Null State

Best kind of grimy, pulpy fiction wrapped in a hacker sim UI. Game play is fairly smooth and the world building is great.

My budget is really thin right now but I went out of my way to buy this because it's absolutely criminal that this game only has one total review. I found the demo for this game in the most recent Next Fest and it very quickly became one of my most anticipated titles. Stylish as hell game with a genuinely unique turn-based combat system. Excited to play more. Please give it a try if you're able.

Once upon a time, all of the world's technologies failed all at once, in an event that came to be known as Obsidian Wednesday. In the aftermath, life became ugly, brutish, and short for all but the richest and most powerful. The world is now run by the 'verts', mega-corps whose influence and control seem insurmountable. You are a wannabe-hacker dredge coming from the ruins of California, armed with a computer and ready to stir things up. Null State is a game about building community and trust in a world that has little of both, and your key to success lies in your hacking skills. Hacking, in this game, is a sort of dungeon crawler hybrid where you infiltrate networks and fight off ICs looking to impede your progress. You fight using a command deck with some starter weapons based on your chosen character background, and your weapons are a series of block shapes that can be arranged for optimal storage, similar to a inventory storage system in other games. There's no need to pick any specific background over the other, as the enemies you face will be made of blocks themselves and are defeated by bricking all available blocks on the enemy using your selected attack patterns. However, …

If you like smart, wordy science-fiction with crisp pixel art, enjoy fitting things in boxes and discovering rare little indie gems, give this game a whirl. It lives somewhere at the intersection of Tetris, Battleship and Shadowrun - as it turns out, that's a great place to be. The art is polished, the animation is kinetic, the tactile feedback is delicious - in the kind of way you only get when someone knows exactly what they're doing. The cyberpunk world is delightfully dystopian, fleshed out and packed with personality, and the dialog is snappy, vivid and exciting. Even the music is good. If you want a tutorial to get started, don't forget to click on "How to play" on the menu before starting the game, but you can just as well barrel in, shuffle around pressing buttons and learn from your mistakes. The gameplay turns out to be very easy, but I enjoyed piecing it together and the story is strong enough that you'll keep coming back for more regardless. It will become obvious to anyone playing that this is a dark horse on a budget, for a very specific type of sci-fi fan. Whichever Youtuber becomes the first to put this game on their radar will reap the benefits of this sleeper hi…