Cytus
Cytus is a rhythm game developed by Taiwanese game developer Rayark. It was first released on the iOS platform on January 12, 2012. The game was later released on Android on August 7, 2012. A port for PlayStation Vita and PlayStation Mobile, titled Cytus: Lambda, was released on June 26, 2013. An arcade version titled Cytus: Omega in collaboration with Capcom was revealed at JAEPO in February 2015 and was set for location testing in July 2015, but was utimately cancelled on March 30, 2018. A sequel game, Cytus II, was released on January 18, 2018 for iOS and March 2018 for Android. A remake Cytus Alpha was also released for the Nintendo Switch on April 25, 2019.
Plot
Cytus
The story of Cytus is carried through its 10 main chapters as well as a prologue. The story revolves around the protagonist, Vanessa, who lives in a 22nd-century world where robots with human memories are the only remaining sentient beings while living humans are killed by a mutant virus. Due to limited memory space, human emotions are stored in the form of music in "Cytus", and by playing the songs, the robots are able to revive their human emotions. The plot features the disaster and the protagonist's struggle with identity. The story is told in-game through various cutscenes that are unique to the chapter title songs; individual songs within each chapter are at most only marginally relevant to the plot, except for a limited few.Cytus II
Cytus II, the sequel to Cytus, takes place about seven hundred years after the establishment of the virtual Internet space Cytus. As more and more people used virtual Internet, more and more musicians held concerts on iM, a social networking service. One musician, Aesir, decided to hold a large virtual concert in Node 08, one of the many nodes in Cytus. Attendees of the event included Paff, a popular singer, Neko, a famous streamer on iM, and Robo Head, an AI robot. A bunch of top musicians performed, but the organizer, Aesir, was nowhere to be seen, even after the end of the event. By browsing through iM and through each character's private "OS logs", players can unlock new songs and gain insight into the story of Cytus.Later, Paff and her media company, Monophonic Entertainment, announced the date for her seventh annual event, PAFFCON. Tickets for her event sold out quickly. At the event, while Paff performed her encore song, "Gravity", she collapsed. Paff was sent to the hospital, where she would wake up a few days later and start recovering.
While Paff was in the hospital, one of Neko's stream got hacked and attacked by Aesir. Neko was arrested by Node 08's Administration Bureau because she was suspected of launching the widespread attack on her fans. Meanwhile, Robo Head later discovers that their memory of Aesir was corrupted, and starts data recovery. People wanted to know who was responsible for the hacking. After Robo Head completes data recovery, he learns that Aesir did show up at the event and that they wiped everyone's memory of Aesir after they finished performing.
Soon after, a new band, Crystal Punk created their new account and host their first major event. Paff was originally going to attend, but her health did not improve. Neko was acquitted a few weeks later by the Administration Bureau. Paff left the hospital and was reported missing by Monophonic Entertainment. Her real identity, Aroma White, was also released by the company. This sparked protests outside of Monophonic's headquarters regarding the location of Paff. The lead singer of Crystal Punk, Cherry, was inadvertently injured while entering the building's headquarters. Cherry was discharged from the hospital a few days later.
One afternoon, while walking home from school, Neko encounters Paff outside of her home on a rainy day. Neko decides to take Paff in and protect her. Paff was missing for two weeks. Neko's fans and family members grew suspicious that she was hiding something. At the same time, Robo Head was analyzing memory files and eventually overwrote their "Supreme Command"—an order that they must follow, and heads back to the node where they were created, Node 03, to locate and find Nora. A few years earlier, Robo Head's supreme command was reprogrammed by Nora to prevent them from returning to Node 03 or Nora.
Not long after, the entire iM system was being affected by a data corruption bug. Messages posted on iM would be scrambled with garbled text. Eventually, iM was attacked by Aesir, preventing anyone from logging in and scrambling messages so readers could not see them. The attack led to Xenon being arrested on charges of doing everything that Aesir did: delete memories and attack the virtual Internet. Xenon pleads no contest to these charges, and he is sent to prison.
After Paff is located by her sister, Helena, Paff discovers that she has the memories of two people: Aroma White and Kaori Minamiya. Years earlier, her career started through a talent show at her school where the winner would sign a contract with an entertainment company. On the way to one of her events, she was seriously injured in a car accident. Aroma was sent to the hospital in critical condition. Noah, Helena's husband, was able to save Aroma by transplanting her memories into that of another body, Kaori. Through that, Paff could sing songs none of her family heard of, but she lacked the ability to remember before the car accident. Paff goes to Node 03 along with Neko and Hayato, a reporter, to learn more about her past.
Unknown to the other characters, an Architect, or an intelligent AI robot that assisted with the reconstruction of human society, attacked Neko's stream and iM. Architects also have the ability to feel emotions that humans can feel. Ivy was attempting to wake another Architect, Vanessa, through the Cytus platform. Ivy woke up 500 years after "the decommission", or when Architect robots were deactivated after human society was recovered from the "ender virus". She needed to collect memories of Ivy and Vanessa in order to wake her up. Ivy finally woke Vanessa up through OS space, a space in Cytus where people can meet and interact; however, because of a video that another Architect, Ilka, showed her before the Decommission, Vanessa's core was corrupted, changing her from thinking about helping with humanity to finding a way to end humanity. Ivy wants to find a way to save Vanessa.
After Ivy establishes contact with Vanessa, she encounters and captures Noah and asks him to transfer Vanessa's memories to that of an empty Architect unit to attempt to wake her up. Noah is unsuccessful and injured, and the empty unit is damaged beyond repair. As a safety measure, Ivy sets up a firewall in an attempt to prevent Vanessa from hacking or compromising any other Internet-connected devices.
Meanwhile, two members of Crystal Punk, Cherry and ConneR, break Xenon out of jail. In Node 03, Paff and Neko encounterd Robo Head and met Nora. Nora is the leader of Kyuu Hou Hai, one of many gangs that prevail in Node 03. Nora explained to Paff that she has the ability to see into OS space. Nora had used this ability before, but it left her vision trapped in OS space, leaving her unable to see in the real world without technology. Kyuu Hou Hai was attacked a few days later by drones. The group successfully fight off the drones, but Cherry gets shot in the process. These same drone attacks also destroyed Joe's cafe.
Cherry was placed on life support in Kyuu Hou Hai. Nora guaranteed that she would recover successfully, however, the electricity at Kyuu Hou Hai blacks out. While backup power was able to reenergize lights and doors, the life support Cherry is on fails, and she dies. The band she created is disbanded as none of the other members knew how to sing well.
After a successful investigation in Node 13, ConneR determined that Ivy was likely the culprit of the drone attacks. He, Nora, and the rest of the group return to Node 08 to stop the destruction of humanity. After encountering Ivy, they learn that Vanessa is causing the chaos. Soon after, Vanessa hacks the weather system and reprograms it to extreme weather. The extreme weather would wipe out humanity. Ivy successfully goes into the Library at A.R.C., a robotics company, and successfully encountered Vanessa up following the advice of another Architect, Rin, to talk to her calmly to snap Vanessa out of the attitude of desiring to destroy humanity. Not long after, the A.R.C. Armed Forces find Ivy and kill her, forcing Paff, Neko, Nora, Xenon, ConneR, Joe, and Robo Head into a final battle to inject a virus that they created earlier through OS space into Vanessa, ultimately killing her and restoring the peace that precedes. During the final battle, Paff calls out to the player for help sharing the burden of the virus in OS space, breaking the fourth wall.
The story has three endings, depending on the player's choices in the final battle. If the player fails to kill Vanessa, then Vanessa wipes out all of humanity. The characters on the menu screen gray out, and the places the characters reside in are empty and/or ruined. The only character the player can play is Vanessa, which forces the player back into the final battle.
If the player fails to answer Paff's call for help, then Paff dies from the burden of transferring the virus and her memories to Vanessa. Vanessa comments that Paff's memories are beautiful right before she dies, and Paff's sister, Helena, is left to grieve.
If the player shares the load of the virus by tapping the note that appears before the battle, then Vanessa is destroyed. Paff returns to singing and accepts her dual identity as Aroma and Kaori, and works on a collaboration with Neko.
If Vanessa does not destroy humanity, then the player will find themselves awoken in a hospital three months later. A.R.C. decides to decommission the library and to improve transparency. Rin breaks out of A.R.C. and starts living a normal life, blending in with the crowd and hideing the fact that she is an Architect. Joe rebuilds his cafe that was destroyed in a drone attack, and Xenon's sister, Shannon, is successfully recovered from OS space.
Gameplay
The main gameplay of Cytus features an Active Scan Line, a line that moves up and down across the screen. The player must tap circular objects, known as Notes, as the Active Scan Line passes over them, following the music.Different types of "notes" are used:
- The Click Note, a single circular note, requires tapping the object in time.
- The Drag Note, a continuous track of notes, requires dragging along the track.
- The Hold Note, a note with an extended ribbon meter, requires the note to be held until the meter is filled.
- Cytus II has an additional note, a Flick Note, which the player must flick to the left or right to hit.
Each note provides a score based on its accuracy, which can be "Perfect", "Good", "Bad" or "Miss!". Hitting consecutive notes in a row with either a "Good" or "Perfect" rating will result in a combo, which provides a score boost that increases as the combo rises. At the end of a song, the player is given a score out of 1,000,000, with a minimum of 700,000 required to clear it. The player also receives a letter grade: "Fail" if a song isn't cleared, C at 700,000 points, B at 800,000 points, A at 900,000 points, S at 950,000 points, and Million Master at the maximum 1,000,000.
As of version 2.0, there is a secondary scoring system, "Technical Points" or "TP". This introduced a new, stricter rating known as a "Rainbow Perfect" denoted by a rainbow outline on the disappearing note effect. TP is calculated purely on note accuracy and is given as a percentage.
Each song has two difficulty levels—Easy and Hard, with a difficulty rating from 1 to 9. Cytus II has three to four difficultly levels—Easy, Hard, Chaos, and Glitch—with difficulty ratings ranging from 1 to 16. The player may also choose how the notes
fade in and toggle tap effects.
Playable songs
Cytus includes 210 songs available for play in the game, spanning a variety of genres including pop music, trance music and drum and bass. The music is composed and performed by independent composers and artists from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Vocaloid engines are also used. A number of songs also has alternate version in addition to the normal version. These can be called upon by interacting with the song artwork in the song selection screen. Gestures used include tapping, swiping and holding at a specific timing and location.Cytus also includes a series of songs in image of the overarching plot, collectively named Cytus: Alive, added in version 6.0 in July 2014. Unlike normal songs, Cytus: Alive songs contains added plot animation during gameplay.
Releases and pricing
Cytus is available through the Apple App Store and Google Play. The full game charges a base price plus optional in-app purchases for players to purchase additional chapters of playable songs.The release on Google Play is free but features a cooldown timer before starting each song. The cooldown is removed when the full price is paid.
The PlayStation Vita and PlayStation Mobile port Cytus: Lambda includes the then-exclusive chapter Prologue: Live, otherwise identical to its smartphone releases. A teaser video was released onto YouTube prior to release on June 7, 2013. This version has since been made unavailable with the shutdown of Playstation Mobile.
Cytus α, a remake of the game for the Nintendo Switch, was released on April 25, 2019. This version, along with a revamped interface, added two new chapters, extra story elements, and an online Battle Score mode.
Million Downloads Plan
Rayark Games announced the Million Downloads Plan in the wake of "illegal piracy harming the sales figures of Cytus". Starting from Version 2.0.0, a 10-song chapter would be made available to all players for free for each 100,000 paid downloads achieved, up to a million paid downloads or ten chapters. The plan is completed with Version 8.0, released in July 2015, opening ten chapters for free, including the special Chapter Million featuring remixes of past songs.Reception
Cytus
, Cytus ranks #7 in the iOS App Store's "Music" category in the United States.Smartphone game reviewer TouchArcade gave the game 4 stars out of 5, saying that "the gameplay is pretty simple, but well executed", though noting it lacked a health system and had fairly loose hit detection.