It’s come to my attention that there seems to be some (indie) games set in cyberpunk-ish settings with at least superficial similarities.

[Brigador](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VhMzf_7qyw) is a mech combat action game with a very ’80s synthwave album by Makeup and Vanity Set. In it you play a mercenary tasked by a Weyland-Yutani megacorp to blow up a post revolutionary former colony planet.

[Starsector](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAvo3S0MD-o) is an open-world top-down space RPG, has some superficial aesthetic similarities (mostly the color palette and character portraits), but also allows very [grimy cyberpunk activities](https://imgur.com/Z8A4Dhk).

[Quasimorph](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu_T0o-JRac) has you running a private military corporation, going around the Solar System on behest of megacorps to loot and destroy installations using clones while killing corporate drones, demons, and committing acts of cannibalism.

[E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWoI9oCqPfM) also has space demons, as the developers were very influenced by Warhammer 40,000, but a lot of the action takes place in traditional neon-soaked cyberpunk urbanscapes, unlike 40K’s more gothic industrial hive cities.

All of these games (Starsector excepted) contain a lot of blood and gore, a very human life is cheap attitude, and the opportunity to engage in unsavory behavior beyond merely killing armed people. (In Brigador there are little [civilians](https://brigador.fandom.com/wiki/Civilian) running everywhere.)

[Syndicate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM0d7VGFNsY) is probably a precursor to this, right down to the ultra-violence. Not set in space, though.

So does this constitute a subgenere or some other sub-category or otherwise distinct flavor of cyberpunk? Or am I just happening to be choosing games with gritty violent tones that are set in megacorp-dominated future space settings, that happen to also contain cyberpunk tropes?

1 Comment

  1. VikingBorealis

    How is syndicate and it’s sequels not just cyberpunk?

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