Cloudpunk

Although the city of Nivalis is beautiful and feels super cyberpunk, every other aspect of Cloudpunk falls flat. The gameplay is unexciting and voice acting is too bad for its own good.

That might seem surprising, but you really have to see it moving. It's unspeakably pretty. There's one bit where you're taken up a whole city tier, via a long platform lift, while having a conversation with Control as you climb past endless layers of catwalks, roads, and railways, all bustling with movement. You don't feel like the centre of the world. You can really believe the whole city is moving all the time, whether you're there or not. You might not be able to do much besides walk and drive around it, but it's one of the best cities I've ever seen, and I spent a fair amount of time just ...

A story-driven delivery game set in a stunning voxel metropolis.

Cloudpunk reaches higher and achieves more than I thought it would, barely missing a spot among the giants of its genre.

Cloudpunk is a game I’m glad exists. It’s a game I hope people see. It is definitely not for everyone, possibly even most people. But it leaves me very much hoping that Ion Lands gets to keep making games and gets to do so with a bigger budget as I suspect most of the issues I had with Cloudpunk would have been at least a little alleviated with a bigger budget. It is encouraging to see that the developers are still adding features and I’ll be following their work in the future.

Cloudpunk makes the gorgeous neo-future city of Nivalis the star of its story and uses a myriad of quirky NPCs to make it feel like a real place. A few of the gameplay mechanics fall short of engaging, but fans of the cyberpunk genre should enjoy the experience. The game is out now on PC for $19.99 with a 10% discount to $17.99 during launch week. It will come to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch at a later date.

With the game falling at around nine hours of gameplay, Cloudpunk is a quaint game that’s easy-going but also hits on some big themes in the cyberpunk genre. Cloudpunk is beautiful, humorous, and most importantly is a window through which to view the progress of society.

In the gameplay department, Cloudpunk simulates the boredom of a minimum wage job a little too well. Looking back, I’m happy to have played Cloudpunk, but I never want to sit through it again.

An amazing looking game with an interesting premise, let down by shallow gameplay and stuttered flow of story and dialogue

Cloudpunk delivers the look and feel of a cyberpunk city, it just doesn't fill the city with anything of interest. The story is okay and there's some side conversations to keep you amused, but once the novelty of driving around Nivalis wears off, you'll recognise that this is a game made entirely of fetch quests. The city looks gorgeous, it's just a shame it doesn't have more attractions.

The story of Cloudpunk is a mixture of numerous sci-fi tropes, which isn't an issue itself - the problem lies with how they're used. Cloudpunk has some of the most abysmal voice acting in recent memory, and it's the medium through which the story is told. Raina hears the stories of Nivalis through commlinks and calls, in seemingly endless conversations that become grating to listen to over time. It quickly becomes apparent that the long walkways of the city exist so that the player has somewhere to walk on while the cast talks at them in extended dialogue sequences that go on forever. Explorin...

Overall, the idea behind Cloudpunk has the potential to be a great cyberpunk game. Although the game's world is visually appealing and offers a limited opportunities for exploration, minor technical issues disrupt immersion, making it difficult to appreciate the few good elements that the game offers. Cloudpunk is a good game to pick up every once in a while for short sessions, but its lackluster story and monotonous dialogue may put off players from investing long hours into the game. In the end, Cloudpunk is able to capture the essence of a cyberpunk game despite its issues, but gameplay tha...