Cyber Paradise is an interesting take on the action roguelite genre. You only have one weapon throughout the game, but you can build and modify your character by picking up cards. The cards are spread throughout the level and also dropped after defeating enemies. The card system is interesting because not only do cards add new abilities, they can also modify the cards next to them.
The bonuses from cards can range from passive buffs like increasing your HP or silly abilities like laying eggs whenever you jump. This one may sound useless but if you have enough egg cards, they actually deal enough damage to wipe out mobs. Just imagine laying dozens of eggs while jumping around willy nilly. While the abilities are pretty unique, there doesn’t seem to be too much variety in the builds you can make, at least as the game is presented in the demo.
The game also seems to have a sense of humor with a literal paywall character you can destroy. Destroying the paywall gives you access to all of the game’s features so you can experiment with different card builds.
As for the narrative you have a main hub area where you can talk to npcs. After beating the level, you receive a memory shown in still images. The narrative progress itself felt a bit stifled and convoluted because details weren’t made clear and the amount of exposition given was very limited. It left me feeling a bit detached from the story because you didn’t know what was happening or who the characters were. This isn’t necessarily a complaint but merely an observation as the gameplay itself was enjoyable enough.
Overall, the Cyber Paradise demo showed a game with some promise. The game felt like an average rogue lite but the card mechanics did offer something unique, although they did feel more on the shallow side. Hopefully the game’s narrative feels more fleshed out by release as well as adding a tad more variety into the possible card builds. Best of luck to the devs.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2431790/Cyber_Paradise/
Review Score: N/A (game isn’t out) as of this writing (10/21/23)
Developer: DDmeow Games
Publisher: DDmeow Games
Release Date: 2024
MSRP: TBA
I received a key from keymailer. Thanks cool person!
Time spent: 2 hours
Achievement Score: N/A
Ducky Obrien 