I felt goodwill and hope for the future seeing Cyberlich and the Death Cult of Labor, an FPS that’s 60% HUD and looks like an Adult Swim cartoon where you smoke ‘deepweed’ to restore your health and blow clouds that spell out ‘doink’ and ‘loud’
Indie developer Polyhedra Games just has a single 30-second YouTube video and a Steam page showing off its upcoming FPS, Cyberlich and the Death Cult of Labor, but man, does it make an impression. The shooter boasts a knockout cartoony art style and anarchic sense of humor straight out of the classic Adult Swim days—an inspiration Polyhedra proudly lays claim to on its Steam page.
I’m a bit of a freak for shooters of the boomer or just generally indie variety, but there are getting to be so many that it takes some real zing to get me out of bed for one sight unseen. Cyberlich’s art style delivered that zing for me: It reminds me of when they let Genndy Tartakovsky off the leash to do something really gnarly like the Samurai Jack reboot or Primal.
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Seeing Cyberlich in action has that same really electric quality as Pizza Tower, Fallen Aces, or the upcoming Mouse: P.I. For Hire—it’s surprising and exciting to see a game look like this. I’m also a big fan of giant, extraneous HUDs like the ’90s classics or Cruelty Squad have, and Cyberlich’s delivers in spades. It’s presented as a little OS window, with x-out, full screen, and minimize buttons up top, huge mechanical elements and readouts obscuring your view, and the meaty hands of our hacker-barbarian protagonist holding a weapon in one hand with a recovery item in the other.
Those healing items are, naturally, burgers and enormous blunts. It’s a bit of a coin toss here: I could see Cyberlich’s wacky sensibility winding up genuinely funny, or tryhard and tedious, with absolutely no middle ground. On the dark path lies 2013 le epic Reddit win the internet secondhand embarrassment, or “cringe” as the kids say (I wish they’d stop). On the more virtuous path Cyberlich could wind up more like last year’s Anger Foot, which has a similar bombastic aesthetic that’s delivered with some real wit and charm.
The way the hacker smokes his blunts in one pull like Tom from Tom and Jerry before blowing a big cloud of smoke in the shape of the word “doink” has me thinking that Polyhedra is on the right track, and that Cyberlich will have the cleverness, the little things that make a funny game funny and not a chore. Right now, Cyberlich does not have any kind of demo or release window, but you can follow development and support Polyhedra by wishlisting the game on Steam.
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