Last updated on January 15th, 2026 at 07:27 am
Crying Suns – Strategy Game Review
Crying Suns is a Strategy/Roleplaying game from Humble Bundle, Inc., first launched in 25th June 2020.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 2,085+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Crying Suns Stand Out
When FTL meets Foundation and Dune: Crying Suns is a tactical rogue-lite that puts you in the role of a space fleet commander as you explore a mysteriously fallen empire. In this story rich experience inspired by Dune and Foundation, each successful run will uncover the truth about the Empire… and yourself as well.
Main Features:
- Space exploration in a procedurally-generated universe
- Tactical fights between battleships and their squadron fleets
- More than 300 possible story events
- A deep and dramatic storyline structured in 6 chapters
- A dark and disturbing atmosphere inspired by our favorite S-F universes (Foundation, Dune, Battlestar Galactica)
First released on PC and Mac, the indie hit Crying Suns was carefully redesigned for mobile and tablets, including a revamped interface and intuitive touchscreen interactions.
Pay once to get the full Crying Suns experience! No ads, no F2P mechanics! All future updates included.
Supported languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese
If you encounter any problem, please contact us at [email protected] with as much information as possible on the issue.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Crying Suns is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 18th December 2023
Recent improvements include:
Gameplay
- Fixed displayed duration of the Engine Disruptor weapon effect when used with the Tactical Weapon officer ability
- Fixed Prag Mah beacons displayed incorrectly with the Pirate transponder
Interface, Graphics and Sounds
- Fixed a blocking bug that would occur when the player had no more fuel and too many officers at the same time
- Fixed ending bosses exhibiting regular human officiers
BugFix Major
- Fixed a bug that prevented players to receive the Hammer class battleship when finishing chapter 4
BugFix Minor
- Fixed a misplaced mask in the Intel Broker tutorial
- Fixed some translations
- Other various bug fixes
Download & Availability
Crying Suns is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
But we keep getting this bug where in battle the game just closes. We restart the app and we have to restart the entire fight from the beginning. It happens a lot, currently Im stuck because we cant get past this battle without it happening.
The over all story was amazing the conversation at the end with the emperor really wrapped up almost every word of dialogue. We read thus far the reveal at the end. We finally got our memories. Back was astonishing.
This game absolutely slaps. The low reviews are from weak willed admirals without a strategic bone in their body. Ive gotten 50 hours of enjoyment at least. Every opponent requires careful planning. Completing every chapter with every ship on hard is a welcome challenge for true military strategists. Go play candy crush if you want a lame video game. This is a deeply passionate game taking huge inspiration from classic sci fi. Devs get our upmost respect. The Imperium theyve created is unique in the genre. Idaho and the gang gunna save space king. Praise be to the OMNI.
This is one of those stories that makes you question life and existence. Its very fun to play, too. Upgrading, the different ship types. Im a casual gamer and we really enjoyed playing this.
This is one of the coolest and most brutal grim dark sci fi settings we have ever seen more so than 40k we loved it and the ending gave us shivers. DO NOT DO WHAT we DID AND GOOGLE THE ENDING EARLY THOUGH IT IS A MISTAKE!! Anyways if your are willing to fork over a few bucks for a fun game then get this game. P.s. The story is better than the gameplay.
Bought the game a couple days ago and we love it. The combat flows and scales nicely depending on what difficulty you pick. The story and lore is a slow drip with an interesting twist. We only really have two complaints. Every now and again the game boots us out when Im about to win a fight and will continue to do so if we approach it the same way again and again. Its not a big deal on a lower difficulty as all we have to do is change our tactics, but on a higher challenge its a nuisance and makes quick runs demoralizing as this bug is more common than Id like to admit. Our second is the length of the game. This game is SHORT. A handful of hours and youre done. Its a bit disappointing giving how much attention went into the world building. We feel an expansion would give this game the time it needs to feel even better. If you like post apocalyptic Sci-fi this game is an easy grab.
A solid tactical space roguelike. Decent UI, fun rock-paper-scissors combat with some twists, and a decent enough story. Would recommend to folks who want an FTL-esque experience on mobile.
The fighting is so boring and redundant we feel like im just pressing the same buttons in a boring order and the enemy can kill your ships so easily makes so sense to even have them healed. Just so boring.
We can tell a lot of effort went into making this game. The art is nice, theres ample lore/world-building, and theres lots of content. The problem is, that for us at least, it just isnt fun. There are so many game mechanics that constantly bombard you with choices and decisions that just feel inconsequential. The RTS space combat system is particularly disappointing. At first glance it has so much depth and promise with numerous ship upgrades, weapons, officers, and three different classes of units where each squadron can be independently managed and upgraded. But it hardly matters. In the end combat is largely a game of rock paper scissors between the three different types of units. Our recommendation – go play FTL instead. Thats what Ive found ourselves doing when trying to get into this game.
Ive nearly won a combat 4 times now using Juggernaut, but at the last moment the game crashed and we have to start the 2 combat sequence over. This is extremely frustrating, please fix the crashes.
One of our favorite games on the Appstore. When we encountered a bug that locked one of the battleships we contacted the devs and they fixed our save file within 2 days. Worth every dollar. Seriously cannot recommend enough to anyone who enjoys games like FTL and other roguelites.
Some of the warships in the game will have the mobile phone flash back when fighting, we hope the official can fix the relevant bug. This is a great game, and hopefully much more content appears.
Ive been looking for an FTL type game on mobile for a long time, and this game freaking hits the spot. But its also not a rip off. Far from it. The game has enough unique mechanics and gameplay that it clearly stands alone as a super fun and addictive game. Devs did a great job.
The most glaring and consistent one is when the player uses the juggernaut. Whenever it completes the drill attack the game crashes every single time. Other then that this is a fantastic game.
Dear developers, the game is experiencing very frequent crashes, mostly during battles when multiple units were individually selected for different targets. Please do a hot fix on this since certain events (Dual enemy ship encounters or triple like the final chapter boss) are utterly unplayable due to reloading from the start, if this cannot be fixed, please consider adding an auto save right after one of those fights during the encounter, thank you! Edit: The game crashes when double tapping a unit on the battlefield, so far it yields an 100% crash rate, additionally, squadrons like parasite, juggernaut will also cause game to crash when using their abilities. When more than 5 or more squadrons are engaged in asteroid terrains, the game also seems to crash too. Also, a few times the game crashed when the enemy is using ship weapons against our squadrons. Hopefully this helps, Im still testing to see if there were other crashing triggers.
What more do you need? Its FTL meets StarCraft as a rogue like. One of the best mobile games Ive played.
That being said: 1. The Juggernauts crash the game now if the hit the enemy. 2. We have no idea how to unlock the new battle ships, we have tried two new runs. Awesome game, lots of replay. Love the sound track.
Ive tried everything on chapter 4, cluster 3, and no combination of actions/ inactions, prevents a crash somewhere in the battle.
Amazing music, fun strategy battles, entertaining story. We have played through the game twice, and it is well worth the price. One issue: the game always seems to crash right before the final boss fight. Can be reloaded but its be nice if it was fixed.
Great art, fun easter eggs, and engaging plot-lines. This game scratches the itch that FTL created and adds some more fun with the RTS elements. The story is convoluted (in a good way), so there's plenty of interesting content, even after a few runs. There are a few spelling mistakes scattered throughout and the game consistently crashes at very inopportune moments, resulting in us needing to replay the same mission dozens of times before advancing. Additionally, we still cannot unlock the chapter 4 ship, despite finishing the entire story, as the end-of-chapter cutscene is always interrupted by a crash lol.
The game is amazing but the only problem is that there are some crashes sometimes and the game wont let us play our own music during the game.
We played this game on steam and it was pretty neat. However we keep crashing in combat, usually when utilizing 3 attacks at once when fighting a battleship.
Although it is need of an update and keeps crashing. It is good game.
Bought the game, finished it over a 4 day weekend. Combat was engaging. Story was solid. Our main issue is that on the iPad Pro there were several instances of the game crashing. It took a bit of trouble shooting each time to figure out what happened. For instance whenever the juggernaut attacked a khaos class battle ship it crashed. These crashes lead to our game being unable to unlock the act4 ship. However it didnt stop us from finishing the gamethe game seemed quite content with us finishing act 5 and unlocking that ship. We never could figure out why the act 4 cut scene would crash.
Its a lovely game except for the frequent crashes. We cannot proceed past a certain point in the story. If it worked, it would be 5 stars for us.
As per the titleits an awesome experience but the battles with a lot of units make it crash. Currently unplayable in our library it has crashed in the same spot 4 times in a row.
The game is great but has crashed 5 times in the few days Ive owned it.
Needs some work with the frequencies of crashes! Im stuck on chapter 3 sector 2/3 because after the dialogue from beating the boss it crashes on the same part everytime and restarts the dialogue.
Bought this game since it reminded us of elite dangerous and FTL and our god it has scratched that itch. But our one annoyance is that there is a bug with the juggernaut ship where if you are moving into kill them with the juggernaut ship and get the hull driver ability to pop off (large damage to battleship) then the game crashes out. Doesnt matter what encounter. If hull driver kills then it crashes. Please devs fix this, we love the game but this bugs us to no end every time it happens. If this and other bugs were fixed then review would be higher. To anyone who wants to play, its a great game but expect bugs crashing you out of the game.
Combat gets super repetitive around chapter 3/4 so we ended up just switching to easy and cheesing every fight with stealth. Story is mostly good as long as you don't think hard enough to realize the plot holes. Was captivating enough for us to play to the end, at least. The ending, though… At the very least it is unconventional but holy cow is it extremely unsatisfying, especially for a narrative-based game.
We hate long-presses. This game is a lot of long-press and tap sequences, for little reward. Annoying. Our hangar has two ship slots. Filled. Lets change deployed ships. Tap squadrons. Expands that command area. Tap a ship. Details come up. But the list of replacements doesnt. Even though there is plenty of room. Tap ship in hangar again, maybe that will give option to replace. Nope, closes the detail popup. Long-press ship dock. That removes the ship. Doesnt bother to open the list of undeployed ships! Click empty dock. Finally get ship list. Tap one. All that happens is details popup. Seriously?! Gets worse in battle. Because we frequently need to long-press dock-with-ship, we accidentally long-press a long-range weapon that has been charging for ten seconds. Instantly undeploys, without any warning. Fine, time is stopped, so do the multiple steps needed to get it back. Of course the 10 seconds of arming starts over. Land on planet. Watch a sequence of random events that you have no control over. Having fun yet? No. Uninstall. Story is mildly interesting, so we gave it 2 stars.
Great game except for the fact it keeps crashing during battles. Really annoying to have to keep replaying certain battles. Please fix this buggy version.
Which is frequently on an iphone 14.
We finally found a game we can both enjoy and get lost in. We have been looking for any game that could actually hold our attention for more than 3 days. And finally, finally we found this one! We have Ben playing this on and off for 2 weeks now and we are so happy about it. We are looking forward to seeing what else is in store! Thank you creators of this game! Thank you.
This game is great, balancing difficulty really well so we were always challenged, but also just needed to play one more level. Excellent combat, gratifying wins. Played through several times.
Easily one of the best games on iOS. Challenging gameplay, compelling story, fitting musical score, and unique aesthetic combine to provide a great experience. After buying the game, we (apparently) played it for about five hours per day, completing the campaign in about a week.
Rogue-lite veteran here and this is every bit as good as games like FTL. Could definitely see putting in a lot of hours. Highly recommend. Wanted to report a bug – our game crashes when we use a parasite on a juggernaut.
Great game but would love controller support.
We downloaded this game because of the App Store recommendation, and we were not let down. The visuals and story are mysterious and interesting and the music is great. We love how some elements are clearly influenced by other science fiction games/films/books such as the intro cutscene, which appears to be heavily inspired by The Matrix. The combat takes some getting used to, partially because we have not discovered a way to review old tutorials, but once you gain a basic understanding it becomes much more fluid and engaging. One suggestion: we would greatly appreciate if you make it so that you can select a ships target/route before it actually spawns on the battlefield? We find it annoying to have to pause the action to place the squadron, unpause to let it spawn, and then pause again to select enemy squadrons or systems.
Its in the title. Support indie games! Seriously, this is a great example of what the indie movement can do. Or go buy a loot box to play a generic AAA time waster. Your choice.
Great storyline and fun gameplay, they have a time constraint to keep the game moving in one direction. Storyline is very well thought out and a blast to play. Fight sequences were unusual initially, but we really like them now.
Great gameplay. Terrifying scarcity. And a surprisingly interesting story. Im loving it so far.
Good tactical and strategy game with a well-told story that ruminates on our growing dependence on technology and speculates on what the singularity might be like. Striking pixel art design. Stunning all around.
You dont find a game like this very often. The attention to detail in this title shows a true love for all things geek. The dev team are both Fans and creators. Fans first we think. Bravo on creating one of the best games Ive played all year.
Very good story, thousands of decision and RNG is phenomenal. Please add more content. We have so many ideas.
FTL vibes. Great stories. Fun characters. Would recommend.
It took a few hours to get the hang of Crying Suns, but once we knew what we were doing we were hooked. The plot is decent, not the greatest but its rare for video games to stand on the merits of storytelling alone.
Very fun. We were worried things would be too small, but we have an older phone, smaller than modern ones, and had no control issues whatsoever.
This game is amazing and the story Id great. If you loved FTL you will love this one even more.
Excellent story and world building with satisfying game play. It takes the FTL formula and builds on it in really creative ways. Highly recommended.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 3.0.3
- Size: 1,013.94 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, JA, RU, ZH, ES
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Medical/Treatment Information, Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content and Nudity, Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence
- Developer: Humble Bundle, Inc.
Last updated: 18th December 2023 | Genre: Strategy, Roleplaying | Developer: Humble Bundle, Inc.