Cygni: All Guns Blazing Review

Shmups and Konami are two things that go hand in hand, but we’d be lying if we said that we expected a new one in this day and age. Despite being first announced back in 2020, it took a long while for the game to see the light of day, and its promise of “mind-melting action” was something we never thought we’d see.

Fast forward to 2024, and it seemed just natural for Konami to publish this title from Scotland-based developer KeelWorks. Based on screenshots and trailers alone, Cygni: All Guns Blazing is a twin-stick shooter that looks phenomenal, but can it provide a new twist to the genre that we somehow haven’t seen yet?

Visual Treat

Shmups, or shoot ’em ups, have come a long way, and one thing Cygni has going for it is its level of visual fidelity. There aren’t any pixel graphics here, and even from the trailers alone, you’ll quickly notice the stunning level of visual quality that this game provides. It’s a futuristic light show, and from the ships all the way to the bullets, projectiles, and textures, Cygni is a definite looker.

It’s hard not to be impressed with the graphics of this game, especially when played on a capable PC or a PS5/Xbox Series. The explosions are crisp, the particle effects are outstanding, and the lighting is on point. Cygni looks absolutely stunning.

Most importantly, despite the hail of bullets coming from all directions, it’s quite easy to see what’s going on. I’m not a shmup pro by any means, but the visual language feels clear and not unfair, despite some sharp difficulty spikes. Part of what makes Cygni feel good to play is how its shield system is structured, allowing players to survive waves of projectiles as long as they manage their toggles correctly.

Cygni employs a refillable shield that, as needed, can be routed to your weapons. Both the shield and weapon meter have 5 levels to fill up, and players can choose to either weaken their firepower in exchange for more survivability, or vice versa. Enemies generously drop these shield refills, and as you pick up enough, you can fill up your weapon meter and fill up your shields at the same time.

Direct hits to you will knock you down a shield level, but you can always choose to fill that back up by picking up another refill from downed enemies or transfer some from your weapon at the expense of weaker power output, taking a longer time to kill enemies on the screen. You can also fire out rockets that can deal huge damage in a pinch at the expense of a weapon’s power level, so switching resources is happening all the time. Resource management is at play here, and it makes for an exciting time because you’re doing everything in mere seconds.

As you can guess, this shield system means that players can survive far longer in Cygni compared to other shmups, which keeps players in the game and makes mistakes forgivable, thus allowing for an accessible entry into the genre for interested newcomers. All of this seems a bit complicated, but Cygni has a tutorial that’s easy to understand, making it a required session before taking on the bad guys.

Takes Getting Used To

Even with the tutorial session out of the way, Cygni takes getting used to because, unlike more traditional shmups where you can pick up different weapons, you’ll be continuously upgrading your loadout in between missions. There aren’t a lot of upgrades, but the meat of this system lies in how much customizability there is.

Your ship basically has two main weapons to choose from – Air to air and air to surface. Air to air, or basically your main weapon, will be your primary source of damage for the most part, while your air to surface is basically a continuous laser stream that can fire on ground-based enemies. Customizability lies in the fact that you can choose a direction where your primary weapon can fire.

But isn’t Cygni a twin-stick shooter? Can’t you normally aim? Well, you can, but you are only limited to a certain range in front of you, so you can’t fire downwards. Technically. Cygni provides players with presets where they can choose the way the main weapon fires (almost sidewards, concentrated at the front, in a 90-degree angle, and so on), and players can switch presets anytime during the game.

With this system, and depending on what the level calls for, players can essentially stay in the middle but still manage to hit enemies at the flanks thanks to these presets. On top of the shield/weapon resource management, it can get a little tricky at times, so it could take some practice! This feature isn’t really explained too well, so understanding it took a bit of trial and error.

Replayability in Cygni boils down to leaderboards and repeating missions to gain a higher score, but this seems to be at odds with how long the levels can take to finish. Most, if not all, of the levels in the game take at least 10-15 minutes, making repeating levels a bit of a chore.

Upgrading your weapons is also something worth grinding for, but the currency you’ll need to upgrade is basically the shield refills you’ll pick up during a level. The catch? These shield refills will only count towards your total if you pick them up when your shield level is full, thus incentivizing players to perform well to gain as much resources as they can, lest they run through the 15-minute level again.

Additionally, if you die, you lose your hard-earned pickups, so imagine my dismay when I died to a boss with nearly 400 points of resources that were supposed to go to my blaster upgrade. You could finish a level with 4 or 40 or 400 points that can be used to upgrade your ship, but seeing as levels take a while to finish, losing them at the last second can be frustrating.

On easy, you get three lives, but on medium and hard, you’re left with just one life, so managing your shields and weapons becomes much more important. The game is mostly fair, but some difficulty spikes will make you scratch your head!

Cygni offers 7 levels with three difficulty settings, an arcade mode, and even co-op for even more replayability. Sadly, there’s hardly a semblance of a coherent story here, despite the cinematic cutscenes in between levels.

Running Out of Steam (Deck)

Naturally, we had to try the game out on the Steam Deck, and while it is playable, you’ll have to sacrifice visual quality for smooth gameplay. Cygnie has a “Steam Deck” graphical setting that, despite the game still being readable for the most part, does not look good due to a lot of jagged edges and muddy textures. It’s the only way to keep frame rates steady, so take your pick!

Strangely, trying out the other visual settings on the Steam Deck (medium, high, ultra) didn’t really yield that big of an upgrade on the graphics, if any at all, so it seems like the game defaults to a certain visual output regardless of setting.

That being the case, I found that I could stick to 30 FPS even with just a TDP limit of 9-10, so this is your best bet if you want to experience the game on the go. Bumping up the frame limit to 60 will have inconsistent results, even with the TDP limit off, with frames ranging from 30-60 depending on how busy the screen is.

Of course, this is to be expected from a handheld, so while playing Cygni on the Steam Deck is something you can indeed do to scratch that shmup itch on the go, you’ll want to switch to a PC/PS5/Xbox Series to fully appreciate the beauty of the game.

Verdict: Buy it!

Cygni: All Guns Blazing is an awesome shmup that goes a bit light on the innovation but goes hard on visual quality. That’s not to say that the game isn’t good, but it doesn’t introduce mechanics or systems that revolutionize the genre. For some, switching resources between shields and weapons while in the middle of everything may be a bit too much, but when you add the weapon direction presets on top of that, you’ve got another thing going.

Despite its layers of systems, the game is mostly fair and manageable, and Cygni impresses with fantastic visuals and a responsive shooter that is a good and reasonable recommendation for fans of the genre. While gaming on a portable device works, Cygni is best played on current-gen consoles and a capable PC that can show off its stunning visual flair.

*Cygni: All Guns Blazing was reviewed on a PC/Steam Deck with a review code provided by the publisher.