Introduction

French start-up Streum On Studio isn’t a very large team -- it consists of less than a dozen individuals -- but here they are releasing one of the most ambitious indie games this year: E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. In 1999, long before officially founding their company, the guys behind Streum put out a Half-Life mod called Syndicate Black Ops, which they say helped inspire their latest project. As it turns out, E.Y.E actually has more in common with the lore and mechanics of A.V.A., a role-playing board game they released in the late ‘90s. Work first began on E.Y.E in 2006, and after five years of self-funded development, it’s finally been released on Steam.



E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy is an FPS/RPG set in a fantasy-cyberpunk universe featuring persistent character progression and fast-paced combat with up to four (or more) people playing cooperatively. Its gameplay is driven by the sort of twitch shooter/melee action you’ve come to expect from Source titles, combined with an extensive and varied arsenal of cybernetic abilities and psychic powers. Indeed, Streum has made sure to put an emphasis on player skill rather than your character’s statistics, though they’re still an important part of the puzzle, even if you choose not to micro-manage them. Other role-playing elements include a branching storyline that is influenced by player choices, NPC dialogues that deliver background information and mission objectives, a finite grid-based inventory for your entirely customizable load-out, and even the capacity for your character to be psychologically terrorized.

Gameplay

Like so many other RPGs and RPG-hybrids, you begin your E.Y.E adventure by creating a character. There are several starter “genes” that you mix together to determine your initial attributes, which in turn contribute to all of your different statistics and aptitudes. You’ll see familiar ones like Strength, Endurance, and Agility that do what you would expect them to, but there are others, such as Accuracy for firearms proficiency, PSI Force for psychic power and resistance, and Mental Balance for strength of will and resistance to the several types of madness. There are no explicit classes, but you can earn certain titles based on what attributes you focus on improving, if any.

While you play, you gain experience points for actions including, but not limited to, killing enemies and completing objectives, which contribute to your character leveling up. At that time, you’re given 3 attribute points to spend as you see fit or, if you have autoleveling turned on, the game will choose which of your stats to increase based on what actions you perform most often. This is where the freedom of choice shines through, showing more than a few shades of Deus Ex: you can run around guns blazing, relying on your marksmanship and armor to keep you alive; brazenly wield a giant hammer or dual katanas and annihilate foes up close; silently snipe from afar and sneak around cloaked for those stealthy take-downs; hack into turrets, drones, or even people (!) and let them do your dirty work; exercise your psychic prowess by cloning some reinforcements and crushing the mind or body of the enemy with the wave of your hand; the possibilities are vast in E.Y.E.