A City Sleeps™ Reviews

Tho the game features an potentially fun gameplay, Harmonix forgets what make music games great & didn't know what makes SHMUPs tick.. The flow.. The game insist on the use of adaptive soundtrack that would be better with the "adaptive" elements.. The parts of music stops when you stop shooting, or when u killed the enemies too fast, etc.. The so called "tactical layer" idol system is not fun to play/manage, plus it breaks the flow of music.. The level designs were horrible, the enemies encounters were uneventful, & the bosses which should be the core of SHMUPs are soulless.. TL;DR: While it's an interesting notion, Harmonix failed to sync the gameplay with music like it promised..

It's a good game but nothing amazing. A City Sleeps is a bullet hell shooter with some minor musical aspect, your projectiles are affected by the beat and it sounds when you attack. That was a bit of a disappointment on a game from Harmonix and I feel this system only detracts from the experience. It's quite short, only three stages with 3 chapters each and some incentive for replayability in form of unlockables and new difficulties. It's a pretty beautiful game and even though I'm not a fan of Electronica the soundtrack is good. It could really benefit from a new free add-on with at least a new stage but it's a good enough game as it is.

The game has a decent concept and a soundtrack that turns out really nice. The problem is in terms of shmup games it does that very poorly. It feels like you're flying around in a flash game and shooting being tied to the audio just means there are times youre just doing nothing.

I don't know for how long this game has been in my library. I was holding back playing it because I thought it wouldn't work with controller... but it's working without any problems. And I just noticed that this game is by Harmonix, my favorite game studio. This might take a stage to get used to but at the end of the first stage you will understand that this game is actually a very cool and unique combination of music based gameplay and shoot em up.

What do we have here? A City Sleeps is a horizontal shmup in which the spawning of enemies and your own rate of fire is determined by the rythm of the games music. Another nice feature is the ability to put one of five ghosts on available points on the screen to create shooting turrets or healing points that aid you in your battle. What is good: 1. The soundtrack... its awesome and very well done. 2. The difficulty. The game is hard and unforgiving like a good shoot em up should be. 3. The ghost mechanic gives the game additional replayability as you probably will want to try a different approach on a level you've already beaten. 4. Varied bullet patterns. If you've played a few bullet hell shmups you'll be surprised to see a few quite well done and interesting patterns here. The bad: 1. Controls feel clunky. You either feel like youre not fast enough to dodge the onslaught of bullets or you use your dashmove and overshoot. This of course gets better with practice but right of the start controlling Poe (the main character) never felt quite right to me. To me it felt like the dash move was originally intended to make you invincible for a few frames but then they cut that feature out at the last minute. 2. Gameplay. Despite having scrolling backrounds this is basically a twinstick onescreen arena shooter like geometry wars. Enemies spawn on screen and you try to kill them as fast as possible. Most foes take a ridiculous amount of damage though and often times fighting those bigger enemies feels slow and repetitive. At the end it all boils down to which ghosts to use at what point in the level and i didn't find this particulary exciting. Never before have i played a shmup in which destroying enemies felt so unsatisfying. They don't explode or scream or have nice death animations. Killed enemies just vanish without a sound. 3. Graphics. Stylish but Cheap. Everything looks like a cardboard cutout and is barely animated at all. Think of old flash games. Disappointing. 4. Content. Yes there are ghosts and relics(passive boosts) to unlock when beating the levels at certain difficulties but at the end of the day there are only 3 different levels. They change according to the music at higher difficulties but to me everything felt quite samy. 5. The whole rythm affects gameplay thing. A great idea that fascinates at first but eventually shows its downside: It makes the game unpredictable. Pushing the "shoot" button to kill a near enemy but you are not shooting? Yeah, because the music at this very moment does not allow it. This wouldnt be that bad if you could actually predict the music and play accordingly but the whole soundtrack (as good as it is) sounds like some kind of everchanging rave/techno/remix stuff. Try to predict this. :) As you can probably tell i do not like A City Sleeps. Compared to other shoot em ups its slow and repetitive, looks cheap and has not enough content to warrant its price tag of 14€. Youll be far better off to buy stuff like Crimzon Clover, Jamestown, Deathsmiles, Akai Katana or any other shooter from cave. The only redeeming thing about A City Sleeps is its soundtrack. Yeah. buy and download the soundtrack, its awesome.

Once upon a time I bought [b]A City Sleeps[/b] and was so unsatisfied with the product it became the only game on steam I've ever refunded, even to this day. Plagued with problems from lackluster controls to poor readability, the latter being a MAJOR problem give the genre of the game. Conceptually a rhythm-centric bullet hell is a good idea, but the execution is just not good enough.

This one's hamstrung by its execution. A bullet hell rhythm shooter is a cool idea (and the music here is very good), but the fact that your firepower is tied to the percussion of the song means that, if there's no percussion, you have no firepower. You come to rely on melee, which means you get hit a lot. You'll have your face pressed firmly in the ass of enemies, trying to both kill them and charge up your Ghost Hand so you can get through level two's insanely cheap rose mini-boss. They try to discourage you from using Mercy (the healing ghost) by tanking your multiplier with her active, but given how quickly this game starts playing dirty, she's basically a requirement. Get Symphony instead.

While at first this game might appeal to your senses, that will fade quickly along with your interest. There isn’t really anything here. Very few variations in enemies, level design, weapons, and even the score lacks in the creativity department. It all becomes very dull, very quickly. I’ve played free mobile games that have more content than this. If you really feel inclined to check it out, play it for one hour...and decide if you want to return it or not. At that point, you will have had the opportunity to experience most of what this game has to offer. Which, sadly to say…isn't much.

Bought this game out of support for Harmonix to be honest, plus i love Shoot them up and bullet hell games so i figured i won't regret buying it for sure. well the game itself isn't broken but there are some glaring issues: + the soundtrack is great. + the art style is good too. - moving the character is very slow and the dash isn't much of a help. - only 3 very short levels ( but you can replay them with increased difficulties) - Rhythm and shooting doesn't work well in this game. i love Harmonix to the death for the RockBand series but this game isn't worth it i think. P.S. here is a word from Harmonix "We've been paying close attention to all your feedback on the game and have been considering it closely. As such, we've decided to permanently drop the price of A City Sleeps to $9.99 (Standard Edition) and $12.99 (Deluxe Edition) to be more in line with your expectations as a Steam player" this seems kinda passive aggressive to me cause they are kinda saying Steam Gamers are cheap, i don't agree with that at all, i will still support Harmonix for their past work and i hope they don't stumble again like this game and Rockband Blitz.

A really well polished game with an amazing art style and soundtrack that go well into the game mechanics, and despite short length offers for a fair amount of fun. The bad: -Relatively short at only 3 very short level. -Not much to do or collect besides the leaderboard and finishing the game on every difficulty. The good: -Amazing art style and soundtrack that go right into the game mechanics. You shoot in the beat of the music. -Great in short bursts. Short level. -Unlockable special abilities change up the levels and add highly to replayability. -Although short, the game is relatively challenging and offers a variety of difficulty levels to unlock. For every fan of the sadly scarce Shoot 'em up genre that enjoy a vibrant soundtrack that compliments the game well this is a must have. With it's beautiful art and fluid gameplay, it offers high replayability despite the short length. It is a sadly (at launch at least) overlooked game that in the terms of production quality and overall gameplay is at the top of its genre. If you enjoy the art style and are a fan of this genre, as well as are intrigued by the idea of the music pretty much dictating the game flow, this is a game you shouldn't miss. For everyone else, at least at a sale, it is worth a shot and will probably end up being a gem in many people's game library.