One of my favorite things about games is the incredible variety of genres, difficulty, and accessibility. It’s like Baskin Robbins wasn’t relegated to just making ice cream and decided to do something really weird with the flavors.
As the AAA bubble bursts inward, indie studios like KeelWorks are stepping up to embrace disenfranchised gamers. Can this studio knock it out of the park with its debut shmup, CYGNI: All working at full speedWill it succumb to the traps that plague the entire industry?
Reading promotional materials Down CYGNI: All working at full speed you’ll be blown away by how stunning this shooter is. It looks like a magician trying to distract the audience with one hand while setting up a trick with the other. While the distraction is indeed quite stunning, it ultimately undermines other aspects of the performance. It quickly becomes obvious that more time should have been spent making the gameplay just as stunning.
CYGNI: All working at full speed has difficulty in establishing tone. The pilot is done in a style very reminiscent of Pixar films such as The Big Six and for some reason I don’t understand, there’s even a gratuitous shot of her pulling her pants up over her tight ass in the opening cinematic. It’s such a strange inclusion that it’s demanding to immediately recommend this game to younger audiences, even though there’s nothing in the rest of the game that’s even remotely sexual in nature.
Cinemagraphs are either fully rendered events or illustrations with minimal movement, similar to the cost-savings used in titles like Destiny 2 Or World of Warcraftlater expansions. The levels, pilot ship, and enemies are also rendered in a more realistic way, with bosses looking like the offspring of a chainsaw and an HR Geiger illustration. It’s just everywhere, and like me in college, it’s stunning but confusing.
The narrative is oddly present for something riding in the backseat, while the visuals and gameplay are front and center. It’s clear that a lot of time has been spent on creating the world swans and creating knowledge about using alien technology to empower humanity. I found the concept of these unearthly mechanical beings slumbering until humanity awakens them by collecting their “corpses” fascinating. Unfortunately, it only exists to provide a basic explanation for why we shoot these aliens.
When it comes to gameplay, CYGNI: All working at full speed could have benefited from more time in the oven. There are an overwhelming amount of shallow mechanics in the game. Rather than forcing a tutorial on players, this option sits out of the way and ultimately sets the player up for failure. This is compounded by the fact that the first stage is arguably the hardest and longest. It’s a trial by fire that will leave all but the most masochistic of players a tad irritated.
The biggest problem with swansThe gameplay is balanced. There is no even progression and you will be punished for things you don’t know exist. The first level is more like the final level, so players are not able to get used to the different systems and mechanics. Worse, you go into it with too few powers for what it is.
Unless you play on straightforward, you’ll only have one life on levels that are over 20 minutes long, with no checkpoints, and you’ll have to face multiple bosses. Unlike other games in this genre, there’s no point system to earn another life. If you run into a barrier that appears out of nowhere and you die instantly, too bad.
This in turn has a negative impact on upgrades, which are crucial to surviving a mission. Enemies have a chance to drop energy points upon death. These points are used to replenish shields, enhance firepower, or fire projectiles. They are also used to buy upgrades. This means you’ll be forced to strike a balance between using your points to survive and saving enough to actually upgrade your ship. Don’t die, though, because all of those points disappear like a fart in the wind if you die.
Unfortunately, the upgrades are mostly useless. The side drones enhance outgoing damage and the extra homing missiles are great, but everything else is irrelevant. For example, swans takes a layered approach to combat, as you have to deal with enemies in the air and on the ground. However, you can only attack one layer at a time, and it’s extremely uncommon that you don’t find yourself fighting both at the same time.
Ground attacks are tender, even with upgrades, and more often than not it’s better to just ignore ground forces so as not to be completely overwhelmed by split attention. Hell, giving me the option to change my ground attack to something like a carpet bomb would be a thousand times better.
Finally, your ultimate, Shield Blast, might as well not exist. This attack uses your shields to unleash an AoE across the entire screen that destroys everything. The problem is that enemy reinforcements recharge quickly, and you have no shield left. If you get hit by a stray shot before you can refill them, that’s it. You’re done. Time to start over.
Not being a masochist, I decided to play on Easy with the intention of buying upgrades and then working my way up to harder difficulties. With a few select upgrades, Easy became just that. However, trying to play on Medium is a futile endeavor, as this fundamental balance issue rears its ugly head. There are simply too many enemies, too many projectiles with no real evasive maneuvers, and the levels are way too long. Honestly, you could cut each level and end it with one of the enjoyable boss fights, and it would be a lot better.
All of this makes me reconsider the $30 price tag. All in all, it took me about four hours to complete the campaign, unlock all the upgrades, and replay it a few times. Sure, there’s local co-op and an Arcade mode that’s basically a points-based version of the campaign, but it lacks too much to ask for that much money.
Perhaps if the game was better balanced, had more significant improvements, or tried to play as well as it looks, it might be worth buying. As it stands, I’d say wait for a sale and don’t spend more than $15. It’s a fun way to kill an afternoon and gives you a taste of the genre, but that’s about it. Hopefully, developer KeelWorks will learn from their debut effort and bring the gameplay design to the same level as their visuals.
