CICADAMATA"

Worth every Penny! Not a thing about this game I don't enjoy and I'm praying to see more!

this is true marathon

This game machine-baited me and I'm going to kill my infant son The game itself, while feeling unfinished, is a solid 8.5/10 also make the time aspect matter more for scoring, please and thank you

I really wanted to like this game, but I just can't. Starting with the good, the visuals are very interesting but sometimes overwhelming and confusing during a run, as all enemies look somewhat the same from far away and a lot of the wall textures are very... odd (and tbh ugly to look at)... but besides that, the art direction in this game is AWESOME and probably it's best aspect. The UI and the menus are really cool. The music is also pretty good and matches the vibe of the game pretty well. Finally, there seems to be some completely optional lore that you can access by finding some terminals during levels, but it's just kinda... there. But the gameplay... the gameplay can be pretty miserable. Just for a bit of validity, I got the highest rank on every main-game level, and I'm aware of how every mechanic works. The movement is slow, floaty and clunky, and the maps you'll be moving in feel like they're empty and lacking direction. The enemies you'll be fighting in said maps are also very boring, most of them don't move at all, and they don't really have much interactions with you or eachother at all, the only exception being the turret, the flower and the weird statue that moves you to where you killed it (The best designed enemy in the game imo) but the bar is very low. The arsenal you'll be fighting these enemies with is very small for a game of this genre and also uninteresting, and you'll quickly realize that your main weapon quickly becomes useless if you want to go for the best rank as it just gives you less points than spamming the slam/launch and/or finishing enemies off with a dash. All of this combined makes the core gameplay loop incredibly repetitive and unfun where all of the design decisions work against eachother. The scoring system is the worst offender as it punishes you for using your shotgun and railgun, as mentioned earlier. The "Zoned" mechanic makes this even worse, as you'd think you have to go fast to make the most out of it, but again, spamming the same moves and milking every enemy dry of points is the better strategy. There are also water levels, which makes your already slow, floaty and clunky movement even slower, floatier and clunkier and turns your already bad shotgun into what might as well be garbage. I could keep going with more bits that I dislike, but honestly they're irrelevant as I think the very foundation of the game is flawed and works against itself at every single step. I think the game has a lot of potential, the art direction is incredibly good. the music is really good, but they're overshadowed by the gameplay experience. To me it really feels like most of the effort was put into making the game LOOK good, instead of making it feel good, which is a shame. If you're coming to CICADAMATA" from other games of similar genres, you might be disappointed, but if you're here because you like games with an interesting design, you might find some enjoyment where I did not.

Super fluid, super fun gameplay. Simple and effective and short as well. Makes for a good pick-up and play game. I would say how it is a 10/10 for what it does, but there is one thing I wanted to say with this review and don't let it bring down your enjoyment of the game because it is truly a fun time. If you read the achievement list, go into the game, complete it, and even notice in the final fun star-power level set, there is SJW trans-rights propaganda flag imagery scattered about. Before the story was introduced after game completion, the dialogue writing was very on the nose as typical with this genre of game that there is more of a transgender angle than a transhuman angle being pushed. Confimation by the LGBT imagery really cements this, then the visual novel at the end being the only real story to be had basically implying further LGBT gripes, grievance, and themes typical of "woke media literacy," it is clear this game's creator "January" wanted to speak on that. Fair enough, however, all I want to say is that it didn't really add to the overall experience and only really took away from it. Instead of being applicable to most people in how they can relate to losing humanity by becoming a Cicada, it went hard into the paint for the trans angle, unfortunately being another game in the heap of "trans-coded" games of a similar nature. It's the same way that trans media is stereotyped for being heavy into breakbeat, loud and fast visuals, cyberpunk themes, etc. It decides to TROPE itself, falling into the most obvious traps. Now Cicadamata to me, and maybe a few others, will simply be yet another game PEGGED to current year (2026) and will age like milk. Really fun game but I felt the need to add that because this game simply didn't NEED a story or NEED to push an agenda.

FPS timetrial scoreattack game - kill everything as fast as possible in a giant chain, collect 4 spheres and get to the end. Very stylish with top notch presentation and has great sound design and soundtrack. The time bonus from completing levels faster is large, but chaining a massive combo and efficiently dispatching enemies is vastly more significant. Gameplay revolves around your abilities (ground slam and dash), which are either on a short cooldown or can be instantly refreshed by using them on an enemy. The difficulty of the game comes from creating the most efficient route to keep your combo going to get the highest score. Shooting is secondary, but is great to either pump more points out of a single target, or to kill enemies that are too far away to change your route for. Level design is fairly intuitive for the most part. Only thing I can put against this game is it's length. I've beat all the main stages at the highest rank at 4 hours. I'm pretty hooked by the story and world but after 18 levels that's all you get. This is very clearly a prelude to something else (self described as an initiation) and plot is left vague and open, but there is currently nothing.