Cytus

The story of Cytus is carried through its 10 main chapters as well as a prologue.[8] The story revolves around the protagonist, Vanessa, who lives in a 22nd-century world where robots with human memories are the only remaining sentient beings while living humans are killed by a mutant virus. Due to limited memory space, human emotions are stored in the form of music in "Cytus", and by playing the songs, the robots are able to revive their human emotions. The plot features the disaster and the protagonist's struggle with identity.[8] The story is told in-game through various cutscenes that are unique to the chapter title songs; individual songs within each chapter are at most only marginally relevant to the plot, except for a limited few.

Cytus II, the sequel to Cytus, takes place about seven hundred years after the establishment of the virtual Internet space Cytus (stylized as cyTus). As more and more people used virtual Internet, more and more musicians held concerts on iM, a social networking service. One musician, Aesir (stylized as Æsir), decided to hold a large virtual concert in Node 08, one of the many nodes in Cytus. Attendees of the event included Paff (stylized as PAFF), a popular singer, Neko (stylized as NEKO#ΦωΦ), a famous streamer on iM, and Robo Head, an AI robot. A bunch of top musicians performed, but the organizer, Aesir, was nowhere to be seen, even after the end of the event. By browsing through iM and through each character's private "OS logs", players can unlock new songs and gain insight into the story of Cytus.

Later, Paff and her media company, Monophonic Entertainment, announced the date for her seventh annual event, PAFFCON. Tickets for her event sold out quickly. At the event, while Paff performed her encore song, "Gravity", she collapsed. Paff was sent to the hospital, where she would wake up a few days later and start recovering.

While Paff was in the hospital, one of Neko's stream got hacked and attacked by Aesir. Neko was arrested by Node 08's Administration Bureau because she was suspected of launching the widespread attack on her fans. Meanwhile, Robo Head later discovers that their memory of Aesir was corrupted, and starts data recovery. People wanted to know who was responsible for the hacking. After Robo Head completes data recovery, he learns that Aesir did show up at the event and that they wiped everyone's memory of Aesir after they finished performing.

Soon after, a new band, Crystal Punk (stylized as Crystal PuNK) created their new account and host their first major event. Paff was originally going to attend, but her health did not improve. Neko was acquitted a few weeks later by the Administration Bureau. Paff left the hospital and was reported missing by Monophonic Entertainment. Her real identity, Aroma White, was also released by the company. This sparked protests outside of Monophonic's headquarters regarding the location of Paff. The lead singer of Crystal Punk, Cherry, was inadvertently injured while entering the building's headquarters. Cherry was discharged from the hospital a few days later.

One afternoon, while walking home from school, Neko encounters Paff outside of her home on a rainy day. Neko decides to take Paff in and protect her. Paff was missing for two weeks. Neko's fans and family members grew suspicious that she was hiding something. At the same time, Robo Head was analyzing memory files and eventually overwrote their "Supreme Command"—an order that they must follow, and heads back to the node where they were created, Node 03, to locate and find Nora. A few years earlier, Robo Head's supreme command was reprogrammed by Nora to prevent them from returning to Node 03 or Nora.

Not long after, the entire iM system was being affected by a data corruption bug. Messages posted on iM would be scrambled with garbled text. Eventually, iM was attacked by Aesir, preventing anyone from logging in and scrambling messages so readers could not see them. The attack led to Xenon (real name: Simon Jackson) being arrested on charges of doing everything that Aesir did: delete memories and attack the virtual Internet. Xenon pleads no contest to these charges, and he is sent to prison.

After Paff is located by her sister, Helena, Paff discovers that she has the memories of two people: Aroma White and Kaori Minamiya. Years earlier, her career started through a talent show at her school where the winner would sign a contract with an entertainment company. On the way to one of her events, she was seriously injured in a car accident. Aroma was sent to the hospital in critical condition. Noah, Helena's husband, was able to save Aroma by transplanting her memories into that of another body, Kaori. Through that, Paff could sing songs none of her family heard of, but she lacked the ability to remember before the car accident. Paff goes to Node 03 along with Neko and Hayato, a reporter, to learn more about her past.

Unknown to the other characters, an Architect, or an intelligent AI robot that assisted with the reconstruction of human society, attacked Neko's stream and iM. Architects also have the ability to feel emotions that humans can feel. Ivy (serial number: OPCI_2501_IV) was attempting to wake another Architect, Vanessa (serial number: OPCI_2501_V), through the Cytus platform. Ivy woke up 500 years after "the decommission", or when Architect robots were deactivated after human society was recovered from the "ender virus". She needed to collect memories of Ivy and Vanessa in order to wake her up. Ivy finally woke Vanessa up through OS space, a space in Cytus where people can meet and interact; however, because of a video that another Architect, Ilka, showed her before the Decommission, Vanessa's core was corrupted, changing her from thinking about helping with humanity to finding a way to end humanity. Ivy wants to find a way to save Vanessa.

Two members of Crystal Punk, Cherry and ConneR, break Xenon out of jail. In Node 03, Paff and Neko encounterd Robo Head and met Nora. Nora is the leader of Kyuu Hou Hai, one of many gangs that prevail in Node 03. Nora explained to Paff that she has the ability to see into OS space. Nora had used this ability before, but it left her vision trapped in OS space, leaving her unable to see in the real world without technology. Kyuu Hou Hai was attacked a few days later by drones. The group successfully fight off the drones, but Cherry gets shot in the process. These same drone attacks also destroyed Joe's cafe.

Cherry was placed on life support in Kyuu Hou Hai. Nora guaranteed that she would recover successfully, however, the electricity at Kyuu Hou Hai blacks out. While backup power was able to reenergize lights and doors, the life support Cherry is on fails, and she dies. The band she created is disbanded as none of the other members knew how to sing well.

After a successful investigation in Node 13, ConneR determined that Ivy was likely the culprit of the drone attacks. He, Nora, and the rest of the group return to Node 08 to stop the destruction of humanity. After encountering Ivy, they learn that Vanessa is causing the chaos. Soon after, Vanessa hacks the weather system and reprograms it to extreme weather. The extreme weather would wipe out humanity. Ivy successfully goes into the Library at A.R.C., a robotics company, and successfully encountered Vanessa up following the advice of another Architect, Rin, to talk to her calmly to snap Vanessa out of the attitude of desiring to destroy humanity. Not long after, the A.R.C. Armed Forces find Ivy and kill her, forcing Paff, Neko, Nora, Xenon, ConneR, Joe, and Robo Head into a final battle to inject a virus that they created earlier through OS space into Vanessa, ultimately killing her and restoring the peace that precedes. During the final battle, Paff calls out to the player for help sharing the burden of the virus in OS space, breaking the fourth wall.

The story has three endings, depending on the player's choices in the final battle. If the player fails to kill Vanessa, then Vanessa wipes out all of humanity. The characters on the menu screen gray out, and the places the characters reside in are empty and/or ruined. The only character the player can play is Vanessa, which forces the player back into the final battle.

If the player fails to answer Paff's call for help, then Paff dies from the burden of transferring the virus and her memories to Vanessa. Vanessa comments that Paff's memories are beautiful right before she dies, and Paff's sister, Helena, is left to grieve.

If the player shares the load of the virus by tapping the note that appears before the battle, then Vanessa is destroyed. Paff returns to singing and accepts her dual identity as Aroma and Kaori, and works on a collaboration with Neko.

If Vanessa does not destroy humanity, then the player will find themselves awoken in a hospital three months later. A.R.C. decides to decommission the library and to improve transparency. Rin blends in with the crowd and hides the fact that she is an Architect. Joe rebuilds his cafe, and Xenon's sister, Shannon, is successfully recovered from OS space.

Cytus includes 210 songs available for play in the game, spanning a variety of genres including pop music, trance music and drum and bass. The music is composed and performed by independent composers and artists from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. Vocaloid engines are also used.[10][11] A number of songs also has alternate version(s) in addition to the normal version. These can be called upon by interacting with the song artwork in the song selection screen. Gestures used include tapping, swiping and holding at a specific timing and location.

Cytus also includes a series of songs in image of the overarching plot, collectively named Cytus: Alive, added in version 6.0 in July 2014.[12] Unlike normal songs, Cytus: Alive songs contains added plot animation during gameplay.

Rayark Games announced the Million Downloads Plan (Chinese: 百首新歌，百萬下載; lit.: 'hundred new songs, million downloads') in the wake of "illegal piracy harming the sales figures of Cytus".[13][16] Starting from Version 2.0.0, a 10-song chapter would be made available to all players for free for each 100,000 paid downloads achieved, up to a million paid downloads or ten chapters.[17][18] The plan is completed with Version 8.0, released in July 2015, opening ten chapters for free, including the special Chapter Million featuring remixes of past songs.[19][20]

As of June 2020, Cytus ranks #7 in the iOS App Store's "Music" category in the United States.[22]

Smartphone game reviewer TouchArcade gave the game 4 stars out of 5, saying that "the gameplay is pretty simple, but well executed", though noting it lacked a health system and had fairly loose hit detection.[21]

Cytus α received mostly positive reviews. Ryan Craddock of Nintendo Life gave the game a "great" 8 out of 10, praising the game's mechanics as "something particularly satisfying about dancing around the screen playing a musical version of whack-a-mole", but that its higher price compared to Rayark's other titles Deemo and Voez meant that "Rayark has almost shot itself in the foot with its previous releases."[25] Shigeta Yuichi from IGN Japan gave the game an 8.5 out of 10, noting the Battle Mode's low playerbase and inability to search for friends, yet one that he could still "wholeheartedly recommend to new players".[24]

Multiple Cytus soundtracks have been released both on iTunes and as physical CDs, featuring playable music and background composition from the game.[26] Cytus -Prologue-, was released on April 1, 2012,[27] Cytus -Hindsight- on December 10, 2013[28] and Cytus -Foresight- on December 28, 2013.[29] A story album called Cytus -Alive- has also been released on August 20, 2012; the album features songs composed by Sta and Cranky with the same names as the ten chapters of the game. Each song corresponds to each chapter in the story plot.[30]

Code: Cytus (Chinese: 柯基托斯) is a multimedia video game music stage production based on the story of Cytus, produced by Divertimento Media (Chinese: 樂乎乎工作坊) as commissioned by Quanta Arts Foundation (Chinese: 廣藝基金會).[31] The production ran four shows in November 2014 in Taiwan.