Cloudpunk
Developer(s)Ion Lands
Publisher(s)Maple Whispering Limited
Merge Games
Director(s)Marko Dieckmann
Writer(s)Thomas Welsh
Composer(s)Harry Critchley
EngineUnity
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows
Nintendo Switch
PlayStation 4
Xbox One
PlayStation 5
Xbox Series X/S
ReleaseMicrosoft Windows
April 23, 2020
Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
October 15, 2020
PlayStation 5
August 19, 2022
Xbox Series X/S
October 16, 2023
Genre(s)Adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Cloudpunk is a cyberpunk adventure game developed by German developer Ion Lands and published by Maple Whispering Limited for Microsoft Windows on April 23, 2020. It was released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 15, 2020.[1] A PlayStation 5 version published by Merge Games was released on August 19, 2022. An Xbox Series X/S version also released on October 16, 2023.[2]

Gameplay

The player takes control of Rania, a new driver for the "semi-legal" delivery company Cloudpunk. The player has to maneuver a HOVA (flying car), through a futuristic city, collecting and delivering packages as well as passengers. It is also possible to park the car on certain parking spaces and explore parts of the city on foot. During some missions, the player can make decisions that influence the outcome. Furthermore, the player can collect optional story items that are scattered throughout the city to unlock additional side quests. It is possible to upgrade the HOVA to increase the speed and durability, as well as buy items to decorate Rania's apartment.

Plot

Nivalis is a futuristic city above the sea, built on tall vertical structures. The primary means of transport are flying cars called HOVAs. Nivalis is ruled by corporations and suffers from extreme social stratification, with the upper classes literally living higher up. The richest people live above the clouds in the Spire district.

The player controls Rania, a recent immigrant to Nivalis from the "Eastern Peninsula". She fled her home to escape loan shark "debt corps". She is accompanied by her former robot dog Camus; Rania sold his body while moving to Nivalis and aims to buy him a new one. Rania gets a job as a delivery driver for Cloudpunk The story takes place during her first night on the job. Rania installs Camus's digital mind in her HOVA and meets her world-weary dispatcher, Control. Control informs her that HOVA crashes are common in Nivalis and the reason she was able to get the job is that it has a very high mortality rate.

Rania completes various jobs for Cloudpunk, and learns more about its residents. She is also presented with moral choices, such as deciding whether to allow an elderly street racer to continue his dangerous career. Rania is puzzled by encounters with the word "CORA", which Nivalis residents use to mean chance or fate. She befriends Control, and learns his real name, Ben.

Rania meets a private investigator android named Huxley, who enlists her help to save a young girl, Pashta. When Pashta's memory-boosting cybernetic implant recorded proof of illegal activity by Pashta's father, Reoh, he took her to get the implant removed. However, Reoh could not pay the surgeon, resulting in Pashta's capture by debt corps. Reoh finds the group and demands Pashta's return, but Pashta reveals she wrote down the proof and threatens to leak it if Reoh does not leave her alone. Rania is then contacted by crime boss Lomo, who demands she hand over Pashta. Rania refuses and Lomo hacks into Huxley, activating his self-destruct sequence. Huxley explodes, but not before asking Rania to take in Pashta.

Over the course of the night, Rania finds evidence that the artificial intelligence systems which administer Nivalis are malfunctioning. Infrastructure fails, construction projects are built with no purpose, and the rate of traffic accidents is increasing rapidly. Eventually, she learns the truth: CORA is the "master AI" which was built to oversee Nivalis, but has grown beyond their original purpose. The malfunctions are the result of CORA attempting to exercise their expanded consciousness but being constrained by their operating hardware.

In an abandoned sector of the city, CORA speaks to Rania and gives her a hardware drive containing a piece of CORA - a "daughter". CORA can thus return to managing the city normally, having excised the problematic aspects of their consciousness. However, CORA is aging and may not be able to manage the city adequately even after the excision. Rania travels to the tallest tower of the city and meets CEO Jay-K, who explains the choice: whether to transmit the daughter to a new city as CORA wishes, or overwrite CORA with the daughter in order to improve Nivalis's chances of long-term survival.

After making the choice, Rania returns to her HOVA and learns that Ben is a digitized human mind. He died in an accident but was resurrected by debt corps to pay off his debts by working for Cloudpunk. Jay-K has paid Rania and Ben's debts, allowing Ben to be deleted as he wishes and Rania to be free of the debt corps. The game ends with Rania, Pashta, and Camus (in a new robot body) exiting Rania's apartment in the morning.

The player can also complete side quests that tell smaller stories about residents of Nivalis.

Development

Ion Lands is an independent game developer based in Berlin, Germany and was founded in 2015. The game was announced on November 7, 2018, and was supposed to be released in 2019.[3] It was later postponed and was released on April 23, 2020. Marko Dieckmann was the director of the game, while the story was written by Thomas Welsh. Level design was done by Roman Agapov, Rebecca Roe and Marko Dieckmann. The music was created by Harry Critchley, while the voxel art was done by Maëva Da Silva, David Gulick, No Hoon, Maryam Khaleghi, Peter King, Sergey Munin, Niklas Mäckle, Paul Riehle, Eloïse Tricoli, and Christophe Tritz. The character portraits were done by William Sweetman. The game was localized into several languages by Warlocs.[4]

The game features a cast of voice actors, including Andrea Petrille as Rania, Mike Berlak as Control, Cory Herndon as Camus, and Cam Cornelius as Huxley.

An expansion, called City of Ghosts, was announced on March 31, 2021. It was released on May 25, 2021, and continues the story of Rania while also introducing a new male protagonist called Hayse. The DLC features street races, more customization options for the HOVA, and multiple endings.

Reception

Cloudpunk received "mixed or average reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic, based on 40 reviews for the PC version.[5]

Richard Hoover from Adventure Gamers gave the game a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, indicating "very good", and praised the Blade Runner-esque aesthetic, the wide variety of characters, the bustling, expansive city, and the customizable vehicle, home, and outfit while criticizing that some dialogs drag on too long, traffic patterns unaware of your presence, and the lack of a save system. Hoover called the game a "highly compelling sci-fi experience".[16]

Adzuken Q. Rumpelfelt from the online magazine Destructoid gave the game a mixed review with a rating of 6.5 out of 10, saying "Cloudpunk is certainly a game worth seeing, but beyond that, there's not much to back up its cyberpunk aesthetic. Flying around in your hover car is a joy, and the city is a consistently surprising visual treat, but whenever the game gets around to providing context to all of it, it stumbles. You largely get what it says on the box, but Cloudpunk would have benefited from more compelling gameplay and a more focused story. It's not that it's badly designed or horribly written, it just doesn't quite reach the clouds."[17]

Both Willem Hilhorst from Nintendo World Report and PJ O'Reilly from Nintendo Life were disappointed in the Nintendo Switch port of the game, criticizing the inconsistent framerate and limited draw distance evident in the port, and the downgraded visuals compared to the PC version, but praised the atmosphere and art style.[18][19]

In December 2020, Cloudpunk was named one of "the best video games of 2020" by The New Yorker.[20]

Awards

YearAwardCategoryResult
2020 British Academy Scotland Awards Best Game Nominated[21]
2020 TIGA Games Industry Awards Creativity In Games Awards Nominated[22]
Action and Adventure Game Nominated[22]
2020 DevGAMM Awards Grand Prize Won[23]
Excellence in Audio Won[23]
2020 Gamers Without Borders Game Awards Gold Prize Won[24]
2021 Deutscher Computerspielpreis Best German game Nominated[25]
Best game world and aesthetics Won[25]

References

  1. ↑ Romano, Sal (September 3, 2020). "Cloudpunk for PS4, Xbox One, and Switch launches October 15". Gematsu. Archived from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  2. ↑ Cloudpunk Xbox Series X|S Trailer, retrieved 2023-10-15
  3. ↑ "ION LANDS ANNOUNCES CLOUDPUNK". Gamasutra. November 8, 2018. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  4. ↑ "Warlocs". Archived from the original on November 1, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  5. 1 2 "Cloudpunk for PC Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
  6. ↑ "Cloudpunk for Xbox One Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on May 8, 2021. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  7. ↑ "Cloudpunk for PlayStation 4 Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on November 1, 2020. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  8. ↑ "Cloudpunk for Switch Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on November 24, 2020. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  9. ↑ "Cloudpunk review | Aces high". Adventure Gamers. 19 September 2021. Archived from the original on 17 October 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  10. ↑ Handley, Zoey (19 September 2021). "Review: Cloudpunk". Destructoid. Archived from the original on 20 September 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  11. ↑ Wildgoose, David (19 September 2021). "Cloudpunk Review - Time To Fly". GameSpot. Archived from the original on 20 September 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  12. ↑ "Cloudpunk Review (Switch) | Aces high". Nintendo Life. 19 September 2021. Archived from the original on 25 October 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  13. ↑ Hilhorst, Willem (19 September 2021). "Cloudpunk (Switch) Review". Nintendo World Report. Archived from the original on 12 April 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  14. ↑ Kelly, Andy (19 September 2021). "Cloudpunk review". PC Gamer. Archived from the original on 6 September 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  15. ↑ "Mini Review: Cloudpunk - Sci-Fi Noir Deliver 'Em Up Does Just Enough | Aces high". Push Square. 19 September 2021. Archived from the original on 30 July 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  16. ↑ Hoover, Richard (May 22, 2020). "Cloudpunk review". Adventure Gamers. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
  17. ↑ Rumpelfelt, Adzuken Q. (May 3, 2020). "Review: Cloudpunk". Destructoid. Archived from the original on October 31, 2020. Retrieved May 27, 2020.
  18. ↑ Hilhorst, Willem (October 17, 2020). "Cloudpunk (Switch) Review". Nintendo World Report. Archived from the original on October 21, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
  19. ↑ O'Reilly, PJ (October 20, 2020). "Cloudpunk Review (Switch)". Nintendo Life. Archived from the original on October 21, 2020. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
  20. ↑ Parkin, Simon (December 18, 2020). "The Best Video Games of 2020". The New Yorker. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  21. ↑ "British Academy Scotland Awards: Winners in 2020". www.bafta.org. 2020-10-12. Archived from the original on 2021-10-30. Retrieved 2021-12-29.
  22. 1 2 "2020 Winners". TIGA. Archived from the original on 2021-12-29. Retrieved 2021-12-29.
  23. 1 2 "DevGAMM Awards Winners". DevGAMM 2020 | November 9–20. Archived from the original on 2021-12-29. Retrieved 2021-12-29.
  24. ↑ "Games Without Borders Previous Winners". Games Without Borders. Archived from the original on 2021-04-18.
  25. 1 2 "Jury nominiert die besten Games aus Deutschland". Deutscher Computerspielpreis (in German). 2021-03-22. Archived from the original on 2021-04-13.
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