Myriad Cypher

This actually the second game that I was requested to play by the developer, Marrend, who originally created "Myriad Cypher" in a team for the “McBacon Jam #1” event on RMN with updates since the contest’s end. I have to say that I was rather surprised by this game. While Konae’s Investigations didn’t meet my expectations, “Myriad Cypher” exceeded them greatly. With multiple ways to play and advance through the story and a “learn as you go” type of gameplay I have to say that I loved this game hands down. For the record I played this game for 2 hours and 5 minutes according to the internal game clock.

-INITIAL THOUGHTS-

To be honest I didn’t expect much from this game and in the beginning I thought that it wasn’t going to be much fun. This is most notably due to the fact that the optional intro is not only short and brief but doesn’t give the player much idea on what to do. I call this a “learn as you go” game because it gives the player virtually no instructions on what to do or where to go. I’ll admit for the first 15 or so minutes I didn’t know what I was doing, only taking missions and going to the bars just because it was something to do. When you go into one bar in particular though, the story kick-starts and the game finally has a tangible goal at hand. As you move forward more and more information becomes clearer to the player and I like how the developer was even able to throw in a reference to another game of theirs towards the end. I also like how the player options on how they should play the game. The player can choose to follow the story and eventually win the game or they can choose to go on missions to collect money, or even play as a merchant buying and selling items to earn a profit. Unfortunately, both the missions and the merchandising can get a bit old over time especially in the player hasn’t unlocked the main storyline yet. The battles in this game too can be a bit off-putting. Some encounters are triggered by missions while at other times they are random. While I like the battles, the difficulty rating between each set of enemies is a huge jump from one set of enemies to the next. Instead of a standard RPG leveling system, “Myriad Cypher” upgrades the weapons/modules in the shop for the player to buy and their not cheap. In order to have an even battle with the enemies, it is best and almost required that the player has the latest equipment upgraded. This is a nice setup but matchups can be a bit unfair going from planet to planet without the latest equipment. Conversely, the same can be said about certain enemies. Although the game tries to set the random battles to match the player’s supposed strength, from time to time the player will also encounter an enemy who is no match for the player at all. I will say though that despite the game’s minor shortcomings I really enjoyed playing the game and it ended up holding my engagement really well.

-PRESENATIATION-

I really liked the presentation of “Myriad Cypher”. Everything from the graphical assets to the musical aspects and story helped add depth to this game and emphasize the “space exploration” atmosphere of the game. I really like the inclusion of original artwork inside the game, it not only added personality to the game but it also helped make the main character more identifiable and relatable despite the game’ setting. As for the story, I found it to have a slow start but a strong finish. I loved the genuine reactions from all the characters and felt the storyline to be believable for the most part. There were a few things I questioned about the cypher being related to DNA but that’s more of a personal disconnect from the story and doesn’t affect the overall presentation in my opinion. Similarly, I found all the music but the battle music to be perfect and felt it really defined the mood of the game and situation the player was in. The battle music for me just didn’t flow with the rest of the game in my opinion and as I stated with the story, that is my personal opinion and it doesn’t really affect my feelings towards the overall presentation.

-ENGAGMENT/GAMEPLAY-

While this game is designed more to be an adventure game, I felt that the story was really the prime source of engagement. The exploration of planets and venturing out to missions is fun but for me the game wasn’t worth playing until I unlocked the main storyline. For others the battle system could be their prime source of engagement as the battles and missions are fun and engaging as well. Now it is arguable that the merchant system could also be a source of engagement but for me it was just a nice feature that I found to exploit to get money faster. Since there are multiple ways to play, I would say that the gameplay experience would be different for everyone who plays this game depending on how they go about doing things. The battles for one can be long and tedious in some situations in which the player has to be more tactical about restoring and using up energy for attacks. The merchant system though can allow the player to accumulate wealth quickly in order to buy the latest equipment and repairing the ship without any financial worries. The bar system also functions well but gets old over time with the same information being given over and over again without much advance in the story. The one thing I have to say I’m not a fan of gameplay-wise is the movement. While the player can get used to it over time, the ship’s movement speed accelerates very quickly and turning can be really hard to control at times. Also after going through a portal, turning sometimes forces the player to go back through the portal again which is troublesome if a random encounter occurs while the player is at low health and energy. The movement and collision detecting with the portals/planets was really the only things I had a problem with and the rest of the gameplay worked just as it should.

-OVERALL-

“Myriad Cypher” is an excellent adventure game with plenty of RPG and simulation aspects to keep players interested in the story and non-story related aspects alike. This game also leaves a lot of room for replayability options with an infinite amount of missions to attempts and plenty of shops to get merchandise from. I say play this game if you like RPG’s, Adventure games, Simulation games, “Learn as you go” games, or games that just give the player a lot of freedom to do what they want. I really enjoyed this game and I hope you will as well.

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