As one of the youtube commenters said on the just-released Cypher trailer … casual elevator conversations aren’t our thing neither… but you can’t deny that the artwork behind this text-based adventure looks too good to be true. If the pixel-based games are overexploited nowadays what’s left?
A couple of Argentinian brothers are behind this eye-popping trailer (and homepage): Carlos & Javier Cabrera, who’ve decided to partially leave their respective gaming & web design careers to create Cypher (not to be confused with the sci-fi movie).
We have to admit that we’re quite intrigued by the project as a whole where you’re asked to play Dogeron Kenan, a “low-life criminal being chased by a group of mercenaries through NeoSushi City, Japan after a data-smuggling deal goes horrible wrong“.
NeoShushi may not sound like the most imaginative name for a Japanese city right? And maybe text-based gaming may not be the most appropriate way for a genre like cyberpunk… but it all depends on how the storytelling is built, and either way, you don’t get the feeling that Cypher is aesthetically ripping off any CPunk classic, if it is… then we certainly love the way these brothers seem to use its dirtiest side, that of Tamburini & Liberatore’s RanXerox.
Revisiting 80s and 90s text adventures is something that was missing for us and with Cypher these two may be on their way to create a hit, the good thing? It was released yesterday in 3 flavors (standard, collector, deluxe from $15 to $34), the even better thing is that they’ve put a promo in place for the Deluxe pack for a month. Enjoy it like we are!
