Sine Mora

Not even slow motion can save you now!

Holding in his hands a giant sieve
 Time stands ever sifting
 He sifts through worlds, he picks them out
 Not with regret, but with delight
 He grieves only those that fall
 And those that fall deserve to fall
 Time spares no pity for offal
 Waning nations, cold worlds',
 Broken lives' miasmal desire
 It's death they deserve - and nothing less.

Sine Mora is a side-scrolling Bullet Hell Shoot'Em Up game developed in a collaborative effort by Suda51 at Grasshopper Manufacture, and Digital Reality (creators of Sky Drift). It was published by Microsoft on March 21, 2012.

This 2D shooting side-scroller has a twist involving time control. There are no lives, nor does getting hit cause you to immediately die. Instead, players have a time meter constantly counting down. Destroying enemies adds time, while getting damaged removes time. This gives beginners more chances to make mistakes, but in advanced play, players need to constantly destroy enemies while not getting hurt to avoid the time running out. The airplanes in this game have different times of Time Capsules that have different time control effects, such as slowing the game down to avoid damage, or rewinding time, even after death.

Another thing that makes the game unique to the genre is the amount of depth that went into the game's chilling, tragic story and setting. The story is set in a Dieselpunk alien planet called Seol, with two major warring factions: The Empire and a time-controlling civilization known as The Enkies, with the story starting with the Enkie's obliteration. The story directly revolves around the actions of two different groups of Anti Heroes devastated by the recent events. Leading one group is Ronotra Koss, who seeks revenge against The Empire for the death of his son, Argus Pytel, dragging Myryan into the conflict via blackmail. The other major group is the last of The Resistance, consisting of Durak, Akyta Dryad, and Lynthe Ytoo. The language spoken in the game is Hungarian, telling a tragic story of revenge and genocide.

After players finish the Story, more hardcore players can try their hand at Arcade Mode, which only has two modes, Hard and Insane.

Tropes used in Sine Mora include:
  • The Alcoholic: Koss.
  • Alternative Calendar: The Enkies founded the first calendar of their world, with Circles being the largest time unit, essentially replacing years. The Empire founded it's own calendar, banning all others.
  • Anachronic Order: The story is told mostly in a straightforward timeline, but later bounces back and forth as flashbacks and time travel occurs.
  • And I Must Scream: The Empire's Project is to render the entire Enkie race immobile by disabling their bodies, leaving them unable to move or do anything while they study their ability to control time. Their collective, comatose bodies form a reactor for all of the Empire's time control.
  • Animal Motifs: Girai is a robot resembling an Orangutan.
  • Anti-Hero: Pretty much the whole cast, but Koss is a definite Type V. Doesn't give a damn about anything but his revenge, is hellbent on murdering every single member of the Cobalt King crew despite only one of them having anything to do with his son's death, and his plans include blackmailing a rape victim.
  • Attack Drone: Myryan's special ability, Gemini Drone.
  • Badass Furry: The entire cast. Until the characters start cursing and telling their terrifying story of treason and genocide, you would never know it was a Suda51 game.
  • Battleship Raid: The Prologue.
  • Because Destiny Says So
  • Becoming the Mask: In the true ending, Argus Pytrel becomes the traitor that stops the nuke.
  • Blue Blood: Durak.
  • Broken Ace: Koss
  • Broken Bird: Durak, One of the two last Enkies, who can't have children, and has been devastated over it.
  • Bullet Hell
  • The Chosen One: Enky, the first and greatest of the Enkies. Akyta Dryad's son.
  • Continuing Is Painful: Not as severe as say, Gradius, but if the player takes a hit, they drop weapon upgrades, and scrambling to retrieve them can cause the player to recklessly take more damage.
  • Crapsack World: The earth quakes violently everywhere, The Empire kills off their elderly ritualistically, both the Empire and the Enkies have a strict caste system that rules over it's subjects. And the Empire pretty much encompasses the whole planet.
  • Darker and Edgier: The characters are reminiscent of Star Fox, but the story is much more mature and tragic.
  • Death by Irony: Koss is killed by his own son, who he pretty much ripped apart the Empire trying to avenge.
  • Dieselpunk
  • Disabled Hottie: Myryan, in universe, is popular for her beauty, despite losing her voice due to larynx cancer and having to wear a voice box around her neck to speak.
  • Downer Ending: Both the normal and Golden Ending. The Enkies end up death, Lynthe Ytoo spends the rest of his life in jail, Myryan Magusa dies of cancer, Argus kills his own father and decides to rebel against the empire by traveling back in time, piloting the Cobalt King and refusing to deliver the nuke.
  • Dynamic Difficulty: The story mode has a casual setting for beginners, and provides lots of time boosts for casual players. Advanced players can change the story to Challenging Mode, and finally, Arcade Mode exclusively has two difficulties, Hard and Insane.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Pretty much the whole playable cast.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You
  • Evilutionary Biologist: The Empire's policy on family is that "monogomy creates jealousy and sexual frustration", that people need to have lots of children, and that elders must commit suicide to "make room" for the next generation, who are inherently superior.
  • Face Death with Dignity: Durak.
  • Fairy Tale Motifs: The spider boss is called Tsuchigumo, a mythical spider that spreads plagues.
  • Flower Motifs: A rose is the Sine Mora emblem, painted on the Enkie rebels planes.
  • Free-Love Future: The Empire are extreme polygamists and The Enkies are monogomists. The empire has as much children as they can and kill their elderly while the Enkies have traditional relationships of monogamous civilizations. The Empire calls this heresy.
  • Handicapped Badass: Koss and Myryan. Myran speaks through a voice box due to throat cancer, and although you won't know it until you look at him on the character select screen, Koss has no legs.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Koss was so focused on revenge that he might have lived if he went back in time alongside Myryan and Girai to save his son. Instead he chases the man he believes shot Argus through the street of the Imperial Capital Tira, and then discovers the man he was chasing was his own son, who took the place of the man who reports say shot him, and is shot down as Argus defends the capital from his own father, as he was waiting there to catch the man who was killing the Cobalt King crew one by one.
  • Hurtbox Dissonance
  • Hunter of His Own Kind: The Collaborationists are Enkies against the Sine Mora beliefs. Nationalized by The Empire, they use their time control abilities against the Enkies, helping the Empire fight them and round up Enkie slaves for The Project. Koss, Argus, Myryan and Lynthe got their start as Collaborationists.
  • Interspecies Romance: Koss is a bison and his son Argus is a wolverine, then there's Akyta and Lynthe, so it's likely this is accepted in the Sine Mora universe.
  • It's All About Me: Durak.
    • The Empire itself might count as well.
  • Keeping Secrets Sucks: Argus had his name publicized as the traitorous pilot of the Cobalt King that wouldn't drop a nuke on the Enkies in order to make his job in intelligence easier. This starts his father's Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Kill'Em All: Argus kills his dad, Myryan dies of cancer, and the Enkies are extinct in the end.
  • Last of Her Kind: Akyta is the last lower-class Enkie, and Durak is the last of the upper class. Myryan is also Enkie, secretly and successfully nationalized by the Empire without knowing her true abilities.
  • Living MacGuffin: The Enkies.
  • Love At First Sight: Lynthe Ytoo thoroughly discusses it in the Alternative text, referring to Akyta.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Argus Pytrel's Seeker Missile ability.
  • The Magic Goes Away: The Enkies are all wiped out to extinction in an instant by Akyta/Argus, and time control is lost forever.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Koss has no problems blackmailing Myryan Magusa into serving him.
  • More Dakka
  • My God, What Have I Done?
    • Argus Pytrel killing his own father.
    • Akyta fights the last boss, the control system enslaving her fellow Enkies, all comatose. By destroying it their life support is cut off.
  • No Antagonist: The Empire is pretty much the main villain, but they practically already rule the planet already. Several of the playable characters acknowledge that they are on one side, and perspective, of their conflict. Koss and Myryan are on nobody's side but their own. The Resistance is more directly toward fighting the Empire to save the Enkies, rather than harm the Empire.
  • Only One Name: Durak, because she is an upper class Enkie, who only have one name.
  • Poison Mushroom: There is one fake item that is dark blue with "???" on it. Touching it causes a Piano Drop, killing you. Doing this at least once is a requirement for the final promotion achievement.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Project imprisons and enslaves the last of the Enkies exclusively for creating a Time Control center. This center is used both as a weapon and for predicting tectonic shifts on the planet's volatile surface.
  • Rape as Backstory: Myryan Magusa.
  • Reactor Boss: The Final Boss. Destroying it kills off the Enkies in stasis.
  • Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Argus Pytrel.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Pretty much everything Koss does is exclusive to his own desire for revenge. Even as he sends Myryan and Girai back in time to save his son, he stays behind just to kill the final member of the Cobalt King crew.
  • Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Empire are the Dirty Communists, and the Enkies are The Fundamentalists.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Of all people, it's Argus Pytal, not Koss, who does this.
  • Shoot'Em Up
  • Smoking Is Cool: Argus and Lynthe smoke.
  • Stable Time Loop: In the Golden Ending, Argus Pytrel sends Akyta into the distant past, pregnant with the child who would become the first of the Enkies race. The Enkies in the present are still wiped out. Argus then travels back in time to rebel against the Empire by piloting the Cobalt King and refusing to deliver the nuke that started everything.
  • Start of Darkness: Koss losing his son. Later, Argus killing his father.
  • The Fatalist: Every single Enkie. Argus becomes one in the end.
  • Time Master: The Enkies.
  • Time Travel: The Enkies can travel through time on a whim, making them very elusive targets for The Empire.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball
  • Title Drop: Sine Mora = "Without Delay." It is the name of the Enkie time travel school, and the final line in the story.

Argus Pytal: I had to give his death meaning, and without delay.

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