Cloudpunk (2020)

Narrative

You are a new arrival at the big city Nevalis. It's also your first night as a delivery driver. In your hover car you drive/fly around to deliver packages. While you're doing this you learn more about the city, and there is an overarching mystery/drama type of thing going on.

Gameplay

It's mostly a narrative game with accidental gameplay. You fly around through the city and deliver packages. You can take side quests as well and talk to the people. There is certain places you can park and walk around. Talk to people and collect stuff. You can also buy food or items. The car can break down and require repairs, you also need to get fuel. If you don't repair or get fuel nothing happens except you get real slow.

Setting

It's in the cyberpunk city of Nevalis. Huge bright neon lights everywhere, flying cars everywhere, and depressing stuff everywhere too. It's raining all night and most people you meet are sad. The graphics are voxel, which was really well done for the city, it looks absolutely stunning. Characters, not so much, but what can you do, it's voxel. They did give them all portraits, which I think were actual photo's? But I can't be sure, maybe just really good art. Music, really not my style but it fit really well with the setting so I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Other

The D-pad button on the controller hides your hud. I got really confused because in buying menu's you have to use the stick because otherwise you hide the hud. It's a really weird place to put the hide hud button haha. Minor thing I know.

Conclusion

It was not bad. I did finish it, because I liked how the city looked and liked walking around in it. You also have a dog AI in your hovercar and it's really cute. But the story just didn't make any sense. It was al very random. I hated flying the car, because I kept hitting stuff (could be me) and needing repairs. The repair/fuel stuff seemed unnecessary additions. It's mostly about the narrative anyway so why add that. Never found a purpose either for all the food and items you can buy in various places. I feel like some parts of this game were a bit unfinished.

Overall I had a good time but still would not recommend. Just because the story is weird and gameplay is meh at most. It's really pretty and the vibe is great, but that's about it.

I picked up Cloudpunk as a recommendation from a Steam curator I follow on the last winter sale. It's an interesting little title but ultimately I think it falls flat in many ways that ended up grating on me.

For starters though: flying your cyberpunk air car, called a HOVA (H to the Izzo?), feel real good and it gets better as you pick up upgrades during your deliveries. Finding efficient routes by flying between buildings and ad signs or zipping down the highways is great though sometimes the raising and lowering of your altitude can feel a little clunky.

Some of the characters are great, Rania is a fine enough main character but her trusty companion Camus is the real driving force. I would do anything to protect that precious boy. On the flip side there's characters like Huxley, an old android who speaks in a 1940s detective noir trope, who is incredibly annoying. That's a personal gripe, I'm sure there's folks who love him.

The voice acting is a little all over the map. There's characters who are really bland and annoying to listen to (a few androids especially, and one of the key characters you work to save later on), I ended up skipping a lot of dialogue, and there's characters like Control and Lomo are done fairly well.

The thing that really became too much for me, though, was the overwritten dialogue. I get that this game is basically a glorified walking simulator. There's nothing much more than listening to dialogue and traveling from point A to point B. I found that, on more than a handful of occasions, I'd reach my destination and just stand around waiting for people to stop talking to me so I can progress. Or, when getting your next mission, just floating in the air or driving aimlessly with nothing else to do until your waypoint finally activates.

Sometimes dialogue is skippable, other times it isn't, and when it isn't you can find yourself just standing beside the character you need to talk to next or the door you need to enter, just standing around listening. And the writing, while good at times, is not good enough to justify that.

All that aside, it's totally worth checking out and people looking for something to hang out and have a mellow experience might appreciate it. I would rate this a 2.5 but given that I need to go for whole stars only it's closer, to me, to a 2 than a 3.

Still a fun little project to check out, especially if you can get it for cheap.