Crying Suns

Genre: Real-Time Strategy / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

Crying Suns, first released on PC in 2019, ported to mobile devices in 2020, and brought to Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a game that combines Real-Time Strategy and Roguelike elements. This game has players taking the role of a cloned admiral awakened on a spaceship at the edge of the galaxy after humanity’s empire has suffered some nebulous disaster that has left its ships and space stations derelict and abandoned or fostering survivors just barely scraping by while fending off vicious scavengers and pirates.

The presentation here is good, using a mix of 2D pixel art for its characters with simple 3D visuals to depict celestial phenomena and spacefaring structures. Everything here is dark and foreboding, and just vague enough for players to fill in some of the details with their own imaginations. It’s nothing visually impressive, but it works well enough for the game. This is paired with an atmospheric synthesized soundtrack that suits the game perfectly, with great low-key songs like Idaho Clone 486 and Idaho Clone 1504, and superb battle themes like Encounter Type A, Encounter Type B, and Encounter Superior.

Unfortunately, one element of the presentation does not work well here, and that is how this game plays in handheld mode. The game’s already-tiny visuals become even tinier on the small screen, and the difficulty-to-read text becomes even more inscrutable as well. Sadly, these flaws aren’t even made up for with touchscreen support, which I feel this game would definitely benefit from, especially since this game requires you to not only highlight but select a ship on the battlefield to show its stats, making it more frustrating and time-consuming to have to keep dragging that cursor around the screen to make strategic decisions. In addition, the interface is filled with minor frustrations like having to deselect after selecting a target in battle, or simply switch to another unit, something that feels awkward.

Controls aside, the gameplay here is a pretty clever mix of these two genres. Players proceed through the game from planet to planet exploring, searching for resources, and trying to make good choices that will help them to get those resources they need without risking too much of their crew. At times these choices will simply offer a completely random chance that you’ll be rewarded or find yourself taking a loss, but often you can mitigate these risks by having the right officer on board.

The Roguelike elements mix up both the challenges you face as you hop from star system to star system, but also changes the weapons and officers available to the player. Meanwhile, the player has some control over how their ship improves over time, as they are able to upgrade elements of their ship regardless of the opportunities afforded by completing missions that pop up or finding a shop that sells items you want. Players must make use of the opportunities afforded to them and make good decisions about the other upgrades to accompany those opportunities.

Of course, every now and then you’ll run into someone who doesn’t take kindly to your presence or wants to claim your ship for its scrap, and you will inevitably find yourself in battle. Battles in Crying Suns take place on a hex grid battlefield that units traverse over in real-time, but at any time players can freeze the action to make decisions. However, these battles are often fairly simple and slow-paced, as each side will only have a small handful of ships at any given time, one of the major elements of the battles is the paper-rock-scissors way that fighters beat drones, frigates beat fighters, and drones beat frigates. Mostly, players will find themselves managing their cooldown timers, as their ships are often easily destroyed, everything in battle has cooldown timers, and those timers feel like they take a considerable amount of time, at least until you upgrade them significantly.

This kinda’ leads to my main complaint about Crying Suns – overall this game is extremely slow-paced. It can take you quite a while to progress, and unlike other Roguelikes, a run can have you going for hours before you find yourself defeated and needing to go back to square one. This is even more true if you choose to explore every planet you come across and micro-manage every battle (each of which seems optimal).

Still, while Crying Suns’ pacing is a bit on the slow side and its controls are a bit frustrating, overall this is a good experience that does a good job mixing its Roguelike and Turn-Based Strategy elements… even if the Strategy is a bit simple and the game’s slow pacing makes the Roguelike elements stretch out longer than they normally tend to. In short, while this game has plenty of areas that could do with improvement, there’s a lot to like here too, and fans of Strategy games and Roguelikes will likely find this game to be worth a look.

tl;dr – Crying Suns is a game that combines Real-Time Strategy and Roguelike, putting you in the role of a cloned admiral awakened to bring his galactic empire back from the brink of a mysterious calamity. The pacing here is pretty slow, the controls are awkward, the Strategy elements are a bit simple and the Roguelike elements are marred by the pacing, but despite these issues, this is still a pretty solid game that overall makes good use of its Strategy and Roguelike elements to craft a worthwhile experience for fans of those genres.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Strategy Game/Simulation

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