Sigmatica (PC)

 So, I've recently been worried that the level of obscurity of the games I cover hasn't been as deep as it could have been. In an attempt to assuage that feeling, I got ahold of a compilation disc of games made by the Chiba University Computer ResearchingSociety in 2013. Most of the games were very simple, very short minigames that I'd struggle to write a full post about (so I'll do a big patreon exclusive compilation post about all of them in the near future). But this one, Sigmatica (or Σtica The uncorporeal domain, as the title screen calls it), stood out head and shoulders above all of the others.

 

Like you can tell from the screenshots, it's a shooting game! And though it uses an abstract visual style, with the player ship and all of the enemies being represented by simple wireframe polygonal shapes, the Touhou series was definitely a big influence on it. The most obvious manifestation of this is the way the screen is laid out, with the big info column on the righthand side of the screen showing your score, lives, bombs, and the number of bullets you've grazed. There's also the fact that the bosses take a long time to kill, with multiple healthbars, and distinct bullet/attack patterns to go with each healthbar.

 

It's a very simple game, as far as modern shooting games go. You can shoot and bomb, and you also have a focus shot that slows your movement. I'm not 100% on how the scoring system works, but I think you score more points the more grazes you do, and when you bomb, all the onscreen bullets turn into points items, too. So it's in your interest to graze and to use bombs at the most dangerous moments. Which is all pretty logical for survival play, too, with a little bit of risk thrown in by the graze counter. Even moreso is the end-of-game bonus you get: big bonuses for each stage you finish and how many grazes you got in total, plus if you finish the game, more bonuses for how many lives you had left over.

 

Which kind of brings up the only real problem I have with the game: it's really short! Only two stages! I know it's only a student project and all, but I was really getting into it, and then it suddenly ended! I guess that's a pretty good problem for a game to have, though. There isn't really much more I can say about Sigmatica. It's pretty good, and I hope its developer went on to make more shooting games in the decade since its release.