The holiday break has arrived here at Digitalchumps and I’m on the hunt for a fun, mindless game that is as organized as it is entertaining. Last week, we were contacted by publisher NetEase Games about checking out a new game from developer Team Miaozi called Cygnus Enterprises, a game that might be perfect for a holiday season that needs a hefty amount of relaxation. The game is an isometric action-shooter mixed with crafting and building. The game also features a nice story built to push all this forward. While there are some hiccups here and there, for the most part the game is near completion in its early access stage. It’s fun, lightly addictive, and it creates a healthy holiday dose of stop-and-go gameplay that is easy to leave as it is easy to come back to when you’re ready.
On that note, let’s get this preview started.
Quick and easy story
Your character, who you create, finds themselves on the planet Mytilus staring at the tattered remains of a former Cygnus Enterprises base. What has happened to the occupants of the base and the former crew is a mystery. Your job is to get the base back online and explore the planet of Mytilus to figure out what the heck happened. To rebuild the base and put together the reason for the base’s destruction, you must gather materials, fight alien occupants, and progress through the planet’s many lands to figure out the secrets the situation holds.
As you progress through the game, you get some small bits that equal out to a bigger picture. While the story doesn’t take the main stage of gameplay design, it’s centralized in all aspects of gameplay and helps to keep pushing and progressing Cygnus Enterprises’ design elements forward. While that might sound like nonsense to some of you, it simply means that the story dictates the real show which is the crafting, RPG skills tree, and building. That’s not a bad thing because the gameplay elements work hand-in-hand with the story breadcrumbs and ultimately create motivation to keep playing. It’s a dance between story and elements that creates a good amount of addictive entertainment.
While the story is interesting, I will say that the dialogue could have been improved at times. I do think that it could have been a bit looser with the actors, who seem to stick to the script more often than sound relaxed and natural. It isn’t quite Resident Evil on the PlayStation One bad, but it just doesn’t sound great. Does that hurt the story? No, but it does take the player out of the experience. There are serious tidbits and some well-placed humor, especially with clones, which helps to make the story flow at times, but better voiceovers could have helped sell the story just a bit more. It’s by no means a story killer, not even close.
Anyway, the story elements are scattered among the gameplay elements, where you can stay on task with the story, but also veer off from the main story when you feel like it. I think I spent a fair amount of time on small outings and side quests when I needed a break or I needed to build up my stats for the main character. The game is in no particular rush to push out the story, which makes for a relaxing time.
Those elements of gameplay
The game is broken into three separate pieces. The first gameplay element is the most obvious, which is action-oriented isometric gameplay. Here you will go out on hunts for evidence, resources, and survival purposes. You are armed with weapons and have unlimited ammo at your disposal. This latter part of this gameplay makes for a fun time and takes away from the repetitiveness that the gameplay occasionally brings. During this gameplay element, you will gather animal meat, and broken and abandoned parts left by the previous crew, and gather resources randomly hanging out everywhere that can be made into useful items back at the base. There are a lot of things that can be used for a variety of reasons.
Speaking of those reasons, the second gameplay element of this experience is crafting. Once you bring gathered items back to the base, you can put them together to make and progress your experience. For example, if you need elements to make a power core that runs complexes then you gather them from side missions, put in an order for a power core, and then go adventuring for a day while it is being built. That’s the catch with the game, where it does take time to build items you may need, so not everything in the sci-fi future is instant. ‘Tis a shame. Kidding aside, the gathering and crafting process is deep in this adventure game. It adds a balanced gameplay experience to Cygnus Enterprises and gives you a reason to go explore repeatedly. Crafting can include making weapons, armor, hats, pieces, and parts, and crafting material to build structures. As I have stated multiple times in the past, I’m not a huge fan of crafting, but this is just easy and diverse enough to add another layer of engagement to the gameplay experience which I found fun.
The last gameplay element, and a big one that will hook all those real-time strategy fans out there, is constructing buildings/structures. As you progress in the story, start gathering items instinctively, and getting requests from the storyline to build certain structures, you’ll start building your areas out. In typical RTS fashion, you’ll need space and elements to make this happen. The buildings are of a wide variety, from science buildings that help you discover new processes and help you to expand your exploration, to buildings that manufacture weapons and equipment. There is also an energy element of the construction process where you must build solar panels or wind turbines to generate enough power to keep the area going. There are so many structures that it provides a deep experience in building structures. Cygnus Enterprises goes deep into this element and uses every aspect of all gameplay elements to justify it being in the game. As stated before, everything is balanced through these elements and they play off each other well. What’s amazing is that no one element outshines the other. It gives you a good amount of purpose with each.
The sideshow of the game is the role-playing game element. The backend skills tree is dedicated and progressed by the above items. The more you do, the more you build and gather, and the more you manufacture means that you progress your character. You also receive promotions from the company, which opens up even more skills and abilities, plus rewards, as you do well. You can also promote and upgrade your clones in the process while assigning skills and tasks. As you can tell, this isn’t simply a game that wants you to do the minimum, rather it’s a well-thought-through experience that does quite a bit and does it all with purpose. In short, it’s a gameplay experience that has been designed well by developers Team Miaozi. It seems like their efforts and design weren’t wasted one bit.
Now, the only hiccup I see in Cygnus Enterprises’ design is the lack of enemy variety, especially at the beginning. While the situations and story help to alleviate that a bit, you will still run into a hefty amount of enemies that are simple repeats. The enemies will eventually change and become more of a variety when you start exploring the huge tracks of land at your disposal (all depends on story progression), but at least at the beginning, you will find yourself killing the same aliens over and over again. Being able to try out different weapons and upgrading those abilities and attributes through enemy killing efforts does help to distract from the repetitiveness, but it’s there and prominent at times. Again, this is the biggest hiccup and there are plenty of other distractions to make it feel like less of a problem.
Overall, the gameplay structure you get with Cygnus Enterprises is deep and engaging. You will find a large amount of positive and fun gameplay with a mixture of elements in the gameplay design. The devs did a great job with their game.
Anyway, let’s wrap this rambling up.
Conclusion
Cygnus Enterprises is a fun experience that will hook you and keep you wanting to play the game. Team Miaozi did one helluva job of balancing each purposeful gameplay element into its design and it has worked very well. Keep an eye on this one and take a chance if you want something fun and that has the longevity to it for the holiday season. I’m sure it will get bigger and better.
