Console Corner: Review of Cloudpunk

For four decades cyberpunk has been a fascination for a certain niche of society, with little bits and pieces disseminated into the public arena along the way. While there is an argument to be made cyberpunk is a thematic medium where corporate interest clashes with individual freedoms and opportunities, or where technology invades the body putting the idea of “humanity” into question, there remains nothing more recognizable in cyberpunk than its aesthetic. Put up an image of a neon, dystopian metropolis, and voila, cyberpunk. Capitalizing on all of this, but mostly said aesthetic is Ion Land's game Cloudpunk (2020).

Cloudpunk takes place in the neon night of the city of Nivalis. Players occupy the role of Rania, a newbee to the city who has just picked up a job with the illicit package delivery company, Cloudpunk. Over her head in debt, Rania needs to earn a few dollars to pay rent and bills. She is provided a HOVA delivery car and given a man named Control as her contact. Rania spends her time picking up packages and delivering them per Control's instructions. She drives the HOVA to the required destinations, parks, and walks to the drop-off point to complete the job. But Nivalis' shiny neon surface is not as perfect as it would seem. Malevolent androids, drug gangs, powerful AIs, corporate thugs—all have some role to play in not only Rania's deliveries, but also in the future of the city.

Cloudpunk is an open world, single-player combination of driving and pick up & deliver. The game's engine is narrative/dialogue. Players take HOVA delivery cues from Control, but the world is explorable on foot, which gives the player a chance to interact with the environment. Their are food kiosks and restaurants, NPCs with side missions, items to collect, and levels to traverse. Through the combination of macro (driving) and micro (pick up & deliver and NPC character interaction) players come to know the city as its secrets are slowly revealed.

What will immediately strike players is Cloudpunk's wonderful cyberpunk pixel aesthetic. Like a Bladerunner vision of Minecraft, the visuals pop off the screen, begging the player to jump behind the controls of the HOVA and zoom around the neon streets and buildings. (For all the open space, there is a decided lack of people and HOVAs on the streets, but I get that the limitations of budget, processing power, and game memory did not allow devs to realize their desired vision.) The chrome blues and pinks, the fuzzy, glowing roads, the flashing corporate billboards feel right out of Ghost in the Shell (the anime!!) or Neuromancer. In short, Cloudpunk captures classic cyberpunk visuals in flying colors (ha ha).

Wholly complementing these visuals is the soundtrack. Warm, pulsing synthwave, the player feels like a king/queen driving the glowing streets—hitting the turbo button as the beat kicks in. While the storyline is different, the music nevertheless made me feel like the game is a love letter to Bladerunner.

But after visuals and music, Cloudpunk becomes less substantial. The overall story is average, and offers a relatively dramatic albeit quick climax and conclusion. The non-physical details of setting, the social setup, and the technological backdrop are all revealed to the player through dialogue and interaction with NPCs. As the pick up and deliver missions start to rack up, the player gets a better view to the game's story, and as more of those missions start to go off-script, the full picture reveals itself. Dialogue does the trick building story, but at times can feel too long.

If there is a fault to the game, it's a lack of glue holding all the pieces together. The city is the city, the characters are the characters, but they are not brought to singular life together in a way that is completely satisfying. The map is huge, and story beats take place inside (and outside) of it. But this doesn't mean that a deeper, underlying sense of place or inhabitation takes over the player's imagination while playing. I think reducing the overall map size and re-allocating those resources to make a more interactive experience (between the characters and environment) could have helped.

From this, the game's story likewise comes across as scattered—a looser affair than it should have been. There is a “main quest” line driving the game. (There are also several side quests players can choose to fulfill after meeting certain NPCs.) The main quest occasionally offers the player meaty moral choices. These choices feel difficult in the moment, but unfortunately, feel meaningless in time as there are minimal consequences built into the game to give them deeper meaning. For example, do you help or thwart gangster A? The player might have some personal values they want to see in action when making that choice, but those values don't typically translate to rewards or punishments or unforeseen consequences. In turn, the choices become relatively toothless. I forget precisely how many pure pick up and deliver missions there are (15? 20?), but I think reducing that number and using those resources to develop in-world consequences to the player's decisions would have greatly helped player engagement. Rather than a tall, skinny decision tree, why not a shorter, fatter one that richly engages the setting?

In the end, Cloudpunk feels like a developer's first, solid footsteps in the world of game design. They hit the ball out of the park with a visually striking setting and a killer soundtrack. The other elements of the game are just average, however—as stated, a solid first step for a first-time dev. A lot of gamers expect combat, so be warned this is a narrative-driven game. There is interaction, however, Driving through the neon city is a nice spot of relaxing fun with the tunes cranked up, and walking around the various neighborhoods, talking with people, and collecting things can be a wonderfully participatory experience. The main story/premise is tried-and-true cyberpunk, the dialogue is a little stilted and long at times, the voice actors are B-grade, and there are moments that a stronger degree of interaction with the environment is desired. But as stated, I'm sure the devs would have loved to have a bigger budget to do more of those things, but didn't. All in all, this is a good indie game that shows great promise for the future of Ion Land.