Cytus: One of my Favorite Games

Cytus is a rhythm game developed by Rayark Games. The main reason why I love this game is because it looks very busy from the perspective of a spectator, but when you play it, it’s not that hard and you feel cool with yourself thanks to the well-designed player experience. From every little detail, I can see how careful they are making decisions to improve the experience.

Being as simple as possible. As what I said, this game looks very fancy and busy when you see someone else playing it without knowing the manipulations of the game. However as long as you follow the scan line and be clear with the three kinds of gestures, you know everything about how to play this game.

Clear and smart UI design. The notes indicate all the information you need to get while playing it. The relative distance between the scan line and notes tells you when to tap the screen. The color and size changing of notes gives clear sign for you to catch the beat (of course follow the rhythm at the same time). Different gestures have very distinguished UI. Have clear but not overwhelming feedback of combo count and grade of each note.

Sound. “Cytus has 60+ songs and 120+ variations, including famous composers from all around the world.” I personally like the genres (mainly Classical Crossover) of the music in this game. However what I want to talk more about the sound is, first, in default setting, there’s no aural feedback when you are playing a song. There are many rhythm games that have aural feedback such as muting the notes that you didn't hit or having other sound effects to break the sense of hearing. I always feel very frustrating when a note isn't played at the exact point-in-time, let alone missing a note or hit wrong notes.

Detection and difficulty. This game has more than 10 levels of difficulty and each song has two modes: Easy and Hard. The detection is pretty loose, which I’m sure that it reduces the frustration of potential Missings and Bads. As a skillful keyboard user and an amateur singer/pianist, I feel the difficulty of this game is just fine, which means that I can always have the sense of accomplishment, I’m confident to challenge songs in a certain range and I always feel that I can eventually get a Master (all notes are Perfect) after practicing enough. After playing for about two weeks I realized this state and my true level. But I would like to keep playing it because of the fluent playing experience and I can always get a higher grade which will make me feel cooler. But there are still a few songs that reamain to be nightmare to me, and I don’t even know how to distribute my fingers to reach all the notes.

Addiction. Unlike some simulation games, this game uses its enjoyable playing experience and a good interest curve to make it more engaging rather than setting little goals and utilizing social features to tie players to the game and being active without knowing how much time you've spent on virtual items. The gameplay is mostly intensity in this game. And as what I talked about in the difficulty, you can choose the levels that fit your proficiency, challenge them, practice a little bit (I would practice a song for 10 times if I can get a Master and still feel not boring because I’m busy figuring out new ways to play it perfectly. But for casual players, merely two times will be enough to get familiar enough with the song and notes.), get a higher score, switch to another song at any time, etc. As long as you are comfortable with this music game and want to play it better, the flow will work.

Exercising your brain, fingers and eyesight and improve your sense of music. A good sense of rhythm, agile split vision and flexible fingers will definitely help players do better in this game, and players can exercise themselves by playing this game. I feel I understand the notes with more sensibility after practicing this game.

Surprise.  I've been playing this game without checking any other videos and information, so I didn't know the best grade of a play is Master. I used to share my feeling and grades with a friend who started to play at the same period. He seemed to know the secret songs and other stuff. But he didn't tell me about the Master. So when I first get all the notes perfectly played, I got a Master and there was a quick fancy animation right when I hit full score, which was a surprise. I felt that it was a little reward for advanced players because I can only view it after achieving it. Another surprise of this game is the secret songs. When I showed my high scores to my friends, I was asked to try the secret songs of each chapter. You can enter them by hitting some symbols at the right timing at song select screen. The secret songs are always a little harder than normal songs. Sometimes they are multiple variations in different styles, which is a successful way to give bonus. Players will be grateful with the bonus and feel developers’ enthusiasm about their game. Although when I showed a secret song to a friend, she felt it wasn't a good design because it was too hard to discover without knowing any hint, I still feel it fine to have such bonus.

Level design. What I mean by level design in this game is which notes to have players tapping and how to organize them, such as layout, different gestures. It’s interesting to discover the notes arranging in a tilted row in being counterpoint to the music phrases. The layout is also very clear and well-designed. I can feel the designers are trying to make the notes much easier to reach rather than picking inconspicuous notes and organize them in a way that conflicts human engineering in order to make the game hard to play.

Besides what I listed above, there are other aspects make Cytus a good game, such as the consistency of art and music style, beautiful illustration and short animation for each song, the States screen, etc.

What I don’t really like. Just from my personal experience, it’s natural to have some part that I think is possible to be improved.

Slow songs. The slower songs are always sorted in a little lower level in this game. But when I play a song which is too slow, I feel harder to keep focusing on because it’s not very intense. Also, the slower the notes’ animations are, the longer your fingers need to touch the screen, which will highly increase the chance of getting a Miss or a Bad. I don’t think I’m too skillful, and the attention of players of different levels shouldn't have much gap, so maybe the speed of songs need adjustment through play tests.

Stories. I know this game has stories for each chapter, but I didn't really get or care the plots through the game. I might make it better to have stressed more about the stories though it's a good game without stories or characters. Maybe this is a reason that they made their new rhythm game Deemo.

To sum up, Cytus succeeded to create a smooth and enjoyable player experience. I like the way that they are trying their best to make a hard game to become much easier and cooler to play.