Cyberpunkdreams - A Text-Based RPG

Lots of words are coming to you on Steam in the form of the narative RPG Cyberpunkdreams.

Forget your empathy. Survive our future. Jack into cyberpunkdreams, a text-based RPG deep dive into Ohio's dystopian future

Live, survive and uncover a conspiracy in 2090s Cincinnati

Cambridge, UK - January 7, 2021 - Independent studio Late Night Games is proud to announce that their free-to-play narrative RPG cyberpunkdreams is coming to Steam this summer, with support for Windows, Mac & Linux. Set in a chaotic and dehumanizing alternate future, the game puts players on a deadly quest to the darkest corners of corporate-run Cincinnati - from the bleak wastelands surrounding the city, through the rain-slick squalor of its hazy neon streets, up to the glistening chrome spires at the city's opulent heart.

A continually expanding text-based RPG, cyberpunkdreams asks players to carve out their own identity in this dystopian cityscape. Through quests, stats, equipment choices and more, players can define their character as a smooth-talking socialite, a hawk-eyed purveyor of secrets, a cybernetically augmented street tough, a master hacker or anything in-between. Player choices are important, with real, lasting impact. On these mean streets, who you know and who you can tap for favors is almost as important as who you are.

cyberpunkdreams boasts over 1.6 million words of interactive prose, delivered through thousands of interlinked story vignettes filled with meaningful decisions and stylish illustrations. A single small choice in one scene can snowball into an unexpected sequence of consequences, making cyberpunkdreams' bleak vision of the future feel all the more alive and unpredictable as it continually expands.

In development since 2013, Late Night Games plan to support the game through regular free content updates, adding new areas to explore, new story arcs to discover and more characters to befriend, deceive or destroy, along with new opportunities to develop the skills necessary to tackle bigger, more dangerous jobs. Life in 2090s Cincinnati moves fast, and doesn't stop until you're bagged and tagged.

Designed to be accessible to interactive fiction newcomers, yet deep enough for veterans, cyberpunkdreams takes an organic (and sometimes cybernetic) approach to character development. Every challenge, win or lose, defines your skills and teaches potentially painful lessons. Every change in outfit changes how the world perceives you, and very little about your character is permanently set in stone - not even your gender. cyberpunkdreams takes a flexible approach to sexuality and identity, as you'd expect from the 2090s.

More details are available on www.cyberpunkdreams.com. The full game will be free-to-play on Steam, supported by optional microtransactions.

More information.

Heh-heh. Anyone old enough to remember MUDs on Compuserve?

On a serious note: there seems to be a renaissance of text-driven games.
IF is having a long niche following for decades, lots of new roguelikes such as Caves of Qud proudly use ASCII and text, The Fallen London series spawned the excellent Sunless-games, experimental narrative games such as 80 Days are blurring games and non-linear literature, Tin Man Games is steadily releasing the excellent Choices That Matter CYOA-series. . . oh my!

Now, all we need is a society that is able to read and we are good.

Originally Posted by duerer
Heh-heh. Anyone old enough to remember MUDs on Compuserve?

On a serious note: there seems to be a renaissance of text-driven games.
IF is having a long niche following for decades, lots of new roguelikes such as Caves of Qud proudly use ASCII and text, The Fallen London series spawned the excellent Sunless-games, experimental narrative games such as 80 Days are blurring games and non-linear literature, Tin Man Games is steadily releasing the excellent Choices That Matter CYOA-series. . . oh my!

Now, all we need is a society that is able to read and we are good.

Ah yes, the good ol' days, I remember them well. Days when people who were good at reading and considered themselves superior readers to lesser readers would exclaim loudly that "The kind of books I read don't tend to have large colourful pictures in them!"

Depending on the online requirements, I might give this one a whirl. I'll at least check out the thoughts once it's out and available.

I just did an interview with a start-up yesterday that is doing some kind of storytelling game. One question they asked me is how interested I would be in paying for "premium choices", and my answer was not interested at all. I play a ton of text based games (including lots of what used to be called text adventures) so I've had this on my radar and my Steam wishlist for a while. But the free to play and endlessly expanding thing makes me nervous. I'd rather pay for a game than get it for "free" and then have content locked behind paywalls.

Oh wow. Just wishlisted this. I love these text based games and since I haven't seen a recently developed MUD in a while the whole Free to Play/endless content possibility is a huge plus for me. And it's online? Huh!