Cloudpunk – PC Review

Welcome to the cyberpunk city of Nivalis, you are Rania, and you have a new job. Your job is to deliver packages around the city in your hovercar.

On your travels, you will meet all different kinds of people, Artificial Intelligence and Androids. Everyone has a story. These will unfold over the course of the night and it is the course you are on. Tighten your seatbelt and enjoy this bumpy ride!

Cloudpunk is developed ION Lands and published by Maple Whispering Limited. I was lucky enough to receive a code for this game from the publishers themselves. However, you can buy it yourself on Steam for £16.99. On first thoughts on watching the trailer, I just wanted to get straight into playing Cloudpunk and couldn’t wait for it to download.

It is different from what I usually play so I thought that this would be a welcomed addition to my library. And so, it was. The first 20 minutes of gameplay was hard to get into as there is a load of narration and it is easy to get distracted.

The lack of tutorials means that it is difficult to know what you need to do, so you must figure that out for yourself as you go along. For example, I had no idea at all where I needed to park, so I just tried ramming it in everywhere! (pun intended.)

I found the game very dark on my screen, but I streamed the game and the viewers and myself watching it back, it is very clear and bright, compared to when I played the game. That also could have been to the room I was in having an exceedingly high light exposure due to the position of the sun and time of day.

Gameplay within itself had quite simple mechanics. It is your typical RPG game, you run around, talking to people, finding things out to help you within the game or give you side quests to do, after a little while it started to feel a little repetitive.

Everything was smooth, me trying to remember the buttons was a bit difficult so I did crash quite a few times! But the flying of the vehicle was a little sluggish. I feel that is because the developers were trying to get the hovercraft feel of the movement though, which if they were, it was a great added touch.

The map was a little confusing at times because I kept running past the objective as it wasn’t very clear where I had to be at certain times. Throughout the game, there are some very witty comments that are made within the dialogue, which the text for the subtitles could be a bit quicker as it scrolls. Some of the NPCs that you get side quests from, have fun comments, I even found a dominatrix whilst on my travels!

It was nice to see a game with voxel graphics (sort of Minecraft style visuals). It was also very dark with a sci-fi feel, which is what you would expect for a cyberpunk-style game. The game has a soundtrack that you can buy as DLC on Steam. Some parts are very 80’s synth, whilst others are ambient cyber low-fi sort of. It’s hard to describe. ​

Overall thoughts are, I would definitely recommend this as I think that it is a great little indie game and is quite fun. It gets addictive!

I would give Cloudpunk a 7/10. There are a few little things that could be added to make it just that bit smoother. There were a few little bug out moments and glitches that could be ironed out. These being fixed would definitely raise the score for myself. But I do think it is a good game with some real potential, ironing out a few bits would make it better. There is a possibility to review again and to be continued on stream… watch this space!