Cyberpunk

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40574993

You can see how I made it on my Mastodon.

In Chess, Checkers, etc, movement of pieces matters, but in Go it's the placement. Stones glow as they are placed, emphasizing this (traditionally the sound of the stone clicking on the board plays this role). The stone's glow also hints at its influence on surrounding spaces.

I'm not entirely sure what this game is. The trailer looks like a cool upcoming cyberpunk anime, but then it's interspersed with shots of a hyper-realistic racing game. Apparently this is actually a racing game trailer where the anime shots are its cutscenes? The two art styles look like they're from completely unrelated works to me.

This game has a steam page though, and a release date of March 26, 2026. It also has a price of $60. That seems high for a game I've never heard of from a studio I've never heard of. So... best of luck to them.

I promise not to make a habit of complaining about things here, but there's something specific I want to complain about in Tron: Ares. And while I know the cool thing to do on the internet is to complain about Jared Leto, it isn't that.

Let's say you're a billionaire CEO and want to make a movie. Who would be the main character? Well, obviously a billionaire CEO, they're the most important people on the planet. But oh no! there's a conflict in this movie! Who could possibly resolve this conflict? Obviously a billionaire CEO, they're also the smartest people on the planet. Hmmm, we should probably have other characters in this movie so they can tell the CEO how amazing and brilliant they are... let's add some of the poors into this movie, like the billionaire CEO's personal assistant. After all, he's "one of the good ones."

That's what Tron: Ares feels like to me. The protagonist and antagonist are both CEOs and the only other named characters in this movie are either 1) personal assistants to the CEO or 2) sentient intellectual property. There isn't a single named character in this movie who isn't on a first-name basis with the CEO. We couldn't possibly have the R&D department work on any of these problems, or have a security detail manage the safety of the CEO. No, only the CEO is capable of doing these things by themselves.

As a fan of cyberpunk, I just can't take a CEO protagonist seriously. So many cyberpunk works have an underlying theme of "the rich aren't human anymore" and it bugs me to root for the "good" billionaire.

Also, it's weird that the only other people in the movie who these CEOs respect... are other CEOs. We couldn't have the audience just assume a CEO would respect his mother, let's make his mother the previous CEO. And we couldn't have the audience just assume a CEO would respect her sister, let's make her sister the Co-CEO (whatever that means). The movie could've just as easily made the sister the head of R&D or something, but no, she had to be a reclusive scientist working in the arctic... who is also a CEO.

Obviously the visuals are amazing, but the plot is so awkwardly skewed towards CEOs that it feels forced. I guess you could say Tron: Legacy had a "trust-fund baby" protagonist (a reluctant billionaire?) but that entire movie was spent inside The Grid so his money was irrelevant. Tron: Ares spent the bulk of the movie in the real world where the CEOs were specifically using the assets available to them to drive the story forward.

There, see? I didn't complain about Jared Leto once.

I stole this post from mastodon: https://chaos.social/@realhackhistory/115736090452823387

I couldn't figure out how to embed a mastodon post or take a screenshot without the "ALT" and "HIDE" buttons, so instead I'm giving credit to the original post.

I'm not sure if I'm cheating by calling this cyberpunk. It has the 'cyberpunk' tag on steam, and it's made by Harebrained (the developers of the Shadowrun Returns trilogy) but this feels more like body-horror to me.

Of course, it might just be leaning more towards the Alien brand of cyberpunk. So even if it doesn't have that classic cyberpunk aesthetic, I think it might hit some cyberpunk themes. Or maybe it's just an isometric knock-off of Dead Space, who knows.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3141390/GRAFT/

It uses an induction coil to power the LEDs. The "stones" light up as you place them on the board.

I find it compelling because in many other games (chess, checkers, etc.) it's the movement of the pieces that matters. In Go, it's the placement of the pieces. Traditionally the clicking sound as the stone is placed emphasizes this. Now light also plays a similar role. The glow also hints at the influence of a stone on its surroundings.

You can see how I made it on Mastodon: @Jilanico@mastodon.social

I modified a goban found here.

The containers for the stones found here.

OC by @Jilanico@lemmy.world

I don't typically like making posts where I just complain about something, but I don't have anyone else to talk to about this movie and I wanted to write down my thoughts as a way of processing them. This post will be filled with spoilers for the new Running Man movie so don't read it unless you've already seen the movie (or have no desire to watch it).

As I walked out of the theater, I couldn't decide if I liked this movie or not. I didn't love it, and yet I couldn't point to any specific things I hated about it. After a couple days of thinking about it though, I realized it was the third act that I had problems with. The first two acts set up some interesting ideas, but all those ideas are either squandered or ignored in the third act.

I should mention that I've never read the Stephen King novel this movie is based on. I've only seen the 1987 Running Man with Schwarzenegger so that's what I'll be comparing it to. Also, I have a high threshold for pain when it comes to bad movies. I was raised on MST3k so I'm almost immune to bad acting and bad dialogue. Instead, I tend to focus more on story beats and overall plot. And that's what I'll be complaining about here.

The movie starts with Glen Powell as a bottle of rage trying not to beat up his boss. He even brings his 2 year old daughter with him to prevent himself from giving into his violent tendencies. When he gets back home, his wife mentions that she knows why he took their daughter with him, because she knows what type of person he is too. Later, when he's about to join the Running Man TV show, Josh Brolin (the showrunner) says that his anger is his superpower and will keep him alive.

Yet throughout the movie he never really gives into his violence. He never really goes unhinged. For the entire second act he behaves as rationally as possible trying to win the game. There are multiple occasions where he has a chance to kill someone (and is encouraged to), and doesn't. He even tries to save some of the people hunting him before a building explodes. It's almost like in an initial draft of the script he was supposed to be mild-mannered and the game eventually drives him to unlock his rage. But that doesn't happen either. In the third act, Josh Brolin lies to him and tells him his family is dead just to egg him on. He lets out a mind-breaking scream of rage and looks like he's about to go all unhinged... then continues with your standard action-movie fight sequence. He doesn't RIP AND TEAR UNTIL IT IS DONE, he continues fighting with his wits. He even takes control of a plane to gain the advantage during a fight. I thought the movie was setting him up to go full bloodlust where he blacks out and is covered in blood by the end of the fight, but that never happens. The setup of him being unhinged and violent in the first act never really amounts to anything.

When explaining the rules for the show, they say that each contestant must record a daily video to prove they're still alive and just share their thoughts for the day. That video could also potentially give clues to their whereabouts. The video must be placed in a mailbox and sent to the studio each day. If a contestant misses a single day, they'll forfeit any winnings but still be hunted down. With that very specific setup, I thought for sure there'd be a plot point where a mailbox would be guarded and time is running out to mail his next video and he has to find a way to mail it or else lose everything. But no, that never happens.

Making a daily video makes a lot of sense in-universe so I like the idea, but they spend so much time explaining this rule and it never really amounts to anything. Aside from a couple gags when mailing the video, this entire plot point could've been replaced with "upload the video to the internet each day" with the same effect. The physical act of mailing a video is never really used to increase tension.

In the 1987 Running Man, Schwarzenegger is accused of a crime he didn't commit. The audience is initially against him (as they are for all contestants) but as he keeps winning the crowd starts turning in his favor. I mean, what audience could resist peak 80's movie quipping like "here is Subzero! Now... plain zero!" Basically, the audience slowly learns who this guy really is and eventually roots for him to win.

This version of Running Man tries to do the same thing but I don't think it works. In this one, everything the audience ever hears Glen Powell say is changed to make him appear psychotic. In one of his daily videos he tries exposing the lies of the network but they change his words so that he's laughing about killing children. At no point does the audience ever hear him say anything reasonable. There's even a scene where a family is sitting next to him, talking to him, liking him, and protecting him, yet when the tv show airs that faked footage of him wanting to kill children the family immediately kicks him out of the house. So we never see any member of the audience take his side or even like him. Nor are they ever given a reason to. Yet in the third act of the movie there's a crowd of people cheering him on. It doesn't feel earned. There was no turning point, no words of compassion that ever made it through the censors that would've changed their minds.

In the 1987 version of Running Man, Schwarzenegger isn't doing the show for money. The producers want him dead and he's fighting back. Plus the entire show takes place in a single evening and he eventually kills those producers so the money is irrelevant anyway.

In this version, Glen Powell is explicitly doing it for the money. He's trying to earn enough money to give his daughter a good life, or at least be able to afford flu medicine. He needs the money, and more importantly, he needs the studio to pay out the money he wins. It doesn't make sense for him to kill off the producers of the show in this version. Even if he did want to kill the Josh Brolin character, that would only prevent him from receiving his money, which is his sole goal the entire time.

At the end of the movie, Glen Powell again tries exposing the lies of the network but they fake his death instead (for a compelling season finale). Then we cut to some indeterminate time later where his family is shopping at a high-end grocery store. So evidently the show paid out the money despite his attempts to sabotage it. And they let him live, which is another odd point. Apparently there were no hard feelings. The movie could've ended here. It would've been underwhelming, but plot-wise this is the logical end to the story. He was just another contestant. But no, there was one more scene (and my next complaint).

In the 1987 version of the movie, Schwarzenegger's primary objectives were to clear his name and get revenge on those who put him in Running Man. In this version, Glen Powell only needs the money. He doesn't really care whether the show continues or not. He doesn't really have a vendetta against Josh Brolin's character; he voluntarily signed the papers in this version. He knew what the show was from the beginning and aside from Josh Brolin's character egging him on to create more compelling tv, the show met his expectations.

Yet the final scene of the movie is (again) some indeterminate time later, where the next season of Running Man is having its season premiere. Apparently the entire audience is on Glen Powell's side now and they decide to riot. Josh Brolin trips and falls on the floor, then Glen Powell slowly and calmly shoots him. Again, not filled with rage, no impulse control issues, just slow and calculated. It's like they shot this scene before deciding how the characters would arrive at this moment. The riot feels unearned, killing the showrunner has no purpose, and the killing isn't unhinged or violent at all. It's like they had two versions of the movie and kept swapping back and forth between them.

To be clear, I don't think the 1987 Running Man movie is flawless or anything. It's just an easy comparison because they're basically trying to tell the same story. And its plot is cohesive. It makes sense. Dumb as it may be, you can see the flow of logic through the entire movie. This version feels too scrambled. Like I said, I don't think the movie does any single thing wrong, but it can't decide what it wants to be. Is the main character unhinged or not? Can the audience see through the network's lies or not? Does the main character want the show to end or not? The movie itself is never really sure.

I don't know anything about this game but the trailer makes it look like it takes place in Night City. Seriously, it looks like an unlicensed Cyberpunk 2077 game to me. Plus, it was made by Neon Giant, the team who made The Ascent, and I absolutely loved that game. I went from never having heard about this game to being extremely excited about it in the time it took to watch the trailer.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2161710/NO_LAW/

Another game I talked about a couple months ago. Dystopika is a chill game where you just create a cyberpunk city... and that's it. They just released a DLC called "B-Sides" which includes a bunch of content they had cut from the initial release but the game ended up being so popular they decided to finally release that cut content.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3859970/Dystopika_BSides/

I made a post here a couple months ago where I mentioned that I'd had this game in my steam wishlist since 2021. Well, it finally has a release date: March 12, 2026.

Replaced is a 2.5D pixel-art platformer and looks very cyberpunk. I hope the gameplay is good because the aesthetic looks amazing. I've been waiting years for this one.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1663850/REPLACED/

This is an officially licensed TTRPG set in the GItS: Arise universe. The kickstarter just ended so I'm not trying to convince anyone to back it, I just think it's impressive that they only wanted ~$11k to fund the project and raised almost $500k. That's awesome!

I've been looking forward to this one. It's a mix of run-and-gun with gallery-shooter mechanics. The demo was really fun and I love the pixel artwork.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2957720/Neon_Inferno/

Last year I posted the previous version of this guide. Since the author just made a new version, I figured I'll keep posting it here. I like how there's now a 'midtempo cyberpunk' genre separate from the normal 'cyberpunk' genre.

As before, this is not made by me but by a user on reddit named khroshan.

You can view the full-sized image here or a version not hosted on reddit here.

Some of you might remember me as the guy who built CyberpunkHub.com, a small side project that tries to catalogue every cyberpunk film, series, game, book, and short out there.

I have been down with Covid for the past few days and, with too much time and not enough energy to do anything useful, I started adding more cyberpunk shorts to the database. Somewhere between fever and caffeine I had a strange idea: what if I made a player that could pull entries that have links to full-length content (usually shorts) and play them right inside the site.

So I kind of gorilla-taped one together while half hallucinating.

You can try it here: https://cyberpunkhub.com/player

It can even be installed as a PWA app on mobile or tablet.

There is also a very early TV version that you can test in your browser using a keyboard: https://cyberpunkhub.com/player?tv=1

Just to be clear, I am not hosting any of the actual content. All videos come from YouTube, Vimeo, and occasionally direct mp4 links that are already public. It might not always work perfectly, but that is part of the charm of something coded under the influence of Covid. * Probably useless for now, but it was fun to build while being sick in bed and pretending to be a futuristic hacker trapped in quarantine. *

This is an extremely long article and I'll admit I only skimmed it, but I don't disagree with any of the items included. Also, I'm a massive cyberpunk nerd and I've at least heard of everything in the article (except for some authors in the 'Global Voices, Local Futures' section) so the author definitely did their research.

If you're interested in some of the more obscure cyberpunk works, this article is a great start.

I love the look of this dark cyberpunk world. Throw in a soundtrack by Mick Gordon and I'm even more excited.

My only complaint is that it seems you play as a police officer. Lame. Change nothing in the game but tell me they're mercenaries and I'm all in, but I don't want to play as police in a cyberpunk world. Anyway, that's an extremely minor gripe and definitely a "me" problem, not a problem with the game. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it.

DEFECT is a cyberpunk, squad-based immersive shooter set in a dystopian world ruled by an AI, The System. Play in Single-player for a deeper offline experience, team up in Co-op, or face off in a new 4v4v4v4 PVP mode featuring dynamic multi-objective, battles with advanced weapons and tech.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2470010/DEFECT/

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/20524903

Cyberpunk stories are often action filled and you as player are directly in the middle, deciding the fate of mega corporations and technological progress of humanity. But in this game? Here you prepare drinks and hear stories about the world outside the bar doors. What crazy stuff goes on, what happened to some celebrity and when the next riot is supposedly happening. It is a Deus Ex story, but you don't play JC Denton, you play a barkeeper and try to make ends meet, so you don't get evicted from your apartment at months end.

And it is glorious. I really started to like games, or stories in general, that don't put you in the shoes of the 1 in a million special protagonist, but in the shoes of one of the other 999.999 randoms, who have to live in that world and can't just change the world by fighting the bad guy.

Your bar has some random people coming, but also regulars you will talk to more often and build a connection with. And each one will have a story to tell you. Now the game play is not exactly breath taking, either you do the drink right or not. Mess up too often and you don't have enough money for the rent. Sometimes you can influence the customer a bit by deciding how much alcohol you put in their drink, but that's it. So mostly you can consider it as a Visual Novel (if you want a cyberpunk bartender story driven game with a bit more gameplay focus, yes there is another one with that description, check out Red Strings Club). But the stories are just so interesting and fun. And following the circumstances of certain regulars was captivating for me.
Especially as you have a lot of variety in your customers: poor people down on their luck, a private law enforcement officer that didn't just join because they wanted to stomp on citizens. Or a cybernetically enhanced dog with a Hawaii shirt. Yeah it's not taking itself always seriously =) And it's mostly about human stories, how they get affected by their society etc. Not about saving the world, but about how they can find a good food store now that the old one was busted for illegally selling cyberware below the counter. So a lot of world building is done through your customers stories.

Biggest drawback of this game? If you enjoy it, you also have to wait for it's sequel N1RV Ann-A like the rest of us. Which still doesn't have any release date. But as Silksong proved: good games take time!

Access to Arasaka has been making cyberpunk-themed ambient music for almost 20 years now. He just released a new EP (Utility) that leans a bit more into the "glitch" genre than "ambient" but it's still great background music. I like just queuing up his albums and letting it play.

His entire discography is available on bandcamp with no minimum price set, meaning you can download it all for $0. I like all of his songs except for the random ones with vocals... those totally throw me off when I just want something ambient in the background. Anyway, I like him as an artist and a new EP is as good a reason as any to recommend him.

A friend of mine started getting into Tabletop Simulator on steam. It's a surprisingly robust platform for building board games, with the ability to shuffle cards, roll dice, place items on a board, etc. The simulator itself isn't a game but there are a bunch of DLCs available which represent individual board games.

That's neat and all, but what we didn't realize until recently (and why we finally bought it) is there's an entire workshop community with almost 100,000 fan-made games of questionable legality. All free. So naturally, I immediately started looking for cyberpunk board games.

The one I'm most excited about and wanted to share here is called Zaibatsu: Speedrunners. And it's a legitimately free board game (what's called a "Print & Play" because you can print the game pieces yourself). You can download the entire game (printable PDFs of the game pieces) here.

I haven't played the game yet (either the Tabletop Simulator version or in real life) but it looks really cool. Each player represents a megacorp and you place hexagonal tiles on a table to build out regions of cyberspace, with the goal of your megacorp having majority control of the tiles. You take over regions of cyberspace (tiles) by placing one of your runners on it and using their Icebreaker ability. If a tile has Black ICE, that runner dies if they fail. So that's fun. Also, you can obtain additional runners like Cleaners, Crackers, Gynoids, or the Idoru to help you. Lots of great cyberpunk references here.

There isn't much information about the game on Board Game Geek and I can't find any youtube videos of people playing the game at all, so it's possible this game is more complicated than I'm willing to play. But I'm intrigued. Also, it's my understanding that Zaibatsu: Speedrunners is a re-implementation of the original Zaibatsu, of which there's even less information. The Tabletop Simulator version of the original Zaibatsu looks like it was better made than the Speedrunners version, though. Oh well.

Anyway, now that I'm taking a step into the world of Tabletop Simulator, definitely let me know if you have other recommendations for cyberpunk-themed board games. I'm not really into full-blown TTRPGs or CCGs though, those are way too complex for me. I like actual board games that I can finish within an hour or so.

Over on the cyberpunk mastodon instance corteximplant.com they're having a watch party for Who Am I and I've never even heard of this movie. I guess it's a German movie but I can't find it streaming anywhere. Anyway, I'm curious if it's any good so I wanted to ask if anyone here would recommend it.

Here's a trailer with English subtitles. I guess it's about a group of hackers but beyond that, I'm not entirely sure of the plot. Wikipedia says it's comparable to Fight Club and Mr. Robot.

Also, I would've posted a link to corteximplant's watch party but it's only available on their Discord server. You can get their Discord invite at https://nightcity.bar/ though.

[SCREAMSHEET // SIGNAL INITIATED]

Encrypted media node activated.

Screamsheet is a defiant ezine broadcasting from the static between corporate firewalls and analog ruins. Expect multi-panel manga collage, horror motifs, protest symbolism, and cryptic dispatches from the N1GHTW1RE Collective.

🕷️ Format:

• Visual manifestos
• Resistance art
• Genre bleed fiction
• Tactical briefings

🛰️ Frequency:
Weekly drops. No algorithms. No apologies.

🧠 Engagement Protocol:

• Drop your own encrypted visuals
• Share nodes worth decrypting
• Collaborate on future transmissions

If you’re tuned in, respond with your call sign.
If you’re compromised, stay silent.

[END TRANSMISSION]\

Screamsheet Website

I don't know how to embed youtube shorts into Lemmy (if there's even a way) so I'm just going to post the links here:

Technofeudalism 2040: A Serf's Day
Technofeudalism 2040: An Overlord's Day

These are just two short animations (1min, 24 sec each) that take place in a cyberpunk future. One of them is from a serf's perspective, the other is from an overlord's perspective. And they're both ridiculous. They also both loop perfectly. Check them out.

I think the guy who made them is on Newgrounds if you'd rather watch there and avoid youtube.

• Youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVhjwEM59tQRlOFYqn5ZffkChnlXtP3DO
• other platforms / where to buy (according to the official NIN site): https://nineinchnails.lnk.to/TRONAres
• about the album: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron:_Ares_(soundtrack)

cross-posted from: !nin@lemmy.world

Hey there! I'm a newbie author writing a cyberpunk book called Neodrius. It's ongoing (5chapters a week) with around 250 pages already. If you feel like trying something new that feels familiar, please give it a read, and possibly leave me some feedback! <3 Thank you! Link - https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/127344/neodrius-a-cyberpunk-novel

[Book]