Jogging towards the objective with your team, you instinctively break off to cover the flank when, suddenly, the artificial sun goes down and rain starts to pour. High-voltage flashbulbs go off simulating lightning, their flashes providing sporadic glimpses of the battlefield as your adrenaline spikes.

Illumination from your helmet display starts to get in the way of your night vision in the near-total darkness; you decide to lift up your water-streaked visor for a better view. You’re taking up position near the objective, knee deep in a patch of swamp water infested with stinging nettles. Only the sound of droplets hitting carbon fiber is audible while you scan the dim horizon.

Soon after you hear distant gunfire, your team begins to engage the enemy, kicking off a dangerous game of search-and-destroy in the shadows.

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Cyborg Seppuku is a delightful game vignette in the vein of old LucasArts adventure point-n-click titles by Malte Burup’s Outerzone Studio. A quick introduction sequence sets up the premise: you’re in the shoes of a man out to find his wife by ejecting his implanted augments through various clever puzzles. The game offers roughly half an hour of cyber-sleuthing set to a Vangelis style soundtrack without resorting to many combine-the-trout-with-the-monkey-wrench shenanigans. Now, speaking of suspicious red herring adjacent maritime life…

Cyberpunk is a complicated genre for me, it’s an effective literary approach that, when wielded gracefully, cuts through reflexive denial of criticism via an offset critique of contemporary trends we passively accept every day. When over-used, it begins to shift further towards a meaningless neon pastiche, a self-indulgent crying out for the present that never was instead of a call to build a better future.

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