Stygian Eye Stories

About me:

Hello! I'm stygianeyedev, an indie dev who has had the pleasure of working with some lovely individuals to begin putting all the stories in my head out into the world.

Please note I am not a studio. I am a single individual who works with a mixture of wonderful volunteers and contractors to get the job done.

Blog Purposes:

First and foremost, this blog is meant to be a devlog for my games. It's where I try to keep people up to date about my games and their status.

You can find my ko-fi here, but please only donate if you like my work for the games. If it's the other stuff (the art, the GUI, the music, the VO, etc), I would prefer you go throw your money at the people who made that part.

This is also one of the two places you can find me actively. I technically have a Bsky I rarely use but am on from time to time. I also have an old twitter account, but that became inactive after Musty took it over.

If someone ever approaches you on sites like instagram, facebook, etc claiming to be me - that is not me. Also, note I do not have an active Stygian Eye Stories fan server (you can make one, but I will never be in it because I have severe social anxiety and the thought of being stuck in a confined space with that much attention on me makes my heart rate spike). I also will never approach fans in DMs period. I only ever approach individuals privately for work purposes (like getting art assets and so on). I say this because I know there are a lot of foul people on the internet who pretend to be creators. While I'm a tiny nobody, I don't want any of my readers getting hurt. Stay safe out there!

Ask Box Rules:

Misgendering in asks will result in the ask being deleted. Most of the time this is just auto-correct or people not knowing, so first offense will just be the ask being deleted. Multiple repeat offenses will result in the user being blocked.

Any ask that is deemed suspicious will be ignored. To give you an example: I once received a very uncomfortable ask where someone implied that Violo deserved to have been abused. I assumed bad faith and deleted it.

Bigotry will result in asks being deleted. If the offense is severe enough (AKA: it's not a typo or just bad phrasing), the user will be blocked.

Do not send the same ask 5+ times. You can send the exact same ask TWICE - just in case the ask box ate it the first time. If I have not answered an ask that has been sent twice that means: I am holding the ask for later OR I've already answered that ask enough times already.

Sacrarium Specific Rules:

Asks about children/family/marriage will be auto-deleted. These asks have been answered previously on the blog.

Asks about the Voidlight or Fatebringer leaving VV or Amare will be auto-deleted. High Affection VLs and FBs do not want to canonically leave their respective partners. Thus, anything like that would fall into headcannon.

Asks about how the Wardens would react to *insert deity characters from other games* will generally be deleted unless I think there is something I can add to it.

Can I make X?

Rules of thumb:

Don't try to make money off it (fanart of someone's OC x LI you're commissioned to do is fine. I more so mean don't do things like make a comic for the series and exclusively paywall it on patreon or something).

Don't claim that my stuff is your stuff. Don't claim that the wonderful assets my lovely artists have made is yours either. Credit appropriately!

Don't feed it to an A.I. generator - period. The art, the music, the writing. Do not put it in anything AI.

Don't use my brand to promote things like racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophbia, etc etc.

Don't claim to speak on behalf of me or my games.

Specific Notes:

Fanart - yes, so long as it is not hateful nor behind a paywall. Obviously, if someone commissions you to draw one of my characters with their PC or to make a one off item like a mug or t-shirt, that is fine. Just don't make anything mass produced to sell (like prints, mugs, etc).

Fanfic - SFW/NSFW are perfectly fine. No money exchange allowed, as that begins to put us in a legal gray zone I do not want to have to navigate.

Fangames - Not allowed to prevent brand confusion. I'm not a AAA studio like Nintendo, so confusion is far more likely.

Fantranslation Patches - Allowed! I don't have the ability to translate the games myself, so feel free to. Just make sure to download patches responsibly everyone. There are plenty of malware bots out there that will try to infect your computer with some thing.

Game Statuses:

Sacrarium Gelus - Completed with Final Patch Released

Sacrarium Pario - Week 2 Released. Read This Devlog For Critical Information: https://www.tumblr.com/stygian-eye-stories/779581667676438528/stygian-devlog-03312025?source=share

The Woeful Rose & The Bitter Crow - Version Version 1.1 released with all CGs included.

Sacrarium Contego - Outline completed. First Challenge written with memory code preserved. Artists secured for sprites and CGs.

Sacrarium Rescisco - Mechanics ironed out and beginning rough outline. Sprite artist secured.

The Grinning Spider & The Lone Hound - Formatting debate ongoing.

Project I.C. - Artist attained, some WIPs produced, some systems developed and rough outlines and GDDs in development.

Idk if I'm making myself clear?

(Love your work btw, you are one of my favorite developers out there you definitely need more recognition for your work.)

I try to not assign too many hard times.

Because time math is hard. Making time jumps too short makes things feel unrealistic, but making them too long is equally rough.

Zahir & Yukimira do not play baseball when the other is in the room. They love each other but have zero desire to be in the vicinity when the other one is getting some. Sock on door knob meets type thing. Their relationship is strictly platonic, and one of thr first things Zahir is gonna do is improve the insulation of the chapel lol He does not want to be hearing that, and he knows Yukimura doesn't either. At most, the only thing they will do in front of the other is kiss the Truthlight or make a cuddle puddle. These actions remain extremely PG because again, they do not see each other that way ever.

Here is the height for the Wardens:

https://www.tumblr.com/stygian-eye-stories/742412032575488000/got-to-talking-with-rian-about-heights-and-ended?source=share

Here is the height for Zahir & Hisashi

I need to stop having ideas.

Amare's game is going to be hilarious on a meta player perception level.

Because I am almost willing to bet money each playthrough is gonna feel on the short side (longer if you're on the high affection route and unlock the deeper conversations), but this personality system will be the fucking death of me word count wise (Amare being the most verbose character besides Viv non-with standing).

Would you believe me if I said I was once even more of a lunatic and almost had 27 of these damn things???? Just writing the outline for the first proper interaction with Amare is already over 100 lines, and I'm not even done with all of the disliked personality responses (Yes Amare likes 3 personality types, is neutral to 3, and likes 3).

Because part of my thought process from AGES ago was that Amare's game is less about you liking Amare and more about Amare liking you. Which is where this personality system was birthed from. You aren't picking a route of a cute anime husbando/waifu/spouse to go on, you are trying to get Amare to choose your route. You want them to confide in you which means you're actually genuinely raising their affection lol

This is going to be so much work kill me.

The things I do for my favorite.

At least the personalities are inherently very limiting. For example, if you have a disliked personality, you are stuck on that Bad Ending route baby. You are never gonna get Amare to like your ass. This means I only have to account for neutral and liked personalities in past-threshold conversations.

The game is intended to function like this where essentially within each conversation path (of which I currently have 7 planned. might trim that down), there are two threshold to hit in each path. If you hit the neutral one, you go up to the neutral conversation but faith the threshold to high, if you get the high you go through neutral and high. If you don't hit the threshold, you only get the basic conversations.

Which of course means that the major lore bits aren't gonna be forked over outside of high affection runs. Amare is old as balls and knows a lot of things about Heimos, Necare, Violo, and Vivere and will only spill the tea if they like you enough to open up about each. Of course the most critical lore will about themselves VvV They're not as coy as they used to be in original iterations.

It also gives me easy marks to note if you hit a previous threshold or not. AKA: If you didn't unlock First Path High Threshold, I know you didn't have conversation about XYZ, so I can add in an alternate section of the conversation to make the Third Path High Threshold conversation make more sense.

While Amare's conversation mechanics are more in-depth than Necare's at least their game won't have this god forsaken scheduling system from hell WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA. The issue I run into when writing Necare that makes me want to lick lead paint til I'm frothing at the mouth is that in theory any task can occur at any task call phase within a challenge line. So you could do the tasks ABCDEF or ACFEBD for all I know. Which means I have to double check to make sure that conversations make sense. I am 1000000000% certain that this game will release with something not flowing right due to this system though. I am prepared for those bugfixes mentally.

Amare's game won't have that issue because the order is always ABCEDF. The question is did you unlock just A or AA1 or AA1A2? Which is far easier to check in comparison.

And again with the self-culling nature of the personality systems, the highest any given negative personality can get is a 1 and never a 2 conversation which helps (because I am going to be strangle holding those negative personalities with negative counts to ensure you can't cheekily get up high enough for a good ending. There are somethings Amare will just not compromise on).

It also means I'm going to have a lot of fun writing the high routes where you just get more meandering conversations and options to pick Amare's brain about lore concepts and the like. They were a teacher in another life after all.

It's cute you think that that is an option.

Even with their time blindness, all of the Wardens are attentive when it comes to care needs and have ways to circumvent that.

Heimos's crows are snitches. VV's castle is a snitch. Mayuhk is a snitch. Snake is a snitch.

do the wardens (+viv) consider themselves 'good' people? i do think your characters are morally grey/mix of both but i'm curious how they'd view themselves. are they self aware of any of what could be considered worse actions?

would vv ever use sex as a manipulation tactic?

how would the wardens react to a s/o with really bad mood swings?

Absolutely none of them would see themself as purely a good person. They're all aware of the things they've done. It's just that some feel worse about it than others.

Amare is in a shit spot. They have a lot of things they must do, even if they hate doing it.

Necare has a blood soaked past that she feels obligated to make amends for, but she knows you can't wash away that amount of violence.

Heimos likes to think himself the most moral of the group, but even he has to acknowledge his early apathy has had disastrous results.

Violo & Vivere have mostly deluded themselves into numbness when it comes to their actions. They're only doing bad things to bad people, never mind the effects it has on making more people numb to violence.

Sex as a manipulation tactic is a no go. Ironically it is one of the few hard enforced normal boundaries they have.

To clarify what I mean in this case:

IF (Interactive Fiction) would be a game with minimal visual assets. So no sprites, no BGs, no CGs.

My English is not good so if it doesn't make sense 🙃 sorry and the typos ( the one who correct spelling) make it worse 😅

Heimos is going to kick them out of whatever space they're in. Not blatant or overly dramatic about it, just does it and forbids their re-entry.

VV will of course be committing a murder once the Voidlight's back is turned.

Necare only cares when the Greatsmith does. The Greatsmith is a grown adult, so she expects them to tell her if they want her to intervene.

There is no one around the Fatebringer to insult them, so this is irrelevant to them.

As a bonus:

Yukimura would unleash that sharp tongue of his and give quite the verbal lashing. He's a crotchety little thing on a good day, and while he looks like easy pickings, touching him is a fast way to have Zahir break your arm. Needless to say, he'll verbally brutalize anyone he pleases.

In the bad endings, he thinks they're an idiot, and he's very pleased that Yukimura and Zahir leave. He's not overly fond of helping people who won't listen to Yukimura.

In a neutral ending, he frankly forgets about them in the 10 seconds it takes them to leave.

He has no real difference in romantic versus platonic endings minus being extra nosy about long term romantic relationships (much to Yukimura's dismay).

"What feeling?" I ask with a frown.

"Fatigue." They tilt their head back for a moment, "I've never known this kind of exhaustion in my life. I come from a land of eternal waking and eternal sleep, hand in hand. With a life so safe, so secure...one never had to be exhausted about anything."

"Seriously? Nothing at all? You make it sound like paradise."

"Don't get me wrong," They looked back at me with a polite smile, "We had negative things like awkwardness, grief, discomfort. We just never had...fatigue. If you started to feel bad, it was common to go to one of the lounging spots or spend time with your family. Never before this new existence of mine did I ever truly feel tired."

"And now?"

"I can't remember the last time I felt rested."

I have a feeling she would metaphorically "adopt" Heimos after warming up to him only to swing her cane at him after finding out his diet habits 😋😋

-Edith's number 1 fan

Lol

Heimos would have no idea how to cope with Edith.

His aunt was far more gentle in comparison, so her more brusque nature will make him think she hates him for a while lol.

There are far older asks about plushies actually. I would recommend looking them up.

Oh lord

am i finally getting that old?

I've only seen the trend like twice on my FYP. Mostly because I fell face first back into obey me recently, so I've been getting a lot of OB edits or danmei related items aighaighaerg

uuuuuhhhh one second

Supportive: Violo

Flirty: Vivere

Confused: Amare

Disappointed: Necare