CYGNI: AGB | Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series 2023

[ExitPlanetDust]

I played for about 45 mins to an hour and couldn’t finish stage 1 on normal. My closest was getting the boss down to 3% and then getting tagged by a rock. I dropped the difficulty to easy and I was able to clear stage 1 without much issue on a single life. So yeah, I recommend messing around with normal difficulty to see how it feels, but maybe start a serious playthrough on easy.

I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I settled on analog sensitivity 3 and it’s so weird to be playing a shmup competently with analog, but it just works here. There isn’t any inertia and the acceleration curve is predictable. I love the shield and weapon management gimmick. It’s so fun to multitask while picking up shards, loading up missiles and swarming the screen.

Oh and do yourselves a favor and shut off the screen shake in the options.

[denisb]

Hi everyone, and once again thanks for all the support and filling in info when and where we can't.

We have begun a patch list already and one of the things we want to look at is providing more info in general for better accessibility purposes, Some of the points:

1 - More info on weapons and weapon management in upgrades (potentially shifting UI around).
2 - Perhaps a mandatory tutorial before game start or a note at least (many seem to skip this).
3 - If time allows More illustrative info on weapons and general stragety/usage tips.

And more balances, minor bug fixes and quality of life additons we would like to make.

If anyone has preferences please do let us know or keep us a note here, no promises if it'll all pull through, but if its feasable we will certainly want to try.

My suggestions if you want to make CYGNI a great "gateway shmup" (based on the reception it might already be a pretty good one but these are my thoughts fwiw):

1. Set the default difficulty to Easy
2. Either ask the players on first start if they want HUD or HUD-less experience, or just have the power-bar shown by default (I think the game plays a lot better when the shield/weapon bars are displayed on the bottom)
3. Maybe a bigger ask, but while the "monitor style" tutorial is fun in a sense, having the tutorial show the actual screen layout would likely make it a lot easier and better to explain some of the concepts?

Now after having bumped the difficulty down to Easy, turned off screen shake entirely, added the power-distribution bar down below, and understanding how the pickup system works, I am having a lot of fun.
And this is a very pretty shmup.

[Sumez]

Man, I was considering diving into this game only because I was surprised seeing how cheap the PS5 disc is sold here.
But all this talk about a Day 1 patch that seems basically required to make the game playable is a massive turn-off for me. Not a fan of discs being a glorified download code

Cheers for having a physical available on release date for a niche title such as this, but at the same time I guess that's one advantage of the hilariously slow delivery cycle of companies like LRG and SLG.

[denisb]

Man, I was considering diving into this game only because I was surprised seeing how cheap the PS5 disc is sold here.
But all this talk about a Day 1 patch that seems basically required to make the game playable is a massive turn-off for me. Not a fan of discs being a glorified download code

I think you will enjoy the game as it is today really, just be aware of a few things going in, and you'll likely have a good time.

[ExitPlanetDust]

Man, I was considering diving into this game only because I was surprised seeing how cheap the PS5 disc is sold here.
But all this talk about a Day 1 patch that seems basically required to make the game playable is a massive turn-off for me. Not a fan of discs being a glorified download code

I played for a couple of hours last night on PS5 straight off the disc while disconnected from the internet. I didn’t experience any crashes. Performance was mostly alright with some slight hitching at random points that did not affect gameplay. All of the QOL updates from the demo feedback made it onto the disc. Movement sensitivity is in the options menu and screen shake can be completely disabled.

The disc seems fine for archival purposes and a patch isn’t required for the game to function. This is definitely not a disc is a download release. At least that isn’t the case on PS5.

[Sumez]

Oh that's good to hear. Still holding out for more feedback to see whether we have a new Sine Mora on our hands or not though

[shmuppy-puppy]

So, I got this on epic and played it for a couple of minutes.
* If you have a fast PC the graphics are stunning.
* Sound FX are great too
* Music sounds good, is not catchy though. Don‘t expect it to hype you up like a cave or qute soundtrack
* The thing does not control/feel like a shmup at all. You will need to practice the buttons on your controller.
* The game is not bad at all. It just is not a shmup, tbh.
* Shmups are easy to understand but often hard to master, this one is harder to learn and probably still hard to master.
I view a shmup almost like blues music, It‘s are always the same and still I love it. When a modern guitar player plays the blues often a layer of sophistication is introduced that actually makes it feel like jazz or metal it loses the very essence of the genre. This is what Cygni is.
My main criticism is that playing games like eschatos, mushi, dodonpachi, danmaku unlimited and gunvein does something to your blood pressure. You can fire them up for an instant kick of adrenalin. Playing Cygni does not deliver that experience. The music is more likely to calm you down and all the destruction/agression that goes with it on screen reminds me a bit of the experience you get from watching a movie. I almost expected it to go to slow motion at times.
I am sure that there is (a younger) audience for it, but the gameplay really is not for me at all.
Don‘t get me wrong, though. It‘s a pretty good game, it‘s just not for me.

[-Fish-]

So, I got this on epic and played it for a couple of minutes.
* If you have a fast PC the graphics are stunning.
* Sound FX are great too
* Music sounds good, is not catchy though. Don‘t expect it to hype you up like a cave or qute soundtrack
* The thing does not control/feel like a shmup at all. You will need to practice the buttons on your controller.
* The game is not bad at all. It just is not a shmup, tbh.
* Shmups are easy to understand but often hard to master, this one is harder to learn and probably still hard to master.
I view a shmup almost like blues music, It‘s are always the same and still I love it. When a modern guitar player plays the blues often a layer of sophistication is introduced that actually makes it feel like jazz or metal it loses the very essence of the genre. This is what Cygni is.
My main criticism is that playing games like eschatos, mushi, dodonpachi, danmaku unlimited and gunvein does something to your blood pressure. You can fire them up for an instant kick of adrenalin. Playing Cygni does not deliver that experience. The music is more likely to calm you down and all the destruction/agression that goes with it on screen reminds me a bit of the experience you get from watching a movie. I almost expected it to go to slow motion at times.
I am sure that there is (a younger) audience for it, but the gameplay really is not for me at all.
Don‘t get me wrong, though. It‘s a pretty good game, it‘s just not for me.

I'm almost 48 and absolutely love it. For me it feels like non-stop pressure from start to finish and after a bit of practice I've managed to reach 10th on lb's.

It's 100% not going to be everyone's cup of tea for sure but I think a few old shmupers like me will be very happy to have a different type of shmup to play. I really enjpy all genres of games though, big and small, so perhaps that helps me adapt to something new. Thoroughly enjoyed figuring out the more complex systems at play here.

[ExitPlanetDust]

I’m also in the latter half of my 40s and I feel similarly about the game so far.

[Sengoku Strider]

* The thing does not control/feel like a shmup at all. You will need to practice the buttons on your controller.
* The game is not bad at all. It just is not a shmup, tbh.

I don't have the game, what is it doing that shmups in the past haven't? Radiant Silvergun certainly requires you to learn a lot of buttons and power up your weapons, Under Defeat and Avenger did the angled shot thing, games since Xevious have done the dual-plane shooting element, the zako swoop in loops out of Galaga, etc.

[guigui]

Completely off-gameplay-topic demand about this game : anyone skilled enough to make a good quality animated .gif of this "I put my pants on" moment ?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I'd like to hear shmupper jaimers' take/opinions on this Cygni: AGB release. Is it 1LC or 1CC in it's current state?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Shatterhand]

I played the game.

It reminded me of when I got Project-X on Amiga all those years ago.

It's very beautiful indeed.

[Zaarock]

* The thing does not control/feel like a shmup at all. You will need to practice the buttons on your controller.
* The game is not bad at all. It just is not a shmup, tbh.

I don't have the game, what is it doing that shmups in the past haven't? Radiant Silvergun certainly requires you to learn a lot of buttons and power up your weapons, Under Defeat and Avenger did the angled shot thing, games since Xevious have done the dual-plane shooting element, the zako swoop in loops out of Galaga, etc.

The games unique mechanic is managing shield/health and weapon energy. You collect items dropped by enemies which add to your health and can manually move one health point into weapons using a button which can act as 1 missile ammo or power up your primary gun a little (if you also press a button to change your shot pattern to the next number...) If you have max health you need to do this before every item or the collection will not give any energy as they only go into health automatically.

The enemy/boss visual designs look great to me and there's some cool moments with the weapons. The homing shot option looks kind of bizarre though, like a post-game cheat unlock rather than something that looks good/part of the intended visual design.

Having played it a bit and 1cc:d arcade mode my main gripe with this game is that the enemy spawns can get very repetitive. Other parts have grown on me over time but not this. It feels like most enemy waves linger and repeat for too long after I'm already dialing them in. And some stages have a very limited enemy pool for some reason, Stage 6 being extra weird here (it mostly consists of 2 very basic enemies that shoot 1 aimed bullet) which is a shame since it has probably my favorite background visual and music in the game but the enemy waves might as well be the actual intended stage 1. Gives some placeholder vibes.

I don't think this enemy variety / tedious pacing thing is some hardcore player gripe on a design choice, most game genres try to avoid tedium. If some non-shmup player generally doesn't like shmups because they seem like repetitively shooting the same enemy this game certainly isn't going to disprove that. I doubt that's intentional as the shooting mechanics on the player side are trying to be varied.

I can see the dead air complaints earlier in this thread are definitely addrssed, and boss fights tend to be the highlight of each stage (if just visually) but the stage portions with normal enemies seem stretched out in duration.
I don't mean comparing to arcade games necessarily. Ginga Force has long single stages and makes no attempt to force an arcade-like mode. But it generally doesn't repeat the same enemy waves this long and each stage brings unique things to the table gameplay-wise at a pace that justifies the stage length.

Spoiler

Stage 5 also feels a little redundant apart from the background & boss as most of the enemy wave is repeated in stage 7 again. Kind of makes you feel like you played the same stage twice.

Arcade mode apparently infinite loops (~90 minutes per loop) with no difference between each loop. So going for leaderboard scores is pure endurance.

[dmk1198]

Just picked this up digital ps5 after Amazon fucked me over on pre order

I assume this same as Xbox?

Noticed some slow down but minor

Lots goin on!

[Aceskies]

Anyone else finds stage 4 (hard) to be a huge difficulty spike? I can beat all other 6 stages on hard just fine but I keep dying and dying on stage 4, more than 10 times now, I have not managed to beat it even once. The amount of mid enemies, popcorn, homing missiles, ground enemies is just so overwhelming I die all the time in the same two spots. I managed to reach the boss once and died too.

Also I think there is a bug with the "finish game on coop". I beat all stages when on coop and the trophy wont go.

[-Fish-]

* The thing does not control/feel like a shmup at all. You will need to practice the buttons on your controller.
* The game is not bad at all. It just is not a shmup, tbh.

I don't have the game, what is it doing that shmups in the past haven't? Radiant Silvergun certainly requires you to learn a lot of buttons and power up your weapons, Under Defeat and Avenger did the angled shot thing, games since Xevious have done the dual-plane shooting element, the zako swoop in loops out of Galaga, etc.

The games unique mechanic is managing shield/health and weapon energy. You collect items dropped by enemies which add to your health and can manually move one health point into weapons using a button which can act as 1 missile ammo or power up your primary gun a little (if you also press a button to change your shot pattern to the next number...) If you have max health you need to do this before every item or the collection will not give any energy as they only go into health automatically.

The enemy/boss visual designs look great to me and there's some cool moments with the weapons. The homing shot option looks kind of bizarre though, like a post-game cheat unlock rather than something that looks good/part of the intended visual design.

Having played it a bit and 1cc:d arcade mode my main gripe with this game is that the enemy spawns can get very repetitive. Other parts have grown on me over time but not this. It feels like most enemy waves linger and repeat for too long after I'm already dialing them in. And some stages have a very limited enemy pool for some reason, Stage 6 being extra weird here (it mostly consists of 2 very basic enemies that shoot 1 aimed bullet) which is a shame since it has probably my favorite background visual and music in the game but the enemy waves might as well be the actual intended stage 1. Gives some placeholder vibes.

I don't think this enemy variety / tedious pacing thing is some hardcore player gripe on a design choice, most game genres try to avoid tedium. If some non-shmup player generally doesn't like shmups because they seem like repetitively shooting the same enemy this game certainly isn't going to disprove that. I doubt that's intentional as the shooting mechanics on the player side are trying to be varied.

I can see the dead air complaints earlier in this thread are definitely addrssed, and boss fights tend to be the highlight of each stage (if just visually) but the stage portions with normal enemies seem stretched out in duration.
I don't mean comparing to arcade games necessarily. Ginga Force has long single stages and makes no attempt to force an arcade-like mode. But it generally doesn't repeat the same enemy waves this long and each stage brings unique things to the table gameplay-wise at a pace that justifies the stage length.

Spoiler

Stage 5 also feels a little redundant apart from the background & boss as most of the enemy wave is repeated in stage 7 again. Kind of makes you feel like you played the same stage twice.

Arcade mode apparently infinite loops (~90 minutes per loop) with no difference between each loop. So going for leaderboard scores is pure endurance.

Arcade mode needs to be redone. It needs to end. No one wants to loop a 90 min shmup. An hour and a half is already at the edge of pushing it and the scoring challenge in a shmup should be coming from what's possible within a timeframe.. NOT seeing who can grind for 8 hours straight. This isn't Pac-Man

I was absolutely loving the game until I found out it looped. It absolutely makes zero sense and is now a big issue.

Looping also opens the leaderboard further to cheaters. A hacked score of 20 million could not currently be disputed as a player could claim they played for the game 10 hours straight.

bollucks..

[samspot]

I like that this game is doing something different. I like taking hits as part of gameplay. It doesn't make any sense that you could have such firepower coming at you and avoid all the shots (like most traditional shmups - not that I don't enjoy them). The shield management works well for this different kind of game. I also liked when there were too many enemies to kill.

The backgrounds are epic, especially the scale of the bosses as they come up. It makes the widescreen worthwhile. I'm a sucker for a cool waterfall.

But there are some things driving me nuts.

1. I cannot figure out the upgrade screen after several attempts. I don't want to try anymore. No idea what they are going for here. You can unlock slots but you can't change whats in them? I cleared the game and have designer mode, but I still can't figure out how to use it.

2. I really don't like the right stick aiming. It's limited in a way that makes it un-fun. I'd much rather not have this mechanic at all if it's going to be 20% right/left shot nudging.

3. Managing shields with bumper buttons while holding triggers is uncomfortable. I found the autofire setting and that made it tolerable.

4. The ground-only sections are tedious. I don't think the ground shots add much to the game.

[Nautilus]

I don't have the game, what is it doing that shmups in the past haven't? Radiant Silvergun certainly requires you to learn a lot of buttons and power up your weapons, Under Defeat and Avenger did the angled shot thing, games since Xevious have done the dual-plane shooting element, the zako swoop in loops out of Galaga, etc.

The games unique mechanic is managing shield/health and weapon energy. You collect items dropped by enemies which add to your health and can manually move one health point into weapons using a button which can act as 1 missile ammo or power up your primary gun a little (if you also press a button to change your shot pattern to the next number...) If you have max health you need to do this before every item or the collection will not give any energy as they only go into health automatically.

The enemy/boss visual designs look great to me and there's some cool moments with the weapons. The homing shot option looks kind of bizarre though, like a post-game cheat unlock rather than something that looks good/part of the intended visual design.

Having played it a bit and 1cc:d arcade mode my main gripe with this game is that the enemy spawns can get very repetitive. Other parts have grown on me over time but not this. It feels like most enemy waves linger and repeat for too long after I'm already dialing them in. And some stages have a very limited enemy pool for some reason, Stage 6 being extra weird here (it mostly consists of 2 very basic enemies that shoot 1 aimed bullet) which is a shame since it has probably my favorite background visual and music in the game but the enemy waves might as well be the actual intended stage 1. Gives some placeholder vibes.

I don't think this enemy variety / tedious pacing thing is some hardcore player gripe on a design choice, most game genres try to avoid tedium. If some non-shmup player generally doesn't like shmups because they seem like repetitively shooting the same enemy this game certainly isn't going to disprove that. I doubt that's intentional as the shooting mechanics on the player side are trying to be varied.

I can see the dead air complaints earlier in this thread are definitely addrssed, and boss fights tend to be the highlight of each stage (if just visually) but the stage portions with normal enemies seem stretched out in duration.
I don't mean comparing to arcade games necessarily. Ginga Force has long single stages and makes no attempt to force an arcade-like mode. But it generally doesn't repeat the same enemy waves this long and each stage brings unique things to the table gameplay-wise at a pace that justifies the stage length.

Spoiler

Stage 5 also feels a little redundant apart from the background & boss as most of the enemy wave is repeated in stage 7 again. Kind of makes you feel like you played the same stage twice.

Arcade mode apparently infinite loops (~90 minutes per loop) with no difference between each loop. So going for leaderboard scores is pure endurance.

Arcade mode needs to be redone. It needs to end. No one wants to loop a 90 min shmup. An hour and a half is already at the edge of pushing it and the scoring challenge in a shmup should be coming from what's possible within a timeframe.. NOT seeing who can grind for 8 hours straight. This isn't Pac-Man

I was absolutely loving the game until I found out it looped. It absolutely makes zero sense and is now a big issue.

Looping also opens the leaderboard further to cheaters. A hacked score of 20 million could not currently be disputed as a player could claim they played for the game 10 hours straight.

bollucks..

Hi everyone,

Some unofficial updates (but to keep you guys posted) of what we are cooking behind the scenes from our side on top of addressing other feedback as well:

1 - Tightening up stage repetition a bit better (notably stage 6), there are some other areas we want to tighten up in terms of timing after watching some really good players play on Arcade mode, their streams and recordings have been helpful for us to study.

2 - Regarding Arcade,
On a personal level I am not a fan of infinite loops either but we've had conflicting feedback, some want it badly, some however don't and yes it may also be exploited. Suggestions are welcome.

@Fish: we have discovered that while the game intended to have shipped with an infinite loop, funny enough currently it seems that it does not have one, it apparently ends on one loop then takes you to the menu and uploads your highest score to the board (we haven't tested this yet but have heard from players who have). We checked the code quickly and it seems to be so. So perhaps this is strangely a blessing in disguise in a way.

3 - We don't like the current Leaderboard implementation either and it has shortcomings, we are looking to completely revamp Arcade mode.

4 - We want to add yet another difficulty mode, this mode was already present but removed last minute with concerns that it may be too challenging, but after seeing how people beat with hard and are asking for more difficulty, we hope to bring it back.

5 - we want to make all upgrades free for Arcade and unlocked (no more points to limit which to choose, this goes for all patterns as well) leaving the player to choose freely how to equip the ship.

6 - Possibly Have Arcade mode unlocked from the start, no more need to complete story mode.

7 - All other feedback will be addressed regarding Arcade mode to display score accumulatively throughout etc.


Finally questions to you all regarding Arcade mode, what do you prefer best?:

A - One loop super difficulty (more difficult than the current hard). -- runs at the risk of being too difficult to complete or be too frustrating.

B - Two loops: starts with Hard continues to second loop which goes on very hard But gives you one revive as a bonus - then ends. -- This one is looking to be most desired internally.

C - Infinite loop - starts with hard (no revive) - second loop same as above very hard with one revive - all rest of loops incrementally increases the difficulty until it caps at an extreme number and maxes out at 3 revives.

Feedback welcome.

I like that this game is doing something different. I like taking hits as part of gameplay. It doesn't make any sense that you could have such firepower coming at you and avoid all the shots (like most traditional shmups - not that I don't enjoy them). The shield management works well for this different kind of game. I also liked when there were too many enemies to kill.

The backgrounds are epic, especially the scale of the bosses as they come up. It makes the widescreen worthwhile. I'm a sucker for a cool waterfall.

But there are some things driving me nuts.

1. I cannot figure out the upgrade screen after several attempts. I don't want to try anymore. No idea what they are going for here. You can unlock slots but you can't change whats in them? I cleared the game and have designer mode, but I still can't figure out how to use it.

4. The ground-only sections are tedious. I don't think the ground shots add much to the game.

1 - I wish the upgrade usage info made it to the upgrade screen but given we were so pressed on time, the localisation and such fell short, unofficially we hope to make big changes to clarify all this in a next update. Meanwhile if its any help check our discord guide channel for video explanations.
Edit got the links for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVBnmnBwjAo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajYq74qV_jI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov5OQ8ezmyM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5xDYdQurco

4 - Same in terms of lack of clarification from our part, once you have ground fire rate upgraded + use homing missiles on gorund units , its very easy and fast to kill them. But pay attention the small enemy units recharge large unit shields you have to kill them first. A video here shows one such example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsBLMopxT7g

Best,

[Eyvah_Ehyeh]

An endless mode for sure would be a desired thing by some, so that should be a thing I believe. I mean it's been done in games Gradius V where people could play for like five hours, or like Geometry Wars, where the world records took over two weeks of game time to achieve. But there needs to be leaderboards both for endless, and 1 loop, so everyone can be happy, methinks.

Me, I would enjoy just that every time you started the game, the stage would be random. Since no big changes will be made to the game (like introducing more random elements, because I'm like the only person in this forum that's really into procedural euro jank), I believe this would be very nice, because man will I get tired of the first and second stage after a while. Especially since the game does indeed drag on, and bosses are just too spongy.

There should be a difficulty choice for the arcade, like easy, normal, etc, or you could make it so that the further into the game you go, the more difficult it becomes. I'm not sure that is the case naturally? Which is also why I'm proposing the stage randomizer, because the stages have similar difficulty levels, and because honestly no matter how nice the attempt at a story is, at the end of the day I don't care about that AT ALL when I'm playing the game for the 50th time.

What changes when you switch up the difficulty, by the way? If it's more enemies, then in theory you can score more on higher difficulties, which is cool.

Also, I just realized what this game reminds me of - dogfighting. Like it's a super aggressive game, like the shmup Parsec 47, but just the general gameplay feels like a kamikaze Jet-Lancer, which is an awesome game but not quite a shmup, which is why I don't think people here know about it, perhaps.

[Eyvah_Ehyeh]

I have a question, concerning the "damage modifiers" that someone wrote about in this thread, which I didn't know about.

Slot 6 - 10% ^
Slot 5 - 8% ^
Slot 4 - 6% ^
Slot 3 - 4 % ^
Slot 2 - 2% ^
Slot 1 - 0%

Does the game ever tell you about this? Also how does it work, exactly? Do you get more damage in ALL your six weapon configurations if you have a full shot power, or just the one in sixth position? Is the damage only added to the guns, or also the drones, and missiles, and beam and ray-gun or whatever it's called?

Edit: Also, for the love of God, let me see the exact numerical angle on the different gun and drone configurations, because I'm going crazy trying to see which one is 10 degrees and which one is 20, etc. Very cool to be able to experiment with these, though, I appreciate it, since, you know, I love that kind of stuff. Now all we need is a shop in-between levels to upgrade our ship with. ;P

Edit 2: One thing that's cool with Cygni is that I actually prefer playing it lying down in my bed, on the 42 inch telly, rather than the other setup that I use for basically all shmups, which is sitting down or standing up (walking on a treadmill) and playing on a screen that is 24 inch. The optimal thing would probably be just moving the 24 inch screen back a bit so I get a better overview of what's happening (because I feel it's too close right now, which is also the reason why I stopped TATEing my screen even if I bought my screen for that very purpose) but yeah pretty cool, because right now its probably just The Void Rains Upon Her Heart and Operation STEEL that I can play on my telly and feel that it's alright, and both of those are horizontal shmups. I mean there's also Resogun, Nex Machina, and Geometry Wars, that also work quite well from the bed/couch, but I think Cygni is the closest to a "vert" that I've been comfortable playing from afar.

[blue_z]

I think this game is already awesome and has so much room for growth too.

My main request would be leaderboards for individual stages. Stage 1 for example is almost a whole game in an of itself; leaderboards for each stage would add a lot.

I’ll leave the mechanical and difficulty improvements to the genre masters, I’m relatively new to things, but I’ve been having an absolute blast with this game. Thanks to the devs for making something so great

[AntiramDSR]

A randomized Time-Attack mode would be great... best would be with a seed-system so that you can replay your favorite level-seeds... maybe not at this point yet, since this would be a big task, i guess.

but the infinite replayability would be great.

i would totally buy this as a dlc <3

[-Fish-]

The games unique mechanic is managing shield/health and weapon energy. You collect items dropped by enemies which add to your health and can manually move one health point into weapons using a button which can act as 1 missile ammo or power up your primary gun a little (if you also press a button to change your shot pattern to the next number...) If you have max health you need to do this before every item or the collection will not give any energy as they only go into health automatically.

The enemy/boss visual designs look great to me and there's some cool moments with the weapons. The homing shot option looks kind of bizarre though, like a post-game cheat unlock rather than something that looks good/part of the intended visual design.

Having played it a bit and 1cc:d arcade mode my main gripe with this game is that the enemy spawns can get very repetitive. Other parts have grown on me over time but not this. It feels like most enemy waves linger and repeat for too long after I'm already dialing them in. And some stages have a very limited enemy pool for some reason, Stage 6 being extra weird here (it mostly consists of 2 very basic enemies that shoot 1 aimed bullet) which is a shame since it has probably my favorite background visual and music in the game but the enemy waves might as well be the actual intended stage 1. Gives some placeholder vibes.

I don't think this enemy variety / tedious pacing thing is some hardcore player gripe on a design choice, most game genres try to avoid tedium. If some non-shmup player generally doesn't like shmups because they seem like repetitively shooting the same enemy this game certainly isn't going to disprove that. I doubt that's intentional as the shooting mechanics on the player side are trying to be varied.

I can see the dead air complaints earlier in this thread are definitely addrssed, and boss fights tend to be the highlight of each stage (if just visually) but the stage portions with normal enemies seem stretched out in duration.
I don't mean comparing to arcade games necessarily. Ginga Force has long single stages and makes no attempt to force an arcade-like mode. But it generally doesn't repeat the same enemy waves this long and each stage brings unique things to the table gameplay-wise at a pace that justifies the stage length.

Spoiler

Stage 5 also feels a little redundant apart from the background & boss as most of the enemy wave is repeated in stage 7 again. Kind of makes you feel like you played the same stage twice.

Arcade mode apparently infinite loops (~90 minutes per loop) with no difference between each loop. So going for leaderboard scores is pure endurance.

Arcade mode needs to be redone. It needs to end. No one wants to loop a 90 min shmup. An hour and a half is already at the edge of pushing it and the scoring challenge in a shmup should be coming from what's possible within a timeframe.. NOT seeing who can grind for 8 hours straight. This isn't Pac-Man

I was absolutely loving the game until I found out it looped. It absolutely makes zero sense and is now a big issue.

Looping also opens the leaderboard further to cheaters. A hacked score of 20 million could not currently be disputed as a player could claim they played for the game 10 hours straight.

bollucks..

Hi everyone,

Some unofficial updates (but to keep you guys posted) of what we are cooking behind the scenes from our side on top of addressing other feedback as well:

1 - Tightening up stage repetition a bit better (notably stage 6), there are some other areas we want to tighten up in terms of timing after watching some really good players play on Arcade mode, their streams and recordings have been helpful for us to study.

2 - Regarding Arcade,
On a personal level I am not a fan of infinite loops either but we've had conflicting feedback, some want it badly, some however don't and yes it may also be exploited. Suggestions are welcome.

@Fish: we have discovered that while the game intended to have shipped with an infinite loop, funny enough currently it seems that it does not have one, it apparently ends on one loop then takes you to the menu and uploads your highest score to the board (we haven't tested this yet but have heard from players who have). We checked the code quickly and it seems to be so. So perhaps this is strangely a blessing in disguise in a way.

3 - We don't like the current Leaderboard implementation either and it has shortcomings, we are looking to completely revamp Arcade mode.

4 - We want to add yet another difficulty mode, this mode was already present but removed last minute with concerns that it may be too challenging, but after seeing how people beat with hard and are asking for more difficulty, we hope to bring it back.

5 - we want to make all upgrades free for Arcade and unlocked (no more points to limit which to choose, this goes for all patterns as well) leaving the player to choose freely how to equip the ship.

6 - Possibly Have Arcade mode unlocked from the start, no more need to complete story mode.

7 - All other feedback will be addressed regarding Arcade mode to display score accumulatively throughout etc.


Finally questions to you all regarding Arcade mode, what do you prefer best?:

A - One loop super difficulty (more difficult than the current hard). -- runs at the risk of being too difficult to complete or be too frustrating.

B - Two loops: starts with Hard continues to second loop which goes on very hard But gives you one revive as a bonus - then ends. -- This one is looking to be most desired internally.

C - Infinite loop - starts with hard (no revive) - second loop same as above very hard with one revive - all rest of loops incrementally increases the difficulty until it caps at an extreme number and maxes out at 3 revives.

Feedback welcome.

I like that this game is doing something different. I like taking hits as part of gameplay. It doesn't make any sense that you could have such firepower coming at you and avoid all the shots (like most traditional shmups - not that I don't enjoy them). The shield management works well for this different kind of game. I also liked when there were too many enemies to kill.

The backgrounds are epic, especially the scale of the bosses as they come up. It makes the widescreen worthwhile. I'm a sucker for a cool waterfall.

But there are some things driving me nuts.

1. I cannot figure out the upgrade screen after several attempts. I don't want to try anymore. No idea what they are going for here. You can unlock slots but you can't change whats in them? I cleared the game and have designer mode, but I still can't figure out how to use it.

4. The ground-only sections are tedious. I don't think the ground shots add much to the game.

1 - I wish the upgrade usage info made it to the upgrade screen but given we were so pressed on time, the localisation and such fell short, unofficially we hope to make big changes to clarify all this in a next update. Meanwhile if its any help check our discord guide channel for video explanations.
Edit got the links for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVBnmnBwjAo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajYq74qV_jI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov5OQ8ezmyM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5xDYdQurco

4 - Same in terms of lack of clarification from our part, once you have ground fire rate upgraded + use homing missiles on gorund units , its very easy and fast to kill them. But pay attention the small enemy units recharge large unit shields you have to kill them first. A video here shows one such example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsBLMopxT7g

Best,

Nautilus,

In regards to arcade mode definitely selection A.

If possible though split this into Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard selections with seperate lb's. At this point it maybe asking far too much but if you look at every single popular shmup on Steam, or consoles, with online leaderboards this is the way it is designed 99.9% of the time.

All of the Cave titles are like this. All indies, doujins are like this. Even the newly released Devil Blade, which is extremely popular ATM, is like this. I can list 20 others on Steam done in this manner but the point is this is the method serious players prefer as it lets the players develop a strategy and doesn't stretch the play time out for hours. We are already sitting at 1:30 with 1 run when a majority of shmups are only sitting at 20 - 40 mins. The current length is testing a players time and concentration. The 4 difficulty selections gives all players, of all different skill levels, the chance to place on a leaderboard. This also adds non-stop replayability as players will venture back to place a higher score perhaps on normal difficulty this time instead of Easy. Add in some deeper scoring methods to arcade mode as well and you have a real winner.

An endless mode should really be seperate IMO.

EDIT: I understand though if all these changes are not possible as this takes more development time and costs money. Would be nice to see things definitely polished up a bit though

[Aceskies]

Today I beat story mode on hard finally. I am not going to play arcade because I am not confortable playing 90 minutes on that difficulty. There are many spots in the game where you can make a mistake with shield management and die, hence repeat all over again. I would be much happier if medium difficulty were selectable, and then record my time in the leaderboard. If thats added in the game I will come back.

Also I want to give an opinion about stage design. I feel each stage is less interesting than the previous. Stage 1 is brilliant, 2 and 3 great, 4 is a noticeable decline, 5 and 6 have boring sections and 7 is basically a recycle of previous stages, except the mushroom section which is nothing memorable. I know its hard to keep the same quality across all stages, but in this game somehow it feels so clear that it gets lineally worse, at least to me. Bosses are not included here, I think they are all great, except maybe the spider one which feels incomplete. Perhaps this has something to do with the devs situation running out of time.

Overall the game is great and quite enjoyable. I would recommend it and it has very clever ideas, also some issues that have been addressed here. I will pray for it to be profitable and allow this devs to continue working on stuff like this. We need new shmups that feel new and there are not a lot of them, and this one is well done. I am not a player that sticks to a game and replays it for scoring purposes or something like that so I cant provide advice on the arcade loops and stuff. But I would very appreciate a boss rush at least, that would motivate me to play more.

[ExitPlanetDust]

I finally cleared stage 1 on a fresh save, no upgrades of course. Things started out rocky, but I found a flow after the first mini boss.

Any recommendations for upgrades if I keep this save going?

[Eyvah_Ehyeh]

A randomized Time-Attack mode would be great... best would be with a seed-system so that you can replay your favorite level-seeds... maybe not at this point yet, since this would be a big task, i guess.

but the infinite replayability would be great.

i would totally buy this as a dlc <3

I enjoy proedural random seed stuff basically everywhere, but this game especially feels like it lends itself to that, somehow, perhaps because it already feels like the game is "just the same shit all the time", and because it's easy for me to kind of even zone out when playing, or to play in a way that feels like I'm just staring into the screen at nothing, and yet I survive, which doesn't have to be a bad thing necessarily, though. I would prefer a randomized mode that isn't a time attack, though, as well. But yeah how about a Time Attack mode that makes it so that the screen scrolls more when you're at the top of it? Or maybe that would be just result in weird and boring/degenerate gameplay?

[AntiramDSR]

A randomized Time-Attack mode would be great... best would be with a seed-system so that you can replay your favorite level-seeds... maybe not at this point yet, since this would be a big task, i guess.

but the infinite replayability would be great.

i would totally buy this as a dlc <3

I enjoy proedural random seed stuff basically everywhere, but this game especially feels like it lends itself to that, somehow, perhaps because it already feels like the game is "just the same shit all the time", and because it's easy for me to kind of even zone out when playing, or to play in a way that feels like I'm just staring into the screen at nothing, and yet I survive, which doesn't have to be a bad thing necessarily, though. I would prefer a randomized mode that isn't a time attack, though, as well. But yeah how about a Time Attack mode that makes it so that the screen scrolls more when you're at the top of it? Or maybe that would be just result in weird and boring/degenerate gameplay?

right? this could be the first shmup where randomness could really work. totally can relate to zoning out, so a endless mode would be even better.

[AntiramDSR]

I'd like to hear shmupper jaimers' take/opinions on this Cygni: AGB release. Is it 1LC or 1CC in it's current state?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

i watched his "Cygni tryout"-Stream on Twitch...
don't get me wrong here, besides him seeming to be a very nice person he surely deserves respect for (as someone called him on thist threat or on discord) beeing one of the best western shmup-players. that's undebatable and watching him playing the games he used to like, usually ends up in numerous aha-moments and being astonished.

so i really don't want to shit on him here, but oh my... that was hard to watch.

never in my live had i imagined it could be possible to me watching HIM playing and constantly feel the urge to scream: "Dude, what are you doing?! stop trying to micrododge and use your rockets!!!1!1!" or even (jk, love the term): "gitgud, shmup snob!"
(see link)

The overall mood in chat was unfavourable and biased, this and his constant derogatory giggling whenever he stumbled over something made it clear that he not really was interested in giving a fair chance. seemed full of ignorance tbh. maybe i'm doing him wrong here but that's how it felt while watching it.

he then postet on x/twitter "maybe we were too harsh on sine mora" which then ended in the intended effect in the comments... how is all that together supposed to be taken as a serious attempt to "tryout', why even using that title.

that's just calling out on everything and exaggerating for the sake to shit on something. unworthy

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... d/1248080/

[ExitPlanetDust]

That Steam review. Yes, this game requires the player to think inversely to the Aleste approach. Rather than picking up power ups and chips to abuse invincibility, one should consider tanking damage intentionally to grab a couple of shards to mitigate that damage and refill their weapons.