Crying Suns

In a market saturated with procedurally-generated roguelites, it takes a rare clarity of vision to stand out. Alt Shift’s Crying Suns, released September 18, 2019 for $24.99, is one such title. It arrives not as a brash attempt to reinvent the genre, but as a confident, mature refinement of it. The game casts you as a clone of Admiral Ellys Idaho, awakened decades after the collapse of the Galactic Empire he once served. The machines that ran everything—god-like AIs called OMNIs—have shut down. Your mission is to command a battleship across the chaotic, fractured stars, investigate the cause of the catastrophe, and perhaps, reactivate the OMNIs.

The shadow of FTL: Faster Than Light looms large over any game in this space, and Crying Suns doesn’t shy from the comparison. It embraces it. The core loop is familiar: you jump from point to point within a star system, consuming fuel, managing resources, and responding to text-based events, all while a relentless threat pursues you from sector to sector. But where FTL demanded frantic, real-time crisis management, Crying Suns slows the pace to deliver something far more narrative-driven and contemplative. It’s less about the panic of a hull breach and more about the existential dread of a fallen civilization. This is a premium, pay-once experience, a welcome commitment to depth that feels increasingly rare, especially on mobile platforms. It positions itself as a game for thinkers, for strategists who appreciate a story that respects their intelligence, drawing heavy inspiration from the grand sci-fi epics like Dune and Foundation.

• Tactical Roguelite Exploration: Navigate procedurally generated sectors of a fallen empire, making critical decisions about fuel, scrap (the universal currency), and which mysterious signals to investigate.
• Deep, Branching Narrative: A central mystery unfolds through more than 300 story events and encounters with a rich cast of characters and factions. Each run reveals more of the lore, making failure a part of the discovery process.
• Squadron-Based Combat: Battles are not simple ship-to-ship slugfests. They are tactical encounters on a hex grid where you deploy and command squadrons of drones, fighters, and frigates against enemy fleets.

The strength of Crying Suns is in how it weaponizes the core mechanics of the roguelite genre to serve its story. Death works as a narrative device as much as a gameplay reset. Each time Admiral Idaho falls, a new clone is awakened, retaining fragments of knowledge from past failures. This imbues the traditional loop of “die and repeat” with a powerful sense of purpose. Each run peels back the layers of a genuinely compelling mystery as much as it builds your tactical skill.

Combat That Thinks, Not Twitches

The combat system is where the game flexes its strategic muscle. It abandons direct control of a single ship for the role of a fleet commander. Encounters unfold on a hex-based battlefield between your battleship and the enemy’s. The core tension comes from deploying the right squadron for the right job. Drones can disable enemy weapons, fighters excel at anti-squadron warfare, and hulking frigates can punch holes directly in the enemy capital ship. It’s a sophisticated rock-paper-scissors system that demands you analyze the enemy’s loadout and deploy your limited resources accordingly.

There are no twitch reflexes required here. This is a game of positioning, timing, and calculated risk. Do you send your fighter wing to intercept those incoming torpedoes, or do you risk taking the hit to press your own attack on a vulnerable enemy weapon system? Do you deploy a slow-moving drone unit, knowing it will be a sitting duck for a few turns before it can reach and disable the enemy’s main cannon? These decisions are the crunchy, satisfying heart of the gameplay, built to reward careful play with battles won at minimal cost.

A Story Worth Dying For

While the combat is excellent, the world-building is what carries Crying Suns. The writing is sharp, mature, and evocative of the classic science fiction it so clearly reveres. The universe is populated with distinct, memorable factions—from the cybernetic zealots of the Church of the Machine God to deranged, aristocratic nobles clinging to their titles amidst the squalor of a collapsed society. Every event, every dialogue choice adds another brushstroke to a bleak but fascinating portrait of a galaxy in ruin. The game trusts the player to piece together the lore, and the gradual discovery of what happened to the OMNIs is a powerful hook that transforms repeat runs from a chore into a necessity.

Crying Suns employs a high-fidelity pixel art aesthetic that is both beautiful and functional. The style gives the universe a gritty, tangible feel, with detailed ship designs and moody, atmospheric backdrops. The UI is built for clarity—clean, sharp, and easy to read on any screen size, which is a critical achievement for a game of this scope. It presents complex tactical information without ever feeling cluttered. The accompanying soundtrack is a melancholic synth score that underscores the game’s themes of loss and discovery, making for a cohesive and immersive audiovisual experience. As a 2D game of modest technical demands, it should run comfortably across its platforms.

The game is designed with each of its platforms in mind. On Steam, the precision of a mouse and keyboard is ideal for managing squadrons on the tactical grid. On the Nintendo Switch, its structure is a natural fit for portable play; its sector-and-event rhythm is well suited to short, self-contained sessions. The iOS version may be the most interesting. The interface has been thoughtfully redesigned for touch, and the premium “pay once” model is a bold statement on a platform rife with microtransactions. It’s the full, uncompromised PC strategy experience in your pocket.

Crying Suns is a confident fusion of strategy and story. It takes the well-established FTL framework and builds upon it, creating an experience that feels both familiar and refreshingly new. By making the narrative an integral part of the roguelite loop, Alt Shift has addressed the genre’s problem of meaningless repetition. This is a bleak, intelligent, and engrossing journey into the dark. We recommend it to any fan of science fiction or strategy, with the caveat that its deliberate pace and reliance on RNG demand patience.