Crying Sun

There have been many developers who tried to emulate the vast success of FTL: Faster Than Light. That random indie space adventure was cheap, rogue-like, and fun. Crying Suns is just one of those games that was released here recently in September 18, 2019. In fact, you can go try the demo yourself. After being burned from games like Out There, I didn't have high hopes for this game considering it was a Kickstarter Project that raised just under $100,000. So how is the game now that they raised the price from $15 to $25?

The Good: Crying Suns decides to weave a story in 6 different chapters. Each chapter has 3 sectors and each sector takes roughly about an hour each. The way they structured the story from the perspective of a captain watching a monitor screen (or elsewhere for that matter) is pretty brilliant. I actually found myself being invested in the story like I was with Urquan Masters. For the first 3 hours in the first chapter of the game, I enjoyed it immensely. There was comedy even within the failures of your crewmates. Battles are geared more towards a Battlestar Galactica style where you attack the enemy cruiser with groups of squadrons and weapons on your ship.

The Bad: It wasn't until I started playing the second chapter that I realized that the game was losing its creativity. It became apparent that the game was short on nearly everything as you received scripted quests, identical results, and reskinned enemies. I found the repetition daunting as nearly every battle played out the same way and the limitations of customizing your cruiser wasn't fun in any respect. Even the story began to recycle itself as you seek out answers to your dilemma. Each boss just ends up blaming you for their problems and leave behind small bread crumbs that lead you to the next chapter. At least you do get to choose a new preset ship (and any lieutenants you may have found along the way) at the end of each chapter.

I'd also wager that the game suffers from being too simple. Squadrons, soldiers, and your battleship all automatically heal after each encounter. Your officers provide small buffs that don't feel as significant as they should be in the heat of battle. I also find it strange that there doesn't seem to be any importance on the number of crew members you have on board, but ironically you can only have a select number of officers. Going over the limit of weapons, squadrons, or officers gives you a prompt to "throw away one" which seems kind of silly if you ask me. But I guess I wouldn't expect much more from such a small-funded game. It wasn't until the end of the second chapter, after 6 hours of gameplay, that I felt some sort of real challenge. I was overwhelmed and invigorated as the enemy nicked my cruiser down to about 40 health. Then after winning, the game crashed! I was so angry at that point that I had no desire to play anymore.

Summary: The game excels at trying new avenues in the rogue-like space adventure genre. However, the limited content is not enough to hold anyone's attention for more than a few hours. $25 is too much for highly predictable events with very little customization and lacking variety.

 

10-22-2019