Cyjin: The Cyborg Ninja (PC) (Early Access) Review

Tired of intense platformers mostly being required to play with a controller? Worry not, there is a half robot half ninja cyborg featured precision platformer with great potential sitting in the development stage. Even early access to the game can give you the overall scope of what this game will look like in its fully-fledged state.

The first thing I noticed was it supports up to 4k resolution, which is pretty neat. Although it’s not a graphically astonishing game, it has a great and unique art style that some players might want to experience at its maximum quality. Players will have to control Cyjin, who is a wall-clinging, always dashing ninja cyborg in the neon cyberpunk mazes filled with enemies to defeat and traps to evade.

A wide variety of foes can be found in this game: from predictable robots with claws moving left and right in regular patterns to laser bean shooting machines to flying saw blades, players will have two playstyles to choose from. Either dash-and-destroy the enemies or weasel your way out of the predicament and move on to the next phase. But that is not always the option, sometimes you will be put in lockdown, and the only way out is to defeat the waves of enemies while keeping an eye on the number of hits you can take.

You can take up to five hits in total and refill checkpoints will come across frequently, so it is fairly forgiving for the progress and not very hard to stay alive. Besides, you also have a defensive shield to protect you from the incoming projectiles and flying blades in case you have to pass through them in midair. But don’t go thinking it’s easy in any way, it is quite challenging when environmental elements such as neon laser bars, falling debris, and deadly traps are all put together cleverly.

As advertised, you will only need a mouse to take on the revenge journey of Cyjin against his nemesis The Shogun. Though the game has a great story to back up its unique gameplay, I didn’t see any storytelling parts in the game, but again, it’s still in development. Hopefully, the developers will have more room for back story explanation when it releases on the full scale. Controls are extremely easy to pick up: the left mouse button is for dashing and slashing through the foes and the right mouse button is for activating the protective shield in the air.

And upon landing on the ground, clicking on the right mouse button will make Cyjin throw a powerful shuriken in any direction, but first, the ultimate gauge needs to be filled to do that. It’s not certain how useful that move will be on the full version of the game, but I was able to finish the demo without making effective use of the shuriken since dashing seems to be doing enough job at clearing the path. Having said that, it also has a fair amount of puzzle solving to get from point A to point B and meticulously crafted boss fights while keeping precision and agility at its heart. If it can keep up the level of quality in the demo, the overall experience of the game will be satisfactory for most platformer enjoyers.