Game Reviews

Cyro

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iOS
| Cyro
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Cyro
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iOS
| Cyro

Cyro - which owes rather a large debt to Kuru Kuru Kururin on GBA - is a game about building a tower to the moon. You're in charge of some earnest little creatures who want to improve their lot in life, and you're going to do so by helping them transport planks.

Wait - come back! - it's much better than it sounds. The creatures work as a pair to carry a plank through each of the top-down mazes that make up the 48 levels in this game, and they continually rotate. Which is handy, but infuriating at the same time.

Handy, because the plank must be moved past complex obstacles, and rotating it is the only way to squeeze through narrow gaps.

Infuriating, because the creatures never stop rotating it. Touch the walls, or bump against an obstacle, and you lose a life. Lose two and you're bumped back to the start, or your last checkpoint.

Might be easier if they stopped with all the spinning

It's oddly reminiscent of Duet, another game in which you control spinning objects and attempt to navigate past obstacles, and it requires a similarly unusual skillset - this is not something that you're used to doing, and you'll need to learn how to overcome the surprisingly steep difficulty curve.

Cyro isn't unforgiving, but you'll have to do a lot of trial and error before you work out how to navigate this rotating rectangle through increasingly complex manoeuvres.

Luckily, though, Cyro is charming. It oozes charm from every pore - the audio is great, from the upbeat music to the muttering and scampering of the creatures. The puzzles are clever and often ingenious - taking place in, say, a ticking clock or through the ventricles of a beating heart.

The visuals, from the clean level design to the crisp (and actually fairly useful) UI are a pleasure to behold. In the end, Cyro is joyous, challenging, and difficult to fault.

Cyro

You'll like Cyro. You might not be any good at it, but you'll not be able to dislike it
Score
Grant Howitt
Grant Howitt
Grant Howitt likes game mechanics. It's kind of a thing with him. Born in the UK and currently living in Sydney, Australia, Grant spends most of his waking hours playing or designing games. He is unusually tall, has daft-coloured hair, and drinks more coffee than you