Cygni: All Guns Blazing is a bullet hell title — a foreboding name that genre was given for a reason. You'll find that it is extremely easy to get overwhelmed as you try to weave your way through thousands of bullets while simultaneously taking out hundreds of enemies — all at a breakneck pace. Cygni isn't here to hold your hand. It is more likely to smash it with a hammer.
But don't despair, this guide will give you all the basic components you need to break through and become an ace pilot. I'll point you in the direction of what you should upgrade first, and help you better understand the core mechanics of the game.
The Tutorial Is As Helpful As It Is Misleading
While it is a pretty banal piece of advice to tell someone to start with the tutorial, I would suggest that you give it a go. For starters, it is presented in a really fun and novel way. It will also familiarize you with all the weapon types, and how to engage them. However, there is a major caveat here! The tutorial doesn't tell you that a number of the weapons it is teaching you to use are not available from the onset.
So, if you are asking yourself, 'how do I use the homing missiles from the tutorial', you won't be able to until you unlock them by completing stages. Know that just because you are being taught how to do something in the tutorial section doesn't mean you will be able to do it right away in the game. Still, it is worth doing, just to get a feel for the controls.
Keep Your Eye On Your Ship
If you are new to the world of bullet hell shmups, this is one of the universal, core techniques for achieving victory. You are going to be dealing with a ton of enemies, and the bullets are going to be filling the screen. Which is why your eyes shouldn't be on the enemies, they should be focused on your ship. If you are holding down the fire button (which you always should be), you'll be taking out tons of baddies regardless.
Your focus is going to be directly on your ship, and ensuring that your ship doesn't collide with enemy fire. Keep on the lookout for the gaps in between bullets, and position your ship in those gaps. Give the baddies your peripheral vision.
Damage Boost Your Way To Victory
If you aren't familiar with the term "damage boosting", it means to intentionally take damage so that you can take advantage of the invulnerability you get after being hit in certain games. This is something you will definitely be utilizing frequently in Cygni. When you get hit by a bullet, a red shield will appear around your ship. During the time that shield is up, you will be invincible.
Let me lay out a scenario for you. You are pinned down by a laser, and on the other end of the screen you spot four energy nodes: what do you do? Well, getting hit will cost you a single notch on your shield, which those four energy nodes will fill and then some. So, there is no reason for you to not take that hit and collect that energy. Being perfect isn't necessary, not getting hit would mean missing out on dozens of energy nodes, which is just going to make it more difficult to upgrade your ship.
Prioritize Power Over Shields
One of the main mechanics in the game is being able to route your energy to your shields or to your firepower. If your shields are full, every energy node will become a currency you can spend on upgrades. So, if your thought is that you want to unlock more stuff, you'll probably want to have full shields at all times, right? Well, here's the thing, if you don't have the stopping power to kill the more robust baddies in a certain time period, then you lose the opportunity to harvest their energy. Which means you are leaving energy nodes on the table.
Instead, have your power maxed out, and only move energy over to your shields if you are a hit away from death. This will score you more kills, which will help you replenish those shields much faster, and in the process, you'll end up banking more energy to spend on upgrades.
Homing Missiles are handy, but they also lower the power of your primary weapon systems. So, you should typically only use your homing weapons when you are surrounded by weaker enemies.
Use The Easy Mode To Farm Energy Nodes
Easy mode lives up to its name. The amount of bullets flying at you is severely reduced. If you follow our above tips on focusing on your ship and damage boosting, we are pretty confident that you will be able to smoke the easy mode stages. Which, of course, means you can stock up on energy. That's right, the energy you gain while completing easy mode stages spends the same as the energy you get in the other, more difficult, modes.
Since you are here anyway, use this opportunity to learn boss patterns and learn a stage's layout. While the easy mode versions of each stage are notably easier, the attack patterns and encounters you face here are the same as the ones you'll encounter in the other modes, just with fewer bullets.
Less Is More When Equipping Weapons
You'll notice that you have six weapon slots that you can use. However, while your first instinct may be to fill each slot with a different firing pattern, consider this: what happens when you want a concentrated fire NOW, but you are currently set on a spread shot? Well, you will have to go digging for it, swapping between a number of different options furiously, and then, if you accidentally skip past it, you will need to cycle all over again. It is a nightmare.
Instead, I suggest you either stick to three slots (repeating the weapons you choose for the other three), keeping one of them your concentrated fire and switching the other two based on your needs for that particular level, or, have your concentrated fire equipped in every other slot, meaning you will never be more than one swap away from getting to your primary weapon.
The Two Shot Types That Matter Most
You have the ability to spend your currency on customizing your weapon's firing pattern. I strongly recommend spending your currency on a concentrated shot first. That is the tightest pattern possible. This will deal the most damage to a single target. After that, spend your points on the spread shot "preset" that is halfway down the list. This is great for dealing with crowds of weaker enemies. Absolutely experiment with the other patterns as well, you'll probably find some combinations that you like, but those two shot types are the most important by a country mile.
Additionally, once you unlock your drones, you'll be able to set those patterns as well. You can get cute with this and create some pretty interesting patterns, but I'd say your best bet is to just match the drone shot type with your primary shot type, as that will increase the stopping power.
Using Designer Mode To Create Specialized Weaponry
If you are looking to create your own shot type, you'll do that by selecting the "Designer Mode" option in the top-right section of the screen. Now, in this mode, press the button to activate the "Pattern Design" option (the button to press to enter this option is listed in the bottom left corner of the screen).
One of the more unique applications is creating a shot that will concentrate your fire to the extreme left or extreme right. These shot patterns are excellent for certain boss encounters!
If you do create one of these novelty shot types, make sure it isn't equipped to your first weapon slot. That would mean you would be stuck with that as your base weapon if things got dire and you had route energy away from your weapon systems.
