Crying Suns — Bleak and Beautiful
Science-Fiction has long been a beacon of hope for me. Even in the worst-case scenarios, the most run-down cities, the most destructive of governments, there is always a beacon of hope. There is always something, whether and individual or organization, trying to do better. Trying to make it better for others. There is always light. And then there’s Crying Suns, daring you to be good at the expense of precious resources while the galaxy’s light blinks out before you. But damn, it’s intriguing.
Crying Suns, developed by Alt Shift, is a dystopian science-fiction story at the tail end of humanity’s galactic existence. The machines that ran the Empire to the point of humanity’s complete dependence, from agriculture, to automation, to construction, have been shut down for over twenty years. If nothing changes, humanity faces extinction in as many as fifteen more years. Only the famed Admiral Ellys Idaho can venture out to solve the mystery of why and how the machines shut down and save the galaxy. But I guess a clone of the Admiral will have to do, fragmented memories and all.
In its game icons and advertising, Crying Suns touts itself as three things: a Story-Rich Tactical Rogue-Lite. Short version: it is all of those things, and it is all of those things well. Long version: Crying Suns excels in its Story-rich promises by making it optional. Players choose how much they want to inundate themselves with extra information about the finer points of the narrative, and can just as quickly say “I’m done,” and move on to the next element of gameplay. They’ll have to listen through the basics, the information they need to progress the story, but no more than that if they’re not interested. Talking with other characters helps to paint the galaxy in finer strokes and will reveal more about the galaxy players are trying to save, but players don’t suffer penalties for wanting to get back into the adventure. For an experience trying to balance between gameplay and narrative, Crying Suns hits it on the head. The only place it suffers is in some of the dialogue writing; without voice acting, it can come off as stilted or awkward. But, to give the writers credit where credit’s due, humanity faces extinction amidst the decay of galactic society. Flowery word choice and sentence structure probably shouldn’t be at the top of the to-do list under those circumstances.
The Tactical aspect of Crying Sun is split two ways. First, the narrative interactions with characters and situations. Do you go explore this planetside warehouse for supplies, or is it too dangerous? Can you spare some scrap (currency) to help a dying space station, or do you think you need it more? Side with one side or the other in a planetary civil war, or neither? Some situations award resources, others take. Some may leave a glimmer of hope in the heart of a players, others will make players curse being so trusting or naïve. The balancing act is on full display in the Tactical, between wanting to do a modicum of good in the galaxy (for a price) or hoarding resources at the expense of others you cross paths with. It is a wonderful short vs. long game question that players will constantly grapple with throughout the six chapters.
Second, the meat and potatoes of Crying Suns’s gameplay loop: the naval battles between two battleships (the player’s and the enemy’s) on a hexagonal grid. Victory is achieved by destroying the opponent’s battleship, done by employing a combination of starfighters, battleship weaponry, and environmental maneuvering. Of course, the enemy has the same abilities as players and will be trying to defeat the player just as much. Starfighters will be damaged or destroyed (a long-term detriment to future skirmishes), elements of the battleships can be put offline for a precious few seconds, and in the end, someone is going to perish in a blaze of epic glory. There is no retreat, there is no surrender. There is only victory or defeat.
Lastly, the Rogue-lite components come in through Crying Suns’ innate difficulty. Players will (likely) be defeated more than once. And when a new clone is belched out of the cloning facility to boldly go where its predecessor died before, the makeup of the sector map is different. There are new enemies, new encounters, new possibilities every time players start over. Their ship starts at its default strength upon both defeat and progression to a new sector. Crying Suns is Rogue-lite, not a full-on Rogue-style game, because of its (albeit rare) checkpoints. There are six chapters in the game, completion of one unlocking the next, onward towards the story’s conclusion. It does not demand that players complete the entire game in a single run, but trades that for more short-term challenges. Simply making it to the end of a single sector can now be a grueling enough experience on its own. There are some customization options upon starting a run (ship type, officers on-deck, and, blessedly, difficulty), but Crying Suns will throw everything a depraved and dying galaxy has at you to stop you every time you crawl out of your cloning facility.
As much as I have tried, I’ve yet to find that beacon of true hope in Crying Suns. To that end, it sets the stage perfectly: a truly dystopic, crumbling sci-fi. This isn’t small-scale cyberpunk where the city is going down the tube. It’s not a fragmented but functional cluster in the midst of a civil war. Crying Suns presents it with galactic scales of defeated. Humanity faces its extinction, not from an alien invasion, not from a virus, not from a fully-armed and operational battle station, but from its own hubris. And everyone is feeling the crunch of that, coping and surviving in whatever way makes sense to them: scavenging, pirating, or praying, to name a few.
And yet, amidst the impending fade from existence, the game still takes place in space. And space is beautiful. Starting out close to a system’s sun, watching that same sun fall further into the back as you send your ship to the outer rings is beautiful. The design, the construction, the glowing of the ships and stations dotting the starscape, even if you know that particular glow could mean a battle. The stars, space, and the fading glow of humanity’s hold through its construction, are the bright spots in the galaxy. Crying Suns makes the most of its pixelated art style and paints a vision of space that is as much beautiful as it is daunting, picturesque as it is looming. Space is dark, deep, and dismal, but it is punctuated with light, and brilliance, and natural radiance. It constantly balances itself between the two polarities.
The gameplay visuals play into that tug-of-war, too. The game screen largely takes place looking out of a massive bridge window, showing players, effectively, what the Admiral sees. There is beauty, both natural and constructed, in so much of what your starship encounters, but punctuated with the harsh grandness of space. When gameplay switches to combat, players are given a birds-eye view of the battlefield, more akin to a game of chess than a roaring space battle one gets in a starfighter cockpit. It can feel overwhelming, especially for a new player (case in point), but everything starts to make sense after a couple early rounds. Soon enough, players will feel more like the Admiral, make sense of so many moving parts at once. It is manageable, and still aesthetically in-line with everything to that point.
All of this, the gameplay, the visuals, the narrative, is enhanced by the audio work, both by way of sound design and soundtrack. The sound design leans hard into the perspective of the Admiral: distant, removed. Explosions are far-off. You are, after all, the Admiral on the bridge. You’re not a frontline commando or a starpilot. You hear mostly beeping and buzzing as messages and menus pop in and out. The bridge shakes when weapons fire from your vessel to the enemy’s, or when their own weapons rock into you, but Crying Suns keeps you distant from all of the clamor and noise.
And the soundtrack. Composed by Aymeric Schwartz, it carries on this theme of balance: the sci-fi is plain in its use of synths and echoes, but it feels afraid. The grandness of a space epic is dragged through the despair of a slow-burning, galactic demise. Quiet moments of exploration are punctuated by huge, sweeping bars as you stare down an enemy battleship, or the cosmos itself. It feels like a sci-fi soundtrack at first listen, yes, but it reminds you every step that as much as you may be exploring space, as much as you might be trying to save humanity, there is no shortage of creatures, phenomena, and circumstances that will try to stop you without a second thought. It is a thing of beauty, both as a sci-fi soundtrack and a collection of music independently.
Crying Suns is a gripping, thoughtful, and challenging balancing act from out of the starting block, and it maintains that tension all throughout its experience. Fans of science fiction would do well to try it. Fans of video games would do well likewise. Perfectly balanced, as all great games should be.
All images captured in-game.
