Crying Suns Review

French studio Alt Shift’s latest offering, Crying Suns, is captivating. A space rogue-lite that was recently fully funded on Kickstarter, Crying Suns is driven by an intricate, deep story in a depressing setting. The game currently includes a working demo available on their Kickstarter page. It offers a good mix of storytelling, space exploration, and hex-based fleet battles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=An317hx2LQA

Crying Suns opens with the main character, a cloned admiral of a space empire, being awakened by a sentient machine-creature known as an OMNI. Reminiscent of squid-like Sentinels from The Matrix, OMNIs provided the humans in far-flung solar systems with everything from food to protection from the harsh elements of inhabited planets. That is, until they all went offline. With a fleet at your disposal, it is ultimately your job to unravel the mystery of what happened.

Gameplay

Having played the demo, what stands out the most is the depth of the dialogue as well as the storyline. The game seems to weave together a plot that expands as you explore from solar system to the next. You spend the bulk of your time on the ship’ giant command deck. From there, you can interact with your OMNI and crew, as well as communicate with the outposts and ships you encounter. Dialogue includes a series of questions you can ask during each interaction that will help fill in details. You can skip much of it if you feel you have all the information you need.

The exploration aspect of the game isn’t particularly in depth. However, there are some layers of strategy regarding how you move about. Your ship has a limited amount of fuel, which restricts how frequently you can zoom around in a system or jump to a new one. You can absorb additional fuel from the sun or simply wait for your fuel to recharge. EDIT: After speaking to game designer Frederic Lopez we’ve learned that if you wait too long to recharge a mysterious threat that is following you will catch up with you. In other words, you have to be wary when waiting around to recharge.

The game includes hex-based combat. Battles begin with ships on opposite sides of the board. You typically have three different weapons systems to rely on: (1) deployable units like fighters and drones (2) on-board weapons and (3) special abilities that your crew can use. However with a variety of each type, there are a lot of strategic possibilities.

You can get more information as well as the demo on the Crying Suns Kickstarter page. Alt Shift have targeted release of the full game for December 2018. You can also get more information from the official site. Did you find the Nerds and Scoundrels Crying Suns Preview helpful? Let us know in the comments section.