The cyberpunk art of Benedykt Szneider gave Ruiner a brutal beauty

Ruiner managed something few cyberpunk games do. It took some of the most cliched imagery the genre has and made it feel fresh. This was a game with Akira-style motorbikes, sushi stands, neon signs, katanas, ladies in leather, Japanese and Korean text everywhere, all crammed into a dirty Asian metropolis in the year 2091. What elevated it was the attitude, communicated in slow-mo ultraviolence, the excellent soundtrack, snappy one-liners and quotes—whether barked at the protagonist by his hacker handler or displayed on his distinctive helmet—and the manga visuals drenched in red. Ruiner was as slick as blood.

As Ruiner's creative director, Benedykt Szneider was responsible for a lot of that. Have a look at some of his concept art in the gallery below, including early visualizations of the city of Rengkok as well as characters like the cyber-zombified drained hosts and the shirt-averse gangers called the Creeps. You'll see the foundations of what could have been a great Kenji Kamiyama series, or maybe a Warren Ellis comic.

Mechanix the cybernetic repairman pinches a cigarette and the hacker known only as Her strikes a pose. A kamikaze Creep bites down on an explosive canister, while the leader of his gang wields a serrated samurai sword. In the finalized art Ruiner's tone is complete, given the red-and-black palette of a moody teenager's bedroom. Ruiner is a top-down game so we can't see the sky, but it's probably the color of a dead television show host. 

One more treat. Here's the offices of Heaven Inc., the corporation that runs Rengkok City, vertically formatted so that it'll look good if you've got one of those sideways second monitors or you're looking at this on your phone. Hit the button top-right to make it full screen and scroll down from the high-status skyscraper to the grimy undercity beneath.

Ruiner was published by Devolver Digital last year. You can see more of Benedykt Szneider's art here.

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.

Latest in Action
Assassin's Creed Shadows change seasons - An upper-body shot of Yasuke looking cheerfully up into the distance.
Assassin's Creed Shadows puts up the 'second highest day-one sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history'
A shock trap transformed into a Lego brick in Monster Hunter Wilds.
A modder keeps turning Monster Hunter traps into Lego bricks so that the monsters will know true pain, and they've just done it again
Nova, a hero from Marvel Comics, smolders at the camera while surrounded by flames.
The team behind Shredder's Revenge has a Marvel beat 'em up on the way with a whopping 15 characters and unsurprisingly gorgeous pixel art
The First Berserker: Khazan tips - Khazan
10 The First Berserker: Khazan tips to smash your foes
Crysis hero Prophet running down a beach while under fire
Crysis Remastered Trilogy activates maximum value mode as upgraded version of the legendary, hardware-crushing FPS series is currently 60% off
Phantom Blade Zero
Chinese action game Phantom Blade Zero didn't click for me until I realized its deep commitment to wuxia film authenticity meant I had to relearn how swords work
Latest in Features
Dancing Green in Final Fantasy 14.
Final Fantasy 14's latest raids have me fully convinced that Square Enix can still cook, even as job design lags behind
Razer Blade 16 (2025) gaming laptop
Nvidia RTX 5090 mobile tested: The needle hasn't moved on performance but this is the first time I'd consider ditching my desktop for a gaming laptop
Phantom Blade Zero
Chinese action game Phantom Blade Zero didn't click for me until I realized its deep commitment to wuxia film authenticity meant I had to relearn how swords work
kingdom come deliverance 2 thunderstone quest
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's masterful quest design can be summed up by one wonderfully weird search for a magic stone
Blue Protocol players dancing minutes before the game closes forever
What will we do at the end of the world? If MMOs are any indication: mostly what we already do, plus a lot of dancing
Sphene applauds in Final Fantasy 14's patch 7.2 story.
I'm not yelling 'we're so back!' yet, but Final Fantasy 14's patch 7.2 story could be the first sign the MMO is returning to what made it so critically-acclaimed