Cygni is a tremendous evolution of the shoot ’em up genre

Don’t let the Konami logo at the start fool you – Cygni: All Guns Blazing is very much an indie game, albeit one being released globally by the Japanese publisher.

You’d be fooled for thinking otherwise, of course. Just a brief glimpse at it in action may be enough to convince you that a lot of money has been thrown at it, when in reality the game – which started off as a three-person team and grew to around eight developers – has just been punching well above its weight, in the best way.

If it’s passed you by until now, Cygni was developed by KeelWorks, a Scotland-based team led by brothers Meher and Nareg Kalenderian and co-founder Helen Saouma. The game is an attempt to bring something new to the shoot ‘em up – a genre that was once synonymous with Konami back in the ‘80s and ‘90s – and it passes with flying colours.

At its core, Cygni is by definition a vertically scrolling shoot ‘em up. Over the course of its seven stages, the game’s All Guns Blazing subtitle comes into its own, with a near-constant onslaught coming from both airborne and ground-based enemies.

It doesn’t take long to realise that there’s so much more to Cygni than you’d expect from a typical shoot ‘em up, however. Those six stages are much longer than in other schmups, and they’re not really designed for you to avoid every bullet thrown at you. This is as much as game about juggling your resources as it is about blowing everything up.

Your ship is armed with two separate energy bars, one for your shields and one for firepower. As you destroy enemies, small energy collectibles float around the stage, and picking them up will top up your shields by default.

However, by hitting the shoulder buttons you can distribute energy from your shields to your weaponry, giving you more powerful attacks (with the obvious caveat that you’re giving up health as a result).

If you’re skilful enough you can eventually end up with both bars full (by manually filling up your firepower bar then collecting more health