Here's a thoroughly Slavic cyberpunk stealth-action game

Indie studio Red Square Games just announced SlavicPunk: Oldtimer, an isometric shooter/hacker/sneaker based on the fiction of Polish author Michał Gołkowski. You play a private detective with a whole lot of issues and an intimidating sitcom dad moustache who goes up against the usual assortment of gangs and corrupt corporate executives.

SlavicPunk: Oldtimer promises "solid combat and movement systems, as well as a modular weapon upgrade system". Stealth is definitely an option, though maybe not non-lethal stealth given all the people who get shot or stabbed in the back during the trailer. As well as an assortment of guns and cybernetic upgrades, it'll have "Battlehacking", which the developers describe as "our own hi-tech spellcasting system".

Between dangerous areas that players will need to sneak and/or shoot their way through will be moments of peace where you get to explore the city, finding sidequests and pushing along the plot, which involves stolen data and the corporation responsible for ruining your city.

That sounds like a pretty generic story, but what's promising is that alongside the usual imagery of dystopian streets with flying cars and hologram strippers are more culturally specific elements, like the sign depicting a neon girl who wears an ushanka and does goose steps instead of high kicks. It reminds me of Peripeteia only isometric, and you're playing the grizzliest man who ever lived rather than Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell.

Red Square says the developers began by asking themselves, "what was the world going to look like in a couple of decades?  How would a hypothetical Central and Eastern European city and its inhabitants differ from, say, Blade Runner's L.A. or Akira's Neo Tokyo?'.

"The attempts to answer this puzzle has had a tremendous deal of influence upon the game's artistic choices, including a mix of futuristic-esque and overly outdated technologies, the grim, brutalist architecture typical of the post-communist countries, the character's not-so-obvious moral choices and the often crudely makeshift, yank-and-tuck character and atmosphere of an environment overpacked with people forced to cope with the uneven distribution of goods and wealth, often relying on their wits and sheer luck to make it to the next paycheck without losing their minds."

Red Square is also working on a tabletop RPG in the same setting, called SibirPunk, which it plans to crowdfund via the Kickstarter-but-only-for-games platform Gamefound. SlavicPunk: Oldtimer is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2023 via Steam.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
A cybernetic woman holds a silenced pistol
The cyberpunk immersive sim I've been itching to play finally has a release date
The titluar Cyberlich of Cyberlich surrounded by a smoky cloud and with a saintly halo behind his head
I felt goodwill and hope for the future seeing Cybrlich and the Death Cult of Labor, an FPS that's 60% HUD and looks like an Adult Swim cartoon where you smoke 'deepweed' to restore your health and blow clouds that spell out 'doink' and 'loud'
A cybernetic woman holds a silenced pistol
I became a domestic terrorist to steal a lightbulb in the best immersive sim I've played this Steam Next Fest—and it isn't even a Next Fest demo
In-development screenshot of game Psycho Patrol R. It is a low-poly, low-fidelity graphical style with deliberately clashing colors and interface elements.
The next game from Cruelty Squad's creator, a 'policing and punishment simulator', has dropped a new trailer showing off its gruesome mech combat
Midair neon jetpack combat between a robot and an android lady
Metal Eden is a movement-shooter that looks like cyberpunk Doom Eternal
A woman holding a gun in a sci-fi setting
'It's like Die Hard but with more comedy': Immersive FPS Skin Deep has talking cats, banana traps, and enemies you can disable by making them sneeze
Latest in Action
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The First Berserker: Khazan review - Blade Phantom
How to claim The First Berserker: Khazan pre-order bonus and deluxe edition DLC
gta 6 trailer
Publishers 'don't want to be anywhere near' Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches: 'It's proving to be very stressful'
An image of a Helldiver from Helldivers 2 shooting at a red dragon from Dungeons & Dragons.
'Ok, so dragon builds are a thing now': galaxy-brained Helldivers 2 player incinerates a bile titan with a hover pack and a flamethrower
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense
Assassin's Creed Shadows immersive mode - Naoe holding a tanto in her hand as two guards fall to the ground behind her.
Assassin's Creed Shadows' first hotfix addresses stability issues and a photo mode crash
Latest in News
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event