Tag: cyberpunk

News

Get ready to play as a cyberpunk bartender later this month

“This is a story about people daring to survive,” reads a title card in the latest and final trailer for VA-11 Hall-A, which could be considered an odd description for a cyberpunk bartending game. Called VA-11 Hall-A, it was originally borne of a cyberpunk game jam in 2014. A couple years, a prototype, and a free prologue chapter later, VA-11 Hall-A is finally on its way to existing on our one-day sentient PCs (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) on June 21st, with PlayStation Vita and iPad versions coming sometime later this year. The titular bar in VA-11 Hall-A—affectionately called Valhalla by its patrons—reflects…
Copper Dreams
News

A cyberpunk RPG that dreams of rust and copper

“How would syndicates abuse their power without the oversight of a government?” asks Hannah Williams, one half of Seattle-based Whalenought Studios. That’s one of the many questions that Copper Dreams, the studio’s second RPG, looks to answer. While RPGs are often set in vast fantasy worlds, Copper Dreams‘ cyberpunk world takes place on an isolated island called Calitana. It’s a place where the uncivilized aspects of humanity can be drawn out,  where food is scarce but copper is cheap, resulting in an economy based on the metal, and a culture obsessed with technological body alterations. “We thought it would be interesting…
News

Footage of the cancelled 16-bit Akira game arrives from 1994

If a cancelled game adaptation of the cult classic Akira (1988) is displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in an era before live-tweeting, does it even make an impact? Apparently so, as rare footage of the Sega Genesis and SNES title recently emerged in the form of a shaky camera on the showfloor of that 1994 CES of long ago. Now, the long-lost holy grail of a potentially good Akira game is bound to the dismal land of YouTube, for all to gawk at and wish the cyberpunk anime were a playable reality. Akira is the rare classic that transcends…
News

New visual novel should satisfy your lo-fi cyberpunk dreams

New York City has a clichéd nickname: The City that Never Sleeps, referring to the restlessness of nightlife in the city. Similar is the metropolis in the newly released Cyber City 2157: The Visual Novel, as it also never sleeps. But that’s because the sun never sets. Night never comes to toss its dark cloak over the city. The City (capitalized, as it is a character in itself) remains bright, shining, always ready to adventure—it doesn’t sleep because it doesn’t get a chance to. And you, the player, are tasked with navigating all its parks, suburbs, cemeteries, and even dreams. Created…
Gunkatana
News

Gunkatana introduces a lightning-fast bloodsport to cyberpunk

What should you do when mega-corporations control everything? If you look to movies, books and television for ideas, you should stand up and fight. Start a revolution or join an already existing one. But the citizens of upcoming top-down, multiplayer action game Gunkantana have lost hope. Instead of fighting back, they’ve set up death arenas in places like strip-clubs where they brutally kill each other for sport. It’s a cyberpunk future filled with bloody swords, laser guns, and rails on which to grind. “Two years ago, the Loading Bar, a videogame-infused pub, hosted the Multiclash event, dedicated exclusively to local…
News

Another perfect marriage of cyberpunk and pixels

Cyberpunk worlds always seem to draw me in. Whether it’s the derelict planets visited by Spike Spiegel and his bounty hunting companions in the cult classic anime Cowboy Bebop (1997-98), or the replicant-laden world of the famed Blade Runner (1982), cyberpunk has always remained a static aesthetic in the media I’ve read, watched, and played. And freelance pixel artist Matt Frith’s bite-sized cyberpunk point-and-click adventure game Among Thorns is no exception. The setting in Among Thorns is described on as “a world suffering with a technological plague, Cora Bry is recruited for a shady job.” So, essentially, a textbook example of any…
Noirpunk
Feature

What cyberpunk was and what it will be

This is a preview of an article you can read on our new website dedicated to virtual reality, Versions. /// We often forget when predicting the future that it will inevitably continue to change. Whatever we dream up, however utopian or dystopian, will be subject to resistances and reimaginings. It will be a temporary state. The future will get old fast and there will be no end of history, despite frequent claims to the contrary, until the last human breathes the last breath. Travelling through modern metropolises at night, particularly in Asia, the temptation is to dwell on how prophetic…
Sususmu Hirasawa
News

Behold the Berserk composer’s lost cyberpunk anthem

With last week’s announcement that the renowned, metal-as-fuck series Berserk would return later this year, it brought to mind some of the genre’s most austere compositions. “Theme of Guts”, named after Berserk’s main character, is a sedate, moving electro-vapor hymn from composer Susumu Hirasawa. Not only is it the show’s emotional cornerstone, but it holds up astoundingly well, even all these years later. The same goes for most of Hirasawa’s stuff (the guy was a rock pioneer long before he became an anime composer), but few tracks of his are as bonkers—or frankly, as genius—as his monstrous jam “TOWN-0 PHASE-5.”…
Review

Void and Meddler is lovely but lonely

It’s a gorgeous evening in Void & Meddler’s synth-wave nightscape. The downtempo music is pulsing, rain is falling, and I’m guiding my protagonist Fyn through a market of vibrant neofuturistic goods. I click on some fish, stacked near a bobbing robot merchant. “No, just no,” Fyn tells me. I click on the pile of fish again. “No way.” /// Booting up the game, I knew from a single glance that Fyn and I were not going to get along. With her hips perpetually half-crooked and a look of withering disinterest carved into her expression, Void & Meddler’s protagonist is all…