CYGNI: AGB | Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series 2023

[beer gas canister]

The demo is pretty intriguing. Due to the insane ship speed it's kind of unplayable right now, but here are a few thoughts from several attempts:

1) Graphics are super gorgeous. The bullets are similar in color to enemy zakos, so it's not always clear what's what. The shadows look really amazing. It's sort of cool that the darkness can conceal enemies! There is a TON of potential in this advanced visual style.

2)The ground element is neat. There are some nice touches, like being able to damage the midboss way early (managed to knock him down to 95%). Again it's hard to tell with the controls in such a state but I like it so far. I wish homing was permanently enabled

3) It's very difficult to remember to shift energy to shields under fire. Not thrilled to be counting hits all the time at the moment, but it could become fun. Also, some hits don't seem to knock off a shield pip, maybe? Overall it's hard to understand the condition of my ship. There's a slow burn Gradius effect at work, where taking damage gradually forces you to drain from weapons to support shields, thereby extending fights. Might end up dramatic and interesting, or potentially a drag on pacing, hard to say at the moment.

4) Hitbox appears to be the entire body of the ship. It feels very large to me

5) Bullet patterns spawn very fast and dense sometimes. It's like Fire Shark hell world sometimes, but with less space to misdirect aimed shots. Will be easier to evaluate when movement is fixed.

6) Firing mode toggle and homing toggle fun ideas. Wish the firing modes (X button) had a bit more diversity and spread, or possibly I haven't been using them properly

One big takeaway is that because enemy visibility is so heavily obscured by bullets, shadows, and other enemies, I can hardly tell what's spawning and when it's going to shoot at me. Maybe the game is balanced to compensate for this, but in the classic bullet hell style, enemies generally give you a hint that they'll attack by a) not firing right away or b) firing slow bullets.

Also, I'm very bothered that you only get 1 life and have to restart the level every time. I hope very much that this a demo thing, because there's no way I'll play through a whole game like this. It's not checkpoints either, as far as I can tell - I died after beating the midboss and went all the way back. Barring the crazy move speed, this is the biggest barrier to entry for me.

Performance is pretty good! Running on a Radeon 580 and a decade-old i5 processor, settings on "HIGH" and it keeps at or just below 30fps. This is clearly not a "frame perfect play" kind of game so it feels fine.

Feel-wise, Cygni reminds me most of Astebreed, but there are shades of Dariusburst too, with the massive outpourings of zakos. It's also similar to Grand Cross, in terms of both the beam-ish 2nd stick control, and a generalized "what the holy fuck is going on rn" vibe. This is NOT like an arcade shmup at all, and I hope people give it a fair shake regardless. There's some super creative stuff going on but it's too hard to control, and too hard to know when I'm playing well vs failing. Lots of potential for fun here but it's pretty screwy right now

[AntiramDSR]

yay... the next Sine Mora. Reinventing the genre.

Why spit on the works of others?

because: "Cinematic Shmup" my ass

yet another euroshmup full of design choices which failed long ago and a thousand times, ennobled by a publisher known for some ot the most iconic shmups out there...

a dev, coming up here, and can't stand getting honest rections? yeah... this will fail big time

[To Far Away Times]

yay... the next Sine Mora. Reinventing the genre.

Why spit on the works of others?

because: "Cinematic Shmup" my ass

yet another euroshmup full of design choices which failed long ago and a thousand times, ennobled by a publisher known for some ot the most iconic shmups out there...

a dev, coming up here, and can't stand getting honest rections? yeah... this will fail big time

I do think this game will find it's audience, it just won't be one that knows what the hell a DoDonPachi is.

[AntiramDSR]

Why spit on the works of others?

because: "Cinematic Shmup" my ass

yet another euroshmup full of design choices which failed long ago and a thousand times, ennobled by a publisher known for some ot the most iconic shmups out there...

a dev, coming up here, and can't stand getting honest rections? yeah... this will fail big time

I do think this game will find it's audience, it just won't be one that knows what the hell a DoDonPachi is.

and to be honest... i don't even know what made me so salty about this game

maybe the ongoing "nooo, believe us... it will be great with all our design choices. we know better"-attitude in threads like this.

sorry @ dev for the negative vibing... funny enough: going to buy it as soon as it's relased. hope it fixes some Nex Machine itches on my XBox.

[soupbones]

Any word on a release date yet? PS Wish List still has that "Announced" placeholder; taunting me.

[Lemnear]

Why spit on the works of others?

because: "Cinematic Shmup" my ass

yet another euroshmup full of design choices which failed long ago and a thousand times, ennobled by a publisher known for some ot the most iconic shmups out there...

a dev, coming up here, and can't stand getting honest rections? yeah... this will fail big time

I do think this game will find it's audience, it just won't be one that knows what the hell a DoDonPachi is.

Eventually...yes, and maybe a part will lead right towards DoDonPachi °^° why not, sometimes works in this way.

[Nautilus]

sorry @ dev for the negative vibing... funny enough: going to buy it as soon as it's relased. hope it fixes some Nex Machine itches on my XBox.

No worries, all understandable, the internet can be a reactionary place . Just to be clear, never our intention to come across as "know it better" attitude quite the contrary.

For Shmups, like all games there are many camps, many impressions and expectations online, no one can ever please everyone. We do our best and work on the things we are passionate about, right or wrong. In the end it's up to players to enjoy it or not. But we do take their feedback into consideration as we did after the Demo was released, any self respecting dev should to that to one degree or another without comproimising the base product.

Whenever I have time I have tried to engage with the community here and in other places. I understand that more enthusiasts in this genre expect the next next-gen DonDonpachi to be out the door and that kind of backfires on us in a strange way when we are in the spotlight but that's internet.

I certainly do hope one day you guys will get the DonDonpachi you are looking for and if Cygni can help that in some strange butterfly effect sort of way then all the better for it.

Meanwhile Cygni details will be announced soon, We have mentioned on Discord why such delays happen, in short the game has been done for a while now the process of paperwork, marketing, printing, certifications, events and physical releases take much much longer than even we expected. So there is always that annoying waiting time and unexpected back and forth, something which is more harmful to us as a small team than anyone else, but there's little we can do but wait.

Thanks to everyone who tried the demo, in case you missed it, we took much of your feedback, There was also a video released on some of the improvements after the Demo that you can check out here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rbOGsm ... =KeelWorks

[jehu]

Whenever I have time I have tried to engage with the community here and in other places. I understand that more enthusiasts in this genre expect the next next-gen DonDonpachi to be out the door and that kind of backfires on us in a strange way when we are in the spotlight but that's internet.

I certainly do hope one day you guys will get the DonDonpachi you are looking for

Some would argue that the critiques here were about nuanced but materially significant failings in the details and about a lack of genre knowledge betrayed by those little mistakes.

But I’m convinced the fans just wanted their dang next-gen DonDonpachi.

There’s no pleasing these guys! But think: if there were no innovations, we’d all still be stuck with Space Intruders and Galactica!