CICADAMATA Beginner Guide: Movement, MATA" & ZONE TIME

The one-sentence model

CICADAMATA is not a shooter with movement — it is a movement game where shooting keeps the movement going. The Steam page calls it a “maneuver sandbox”, and that is accurate: levels are freeform arenas, and your job is to chain hops, skips, jumps, dashes and stomps into one continuous line.

Core verbs

  • Dash — your horizontal burst. It recharges, and the game rewards refresh-chaining: the achievement + DESTROYER asks you to recharge dash three times in rapid succession, which tells you refunds come fast when you play aggressively.
  • Stomp — the downward slam. Same refund logic (+ TAP DANCE is the stomp equivalent). Stomping into water is its own achievement (+ SWAN DIVE), so the game clearly wants you experimenting with where you slam.
  • Falling as a weapon — you can dispatch a THREAT purely by falling on it (+ LONG WAY DOWN). Height is ammunition.
  • JOYEUSE — your weapon. Official screenshots show FAWN-A2 (that’s you, the CICADA) “preparing a charged shot using JOYEUSE”, so hold-to-charge is part of the kit, and THREATS can deplete your MATA” energy in return.
  • ZONE TIME — the traversal-efficiency window. Score chains inside a single ZONE TIME matter: + IT’S TRICKY asks for 50,000 points in one window.

The loop of a level

Every level follows the same rhythm: deploy in, dispatch THREATS (enemies), collect CORES (point pickups), and EXFIL when you are ready to bank the run. You will exfil a lot — one early achievement is literally “EXFIL from a LEVEL 7 times”. Score converts into your account-wide CICADA level (level 5, 25 and 50 have achievements), and per-level performance converts into clearance ranks, up to DMND — covered in the DMND rank guide.

Practical first-session tips

  1. Die freely. + DON’T BE AFRAID OF DYING (“the first of many”) unlocks for 89% of players — death is a reset, not a punishment.
  2. Shoot on approach. The community’s early consensus (Steam guides and the r/FPS thread on point farming) is to open fire from range as you close distance, so each THREAT gives up extra hits of score before the finisher.
  3. Clear groups, not individuals. A full-group clear is a WIPEOUT, and 81% of players trigger one — the game’s arenas are built for it.
  4. Don’t grind ranks yet. Finish the six spheres first; ranked replays are far easier once you know the levels.

Where to go next

Work through the campaign with the full walkthrough, then pick your endgame: achievements, collectibles or the speedrun boards.

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