Welcome to Iccus, planet of the flying men. You are Wor, a winged battle master with the power to hurl bolts of energy and control the magical forces of nature. Your planet has been taken over by an evil virus that has mutated into a collection of the grossest creatures ever to slime a tunnel. They are the Mutants of Iccus, led by the terrible Destroyer. Many have taken on the mutants before you… and failed. Now it's your turn. From the deepest caverns of Iccus to the belly of the beast itself, you must fly and fight for the life of your planet! It won't be easy… but then the best battles never are! Destroy the Destroyer and Iccus will be saved, its skies free once again. But fail and your wings will be clipped… forever!

Gynoug is a side-scrolling shoot'm-up with six different levels. You play as the winged dude Wor and it's your job to make sure everything dies in your path and nobody lives.

The Power-up system is cool, comprised of you raising levels to increase how you fire and how strong too. Along the way, blue crystals will show up and they must be shot to reveal the power-ups inside. The blue orb is the “Orb of Pattern”, allowing you to increase the range of your attack (and the number of bullets you can fire). This also basically increases the spread of the shot. The red orb is the “Orb of Power” which increases the size of your bullets and how strong they are. Both blue and red orb strength is shown at the top by an orb level meter, with one orb being the weakest level and all five lit up to show you are at the highest powered level. To get to the next level on the power meter, more orbs must be collect for each additional level to raise, kind of like experience. And yes, there is the good 'ol “Speed Up” feather that will allow better movement around the screen. The more you get, the faster your guy moves. The last and kind of a rare Orb is an Amber Gem that lets your divide your firepower so to attack both towards the front and back.

The additional firepower offered to your little flying guy is much different. Included with the power-ups that frequent this game are a number of magic scrolls, each labeled with a different letter, that of course, symbolizes what type of power it is. There is a magic scroll meter shown at the top as well, which shows how many scrolls you are currently carrying. Only 3 scroll can be held at once, and by pushing the magic button, the first scroll in order is used. Probably the coolest feature of the scrolls is trying to obtain more than one type of scroll at a time, so they are next to each other on the meter. If you have 2 or more of the same type of magic, once you activated it, the magic will be more powerful, have more ammo, and/or last much longer. 2 Lighting scrolls with 15 bolts is obviously more advantageous than 1 scroll of only 5. So, it's obviously wise to try and get more of one type of magic together for more blasting of baddies.

Whenever you die, you will lose 1 level of both blue and red orbs and lose whatever magic scroll power you had currently engaged. A player will not lose the other scrolls in your meter and they can still be used later. Don't become too distressed yet, as 1ups are given both by score occasionally and by finding the hinden 1up icons (that look like small winged men) in certain areas (You know, those sometimes “hard to reach” areas and whatnot). You must shoot in certain areas to reveal those hidden 1ups or even spot that have hidden scrolls too.

Continuing on with the magic scrolls, there are quite a few to choose from. Throughout the entire game are loads of different magic's and they are offered on different levels. Some magic is not available until later in the game. Even the scroll the gives you the temporary “options” is not discovered until level four. Anyways, most of the magic scrolls are considered offensive magic, while only 2 are defensive. The Offensive Magic's are as follows: E is Energy ball, L is Lightning Bolt, T is the Thunder Bolt, G is for the Ground Attack, H is the Magic Arrow, and W is Wild Fire. The Defensive magic's are O for Elemental, which are the temporary options (They have a time limit and fade faster if receiving hits) and S for the Aura shield which is your standard shield that also based on a time limit and not a number of hits.

The enemies in Gynoug are quite different. They are comprised of mostly ghouls, stone like creatures and objects, and some original looking bosses. Some of the bosses are a little strange, like combining a sunken ship with a huge face (which of course looks like a sea captain) and seems to wear the entire boat on his head. Other bosses seem to be ugly dudes combined with machinery, but the catch is that the machine looks very mechanical, like out of the 19th century, showing lots of moving parts. The game also seems to have a lot of enemies with faces, so you get attacked by many huge headed creatures and flying heads. Bosses and mini-bosses are ususally not too difficult to beat, but it is recommended that the difficulty on this game is increased at least a notch to compensate for the more experienced gamer, otherwise those folks will breeze through most of the game.

Gynoug features:

• Six levels
• An excellent story
• Grotesque enemies
• Intense combat
• One-player action

You have just landed on the most dangerous planet ever known…Iccus. You are Wor, a winged beast who holds the power of lightning and the ability to control the magical forces of nature. Your abilities will be put to the test, as you are here for the sole purpose of defeating the evil mutants that roam Iccus' surface. Journey from underground caverns into the belly of a beast in this detailed struggle between the just and the wicked. Six unique levels will push your nerves to edge, as each dangerous creature you encounter try to rob you of your wings, your life, and your soul. It's going to be the flight of your life, so make sure you bring every ounce of courage and strength you can muster.

The color scheme for the game is rather dark. This is not a bad denotion as it does work well for this game, especially since the entire world you are in is supposed to be taken over by the bad guys and in darkness. But each level's color arrangement is different and helps bring out the uniqueness to each level. Some color and graphics are well put together like the first mini-boss who is made out of rock and stone. Also worth mentioning are little things like bullets as they are not hard to see and are not camoflagued by the scenery either, so those one-hit wonders we all hate are not around to often. The graphics for this title are a good portrayal of the game's environments.