while crouched. Not just your landing, but your jumping location. They shoot projectiles that stunlock you, so one hit means you're dead, without exception.
A good game would feature an element where you could make these obviously hostile factions fight each other, but no. In several segments, the guards and the insects have the same pathing, and they ignore each other, but will work together to kill you, if you're noticed.
Later, you're introduced to orcs, who will instantly kill you if you go near them, even if they're asleep. You have to sasrifice a clone to get past them, and move while the clone-killing animation plays. Except, on occation, the orcs won't finish the animation and will grab you anyway. Seems random.
Very late-game, the game also introduces another hostile faction, the Doomed, or sometimes Damned, as the loading screen tips call them. They are floating skulls that trace you and explode. The explosion makes a loud sound, and also drains 70% of your ember and 50% of your health. You can't slip past them, if you do, they will just pathfind to you anyway. You MUST sacrifice multiple clones to succeed in avoiding them.
The enemies you kill are still very dangerous, because after they die, their body explodes into ragdoll-mode, and will clip into any furniture and rubble you can find. Once I had one of my victims clip through a wall and alert guards on the other side.
Guards' pathfinding will also occationaly not work, and they never leave their positions, making it impossible for you to stealth past without confrontation. Sometimes they die instantly from your poison, sometimes they will never, sometimes they won't even go near the pot after you poison their water or food.
Later on, the game will also add Elves to the mix, enemies you can only kill in this game by dropping a chandilier on top of them. That's the only way. Chandilier gang.
Voice-actors are lacking. There's a single person who voices all the guards, and there are 2 alternatives for each "bark". They often repeat them, so have fun hearing the same guy yelling "THIS ONE'S MINE" after they notice you.
Also, for some reason, when you get noticed, the game jumpscares you with a loud af audio-queue. I had my game's sound at 20% and it's still so loud I had to remove my headphones each time it happened. It gets annoying in a game where stealth makes no sense, and you have to trial-and-error your way out of every map.
You have to load your saves so often, you'll see loading screens more often than actual gameplay.
The story also has an interesting twist, but it's one you can see coming by the time you hit chapter 3. The story is nonexistent, but usually the gameplay makes up for it in these types of games (dishonored, AC, hitman). Not here. Here, you can here some old dude screaming into your ears and a loud jumpscare every time the game decides you've been noticed. And after you get noticed, you can't get away. The guards will always find you, and the amber is so limited, it's not even worth relying on, nevermind using it.
Why do I have 24 hours played at the time of reviewing? Because the game has 4,5 areas, and you have to go through each of them twice, sometimes even 3 times. Guard paths are the exact same, even the guy who hammers a stone wall in a tunnel is the exact same. It's just that you have to go back. The sewers where the smugglers are, you have to cross it 6 times. Once on your way to some smugglres, then back, then again to cell 8, and then back again, and then to get Querberus, and after you get him, it's an excort mission back to your hideout, where getting detected is instant failure.
Also, it's dark, brown and red, and ugly. Just spare yourself the trouble and skip on this.
Edit: by request, I added some spacing, so it's a bit more comfortable on the eyesShow moreShow less
24.7 hours at review173 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Has the classic vibe of a stealth game, massive maps, and an alright story behind it all.
Pros:
Lots of potential with maps.
I've a mere 4 hours and I have only completed the first mission on "Goblin" difficulty (which is the hardest of the difficulties. The maps are incredibly large. full of many possibilities of your sucess or demise; be it the convinient tunnel, heavy objecting hanging above a guard, malfunctioning machines, gob in a box, the common ledge, the miscalculation of one's eyes, and much more.
A game for nitpicking.
There's quite a handful of enemies on each map, you can keep to the shadows and aim directly to the objective, or you could just run aimlessly assassinating every living thing you can find. While I could have skipped a good 90% of enemies without killing them, I simply could not pass on finding and assassinating EVERYTHING. l got a lot more of this game trying to clear an entire map over simply running towards the next loading screen.
Smooth Graphics.
Cyanide certainly knows how to make a good optimized game with some nice graphics. It's no next gen, but I'm sure many of us care for gameplay over graphics these days. I'd say I ran at a smooth 60 FPS at the highest settings, with very little tearing. I'm using GeForce GTX 560 Ti, non overclocked with 12 RAM.
Good Handling.
Controlling Styx is quite seamless with a gaming mouse. The amount of his abilities make a gaming mouse quite useful, but for those that don't own such luxuries can change any keybind through the options. I attempted playing it with a 360 controller, and I would say I much prefer Mouse+Keyboard combo due to easy access of key binds. Let's just say Styx isn't the best at grabbing ledges sometimes...
It's better than Thief.
That poor poor franchise.
CONS:
The AI
This is a stealth game, so I constantly had many "Really?" moments. The enemy AI is no different from any other stealth game and pretty much comes in two ways: the first being "Guard notices you, you run to hide, guard can't find you despite being a few inches away with a very obvious glowing orange tattoo" or the second which is "Guard notices you, you engage, dodge, parry, counter, dead guard, move on". I noticed I went through a lot of the second way through my first playthrough on Hard. To combat the non-stealth feeling and linear gameplay, I simply switched the difficulty to the highest which is "Goblin". I would not recommend any other difficulty if you truly want the feel of a "stealth game". Getting one shot can be quite annoying, but hey, what kind of "Master of Shadows" would get caught in the act of murder?
Bugs like a Bethesda Game.
I have only experienced a few bugs, but none that made me reload. Any bugs that I did encounter were in a "Bethesda" way. Floating bodies, launching dead bodies after a kill, stretching rag dolls, teleportation when assassinating, and minor clipping. None were game breaking, and is clearly something all games these days face. I'm sure patches are to come.
A "Bioshock Infinite" feeling.
Those familiar with Bioshock Infinite might get a retaste with Styx's abilities. While Styx has several abilities, you might find yourself only using a few of them in most situations that aren't forcing you to use them.
Overall opinion:
It's definately worth the $30, but I HIGHLY recommend you play on the highest difficulty to get the real stealth feeling. You can easily make the game last a few hours if you simply run through the enemy and go for the objective; make the most of it by slaughtering everyone in the area and collecting relics/coins. Abuse the amber! Amber powers can easily be forgotten if you don't use them often, they can be quite helpful on many maps! Exploration is important. There will always be more than one way to kill an enemy. Sometimes there's ways of clearing an entire map by the push of buttons...Keep your amber vision lit... Oh and, I hope your virgin ears are ready for the constant f#cks and sh#ts both Styx and NPCs spray out like a rainy day.
I give Styx: Master of Shadows an 8/10.Show moreShow less
37.3 hours at review244 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Experienced a gamebreaking bug where you cannot progress to the next mission if you replay a previous mission to complete secondary objectives. Forums explain that it's a well-known issue that the developers have simply decided to do nothing about. Uninstalled and removed from my library.Show moreShow less
10.4 hours at review159 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
AT A GLANCE
(Full review follows below)
Game Name: Styx: Master of Shadows
Original Release: 2014
Genre Tags: Stealth; Action; Adventure; RPG; Noir; Steampunk
My Overall Grade: A-
Estimated Playtime (Campaign): 12-20 hours
Multiplayer Aspect: None
Recommended To: Established fans of the genre; Aesthetes; Game atmosphere connoisseurs
REVIEW
Styx: Master of Shadows is a third-person adventure/stealth game that is pretty good, but isn’t great. It has all of the typical stealth game properties in abundance, but it lacks any novel ideas. It is a solid game, but certainly could have benefitted from some extra features and more finely tuned controls. That said, if you are a fan of third-person adventure/stealth games, and you are looking for a new game to beat, then you will probably enjoy this. But it is unlikely to become one of your favorite games ever.
The best aspects of the game, in my opinion, are the game-world and the atmosphere. A good job was done in creating an unstable, militaristic city in the steampunk style. The narrative was mildly interesting, albeit confusing. Even after beating the game, I’m still not entirely sure I “get” everything that happened in the story. The voice acting was also subpar and cringe-worthy at times, but ultimately it was tolerable.
The gameplay itself was fun. You really need to use stealth to get by, and there are usually multiple paths to choose from in order to accomplish your goal in a stealthy fashion. You definitely want to avoid combat, especially in later levels. The controls are mostly good and fluid; however, there are some situations where the controls get a little clunky… particularly while climbing. Throughout your playthrough you will probably encounter a handful of situations where the controls screw you over. If you make use of quicksaves, this will only amount to a minor annoyance, if at all. If you are someone who buys into the “save-scumming” nonsense, and want to play using only checkpoints, then this could prove to be significantly more frustrating for you.
There are a handful of abilities at your disposal to facilitate your stealthy progress, and you can increase the efficacy of those abilities by using skill points to upgrade them. Most of the abilities are available from the start, and you don’t get access to that many new abilities by leveling up; so the incentive to earn skill points dwindles midway through the game, when you already have all of the effective ones. This may not be the case if you are after the achievement for unlocking every ability, but doing so will require multiple replays of each level and this probably won’t appeal to most gamers.
Styx: Master of Shadows is a fun game. It has some flaws and it is lacking in some areas, but ultimately I can look back and honestly say I enjoyed the experience quite a bit. I definitely recommend this game to fans of the genre; it is worth a playthrough for anyone seeking a new stealth game to beat. Just be aware that it isn’t perfect.
Follow my curation page to see more of my recommendations!Show moreShow less
15.3 hours at review237 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I read a lot of the negative reviews before writing my own. A few of them are exaggerating, but most being frank and are able to point out some very crusial weaknesses of this game. For the first 10 hours of gameplay it was fairly enjoyable experience, with assassinations and stealth being both satisfactory and rewarding. Then I found myself reload more often as I progress because the game gets noticeably hard. More annoying enemies are added, forming up some really tricky and ruthless combinations. There are even some enemies that can detect you when you are in the range even without seeing you. I am a big fan of this genre but I feel really annoyed and exhausted very often during late game. And enemies have a million unexplainable ways of detecting me, some of which I think are bugs. Will surely recommend if you like frustration, but I won't be buying the next game of Styx series.Show moreShow less
21.8 hours at review120 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.
Kinguin, it offers an infiltration-focused adventure with Amber abilities, and the Steam PC version includes full controller support. The offer is ≈ $0.56 below Steam's $1.99 at 
