I am absolutely terrible at SHMUPs, bullet hells, and other such action game experiences. For this reason, I don’t generally play them. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, it’s just that my progress through them is so slow – on account of my own lack of skills – that generally speaking my time is better spent elsewhere. Sometimes, however, a game comes along that’s so good that I am inspired to struggle through my own skill inadequacies to enjoy the full experience anyway. Cygni: All Guns Blazing is one such game.
When SHMUPs are at their best, they are a carefully choreographed audio-visual dance of movement and light. “Bullet ballet” is probably more appropriate for the most energetic of them than “bullet hell”, because the experience is so tightly choreographed by the developers. With this genre, you have the illusion of free movement around the scrolling environments in your spacecraft (or another such vehicle), but in reality, the enemies come in such well-designed patterns, spraying bullets as they do that the challenge in completing the game is actually learning the carefully designed movements through the hailstorm of death.
Cygni is a particularly beautiful dance, with gorgeously slick animation and a warm glow to the missiles, bullets, fireworks, and explosions that give a powerful yet elegant energy and grace. It’s incredibly fast and looks impossibly chaotic, but there’s a compelling rhythm and mesmerizing flow to it, and it doesn’t take long to become fully engrossed in the precision twitch skills that it requires.
There’s even a sense that enemies have a bit of AI built into them. I’ll need to play the game for dozens of hours more to pick through the chaos to find the nuance, but it does seem like some of the enemies do respond to what you’re doing, and therefore each time you play, and try something different, you get a slightly different spread of enemies to look at. For the most part, the waves are still choreographed – certainly in terms of what they do when they first arrive on the screen, but simply memorizing enemy patterns isn’t entirely enough with Cygni.
After battling through the swarms you’ll run into the boss battles, with enemies that are intimidatingly big, filling the screen to dominate and dwarf your little ship. And then the available space gets even smaller as their attacks inevitably start carving the screen up with lasers and projectiles.
The overall effect of Cygni’s energy makes it difficult to play for long periods of time – at least, that’s the case for me – but I rarely feel so viscerally connected to the action in a game as I have done with Cygni. The developers clearly know better than to let the intense, bursting energy outstay its welcome, either, as levels are not overly long and the variety between them is good, too, so if you do find yourself playing on, you’re never going to be allowed to look at anything for so long that it loses its impact and becomes mundane.
While Cygni is certainly too fast to ever be strategic, being good at the game requires that you are able to make effective use of a full range of offensive weapon options, and then also engage with a “risk-reward” core mechanic: You can choose to route power to the shield, or your weaponry. Doing well at Cygni – not that I do – comes down to being able to understand the situation and adjust your calibrations quickly and on the fly.
Really the only disappointing thing about Cygni is the narrative. Normally that would not be an issue with the SHMUP genre. It’s really not known for storytelling, but it’s clear that the developers genuinely wanted to give this project context beyond the action. There are lavishly presented cutscenes that bookend each level, and we’re clearly meant to care about each character and the situation they’re in. But… unfortunately, you won’t. The narrative never raises above cliché, and perhaps the closest you’ll ever get to caring about the protagonist is that there’s an obligatory scene where she gets dressed. It’s certainly the most memorable moment across the entire narrative. But in all seriousness, she’s got the personality of a mannequin, and overall the effort at telling a story has been misguided energy.
Cygni: All Guns Blazing is a SHMUP with some seriously high production values behind it. For a genre that is usually quite niche, seeing something that pitches higher like this is impressive. It’s not always perfect – the budget spent on the cut scenes was a noble idea that ultimately misfired – but once you’re into the thick of the swirling maelstrom of activity, it’s hard to be disappointed with what the developers have achieved.
