This post will coincide with the commencement of the Cytress Kickstarter, which you can find here.

I was approached by Sean Lee, designer of Cytress to preview the game for him and I said yes for 2 reasons – 1. It is an Australian design and I love to support local, 2. I have tried to play Cyberpunk 2077 on my PS4 and it hasn’t worked so far.

From the rules:

Cytress is an action-selection, engine-building game set in a post-modern cyberpunk world. Over multiple rounds, players will send their crew to complete missions for factions, earning abilities that build their lifepath; while vying for control of the surface world, and trying to escape to the floating city of Stratos.

My Impressions

While it has quite a bit of setup – Stratos doesn’t build itself – it is definitely worth it and I am really loving this game. The ability to customise your character, which is essentially the efficiency engine you are building, is great. You choose the missions that you will be going on and the skills that you will become most proficient which translates to benefits down the track in terms of resource generation or discount.
As is typical of the mechanism, as the game goes on your engine will continue to provide more and more benefits with the later turns a flurry of activity while trying to make your in-tubes into Stratos.

I only had a chance to play at 2 player which is great in itself, but almost all of the components have a flip side for higher player counts meaning that the development team have thought through the balancing of the game at all player counts. A solo mode, where you will be pitted against an AI, has also been developed for Cytress which I am also looking forward to giving a try.

The art direction is fantastic with a muted neon tone to the whole game in addition to well thought out player boards which allows for a minimum of table clutter but a maximum amount of information. I know I ‘only’ received a prototype copy of the game, but if the care and attention to detail is the same for the finished product you will be looking at something really special.

Who would Cytress suit?

If you have a strong interest in cyberpunk/futurism, then I definitely think that this is a must back for you. But really anyone looking for a mid weight, thematic game where multiple routes to victory are possible should definitely check this one out.

I would highly recommend checking out the Kickstarter which is live now – Cytress Kickstarter.