It seems it has become a requirement for every cyberpunk game to be broken, dismembered, and poorly cobbled on release. It almost feels like every new one tries to upstage the faulty wiring of the one before. SlavicPunk takes that rusted circuitry to new levels, setting the busted bar to lofty heights. Even after two extensive patches, the game feels like an indescribably failed Slav squat after drinking six liters of homemade vodka that eked out of sludge ridden, corroded pipes, giving it a lovely, brownish tint, and that memorable acid aftertaste.

Let’s get the “good” things out of the way first, there’s not many of them. As the store page says, the game is based on the works of a renowned Polish sci-fi and fantasy author, Michał Gołkowski. I’ll assume his books are written better than this generic cyberpunk epitaph that doesn’t seem to present the story of Yanus, a hard boiled private detective, that well. I haven’t read them, but he had to have become renowned somehow, right?

As a character, Yanus ticks all the grizzled cyberpunk protagonist checkmarks, jaded, depressed, strung up, augmented, and hung up on the wrong woman. What little story comes out of this is entirely forgettable, underwhelming, and predictable, not in small parts due to the game’s very short length. It’s also poorly explained or elaborated upon, what little dialogues there are pop up at the most inopportune times, and without any good visual or sound cues, so they’re easy to miss. I quite liked the ending sequence, that was shot well, and looks like some more brain storming was put into it.

I wish SlavicPunk at least had its visuals, environmental storytelling, and world design equipped to deal with a complete lack of story substance, but alas, that’s not the case. There are traces, smells, and whiffs of its Slavic dystopia, wafting around what little neon signs it has going for it, but it ultimately looks and feels like a poorly rustled up cyberpunk asset package. Why this game “recommends” a 3080Ti and a Ryzen 7 is absolutely beyond mortal ken. Unless the developers made a buffer zone for all the squalid optimizations that seem to be the topic of many reviews.

The gameplay revolves around you dredging through The City looking for shops, shooting up random mobs, and enjoying frequent staggers and frame drops, and mission areas. Your arsenal consists of five different weapons, from a revolver to a large railgun. They can’t be bought, all are found in the world, but I have absolutely no idea where. The only two openable things in the entire game are chests, which grant consumables, and some kind of drones, which when shot give something. I didn’t even realize I had them until I went to the weapon shop, that’s how well explained almost all things are in-game.

Upgrades for weapons and yourself are the only things that can be bought, but as with everything else, they mostly don’t work. Mine stopped working about 40% through the game when each upgrade I bought just said “can’t install upgrade”, and it never fixed itself. I also managed to find some since I had them in the inventory, but didn’t buy them for sure, so I’m going to guess it’s from those repair drones. Or chests. Or, you know, it could just be another random glitch.

Combat is, to put it mildly, a laggy, frustrating exercise of unresponsive mechanics, the worst jank, and half-baked ideas. Rolling and dodging are your evasive options, and use stamina, with rolling not giving any immunity to being shot. There’s also a crouch, which I used maybe once to go under a broken pipe. Why is there a crouch button in a top-down shooter? Enemy variety is small, and it just kind of blends into the whole generic schtick the game has going for it. They frequently spawn out of thin air on all sides, and somehow have better range than you. Oh, and have grenades, you don’t. Shielded enemies are the worst nightmare, and an enemy that superbly showcases the half-bakedness of it all.

Yanus also randomly stops shooting, active reload mechanics can glitch out, and he also automatically switches to melee when an enemy is close to you, preventing you from using a weapon. Your Battlehack ability, which consists of two hacks, is one of the most awkward and unpleasant to use abilities I’ve witnessed in a long time, especially if you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard. Camera and the overall controls are nowhere near as responsive as they should be for how fast the game wants to play it out.

Apart from the bugs and glitches already mentioned, here’s a few I’ve encountered even after the patches. Your health gets reset to base whenever you exit or change a mission area, forcing you to heal, enemies you stun with the Battlehack have an unpleasant characteristic of still turning to face you, AI is terrible, I’ve managed to soft lock the game on two separate occasions by abusing the hacking mechanic, achievements are broken, and it’s still prone to crashes.

Additional curiosities are inability to change keybindings, non-existent notifications for pretty much anything, from pickups to low health notifications, a messy and tiny UI even with the UI scale slider, and lack of coherent tutorials, or any for that matter. There are also some minigames shoehorned into all this, hacking and some kind of small puzzle to restore power. Both feel completely unnecessary, an afterthought. Instead, a map of some kind would be nice, any kind, I’d settle for one drawn on smudged toilet paper and added as a separate download so I can print it.

I have to give some credit to the cutscenes, the above mentioned final one particularly, and the voice overs, which even if bordering on cringe, do a good job with the Slavic vibe. Everything else, not so much. This looks and feels like it’s been thought out and made on a dare, after a particularly wild party somewhere in the Balkan forests, where the only heating options were six kegs of, you guessed it, vodka.

This would have benefited immensely from an Early Access release instead of a full one, because now, it’s just a proof of concept, maybe. As one review mentions, and I quote, “Cool IP, but sadly you wasted it. Can you make this game again, but properly this time?” The asking price of 23€ for it is just sublimely ridiculous, there’s more fun to be had in a bottle of vodka for less.

More off the beaten path games, wonders and failures at the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Grab some blankets, and better booze at Summit Reviews.

It seems it has become a requirement for every cyberpunk game to be broken, dismembered, and poorly cobbled on release. It almost feels like every new one tries to upstage the faulty wiring of the one before. SlavicPunk takes that rusted circuitry to new levels, setting the busted bar to lofty heights. Even after two extensive patches, the game feels like an indescribably failed Slav squat after drinking six liters of homemade vodka that eked out of sludge ridden, corroded pipes, giving it a lovely, brownish tint, and that memorable acid aftertaste. Let’s get the “good” things out of the way first, there’s not many of them. As the store page says, the game is based on the works of a renowned Polish sci-fi and fantasy author, Michał Gołkowski. I’ll assume his books are written better than this generic cyberpunk epitaph that doesn’t seem to present the story of Yanus, a hard boiled private detective, that well. I haven’t read them, but he had to have become renowned somehow, right? As a character, Yanus ticks all the grizzled cyberpunk protagonist checkmarks, jaded, depressed, strung up, augmented, and hung up on the wrong woman. What little story comes out of this is entirely forgettable, underwhelming, and predictable, not in small parts due to the game’s very short length. It’s also poorly explained or elaborated upon, what little dialogues there are pop up at the most inopportune times, and without any good visual or sound cues, so they’re easy to miss. I quite liked the ending sequence, that was shot well, and looks like some more brain storming was put into it. I wish SlavicPunk at least had its visuals, environmental storytelling, and world design equipped to deal with a complete lack of story substance, but alas, that’s not the case. There are traces, smells, and whiffs of its Slavic dystopia, wafting around what little neon signs it has going for it, but it ultimately looks and feels like a poorly rustled up cyberpunk asset package. Why this game “recommends” a 3080Ti and a Ryzen 7 is absolutely beyond mortal ken. Unless the developers made a buffer zone for all the squalid optimizations that seem to be the topic of many reviews. The gameplay revolves around you dredging through The City looking for shops, shooting up random mobs, and enjoying frequent staggers and frame drops, and mission areas. Your arsenal consists of five different weapons, from a revolver to a large railgun. They can’t be bought, all are found in the world, but I have absolutely no idea where. The only two openable things in the entire game are chests, which grant consumables, and some kind of drones, which when shot give something. I didn’t even realize I had them until I went to the weapon shop, that’s how well explained almost all things are in-game. Upgrades for weapons and yourself are the only things that can be bought, but as with everything else, they mostly don’t work. Mine stopped working about 40% through the game when each upgrade I bought just said “can’t install upgrade”, and it never fixed itself. I also managed to find some since I had them in the inventory, but didn’t buy them for sure, so I’m going to guess it’s from those repair drones. Or chests. Or, you know, it could just be another random glitch. Combat is, to put it mildly, a laggy, frustrating exercise of unresponsive mechanics, the worst jank, and half-baked ideas. Rolling and dodging are your evasive options, and use stamina, with rolling not giving any immunity to being shot. There’s also a crouch, which I used maybe once to go under a broken pipe. Why is there a crouch button in a top-down shooter? Enemy variety is small, and it just kind of blends into the whole generic schtick the game has going for it. They frequently spawn out of thin air on all sides, and somehow have better range than you. Oh, and have grenades, you don’t. Shielded enemies are the worst nightmare, and an enemy that superbly showcases the half-bakedness of it all. Yanus also randomly stops shooting, active reload mechanics can glitch out, and he also automatically switches to melee when an enemy is close to you, preventing you from using a weapon. Your Battlehack ability, which consists of two hacks, is one of the most awkward and unpleasant to use abilities I’ve witnessed in a long time, especially if you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard. Camera and the overall controls are nowhere near as responsive as they should be for how fast the game wants to play it out. Apart from the bugs and glitches already mentioned, here’s a few I’ve encountered even after the patches. Your health gets reset to base whenever you exit or change a mission area, forcing you to heal, enemies you stun with the Battlehack have an unpleasant characteristic of still turning to face you, AI is terrible, I’ve managed to soft lock the game on two separate occasions by abusing the hacking mechanic, achievements are broken, and it’s still prone to crashes. Additional curiosities are inability to change keybindings, non-existent notifications for pretty much anything, from pickups to low health notifications, a messy and tiny UI even with the UI scale slider, and lack of coherent tutorials, or any for that matter. There are also some minigames shoehorned into all this, hacking and some kind of small puzzle to restore power. Both feel completely unnecessary, an afterthought. Instead, a map of some kind would be nice, any kind, I’d settle for one drawn on smudged toilet paper and added as a separate download so I can print it. I have to give some credit to the cutscenes, the above mentioned final one particularly, and the voice overs, which even if bordering on cringe, do a good job with the Slavic vibe. Everything else, not so much. This looks and feels like it’s been thought out and made on a dare, after a particularly wild party somewhere in the Balkan forests, where the only heating options were six kegs of, you guessed it, vodka. This would have benefited immensely from an Early Access release instead of a full one, because now, it’s just a proof of concept, maybe. As one review mentions, and I quote, “Cool IP, but sadly you wasted it. Can you make this game again, but properly this time?” The asking price of 23€ for it is just sublimely ridiculous, there’s more fun to be had in a bottle of vodka for less. [quote]More off the beaten path games, wonders and failures at the [url=https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/37838664/][b]Cabinet of Curiosities[/b][/url].[/quote] [quote]Grab some blankets, and better booze at [url=https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/41449676/][b]Summit Reviews[/b][/url].[/quote]