Neuromancer is one of those types of books that just changes how you think, written in a time before the internet fully existed, and yet we still haven’t quite reached that “cyberspace” era yet. Dex is a kickstarter funded game that is attempting to channel that look and feel into a new game, for a new audience.
Dex is a 2D, side-scrolling RPG that has two intertwining realities – the physical world and cyberspace. Naturally, you’ll be able to choose between both worlds when it comes to solving problems, and while the game takes influences from many other games, problem solving is being devised to feel natural and authentic.
The game is being developed by Dreadlocks, an indie studio based out of Prague, Czech Republic. The team is made up of only three members, while the rest of the staffers are external freelancers who contribute to the project as they can. Naturally, these guys are just oozing passion to make a true cyberpunk game inspired by the classics.
You can view their kickstarter pitch below:
The game world within Dex is described as a semi open world RPG, meaning the world will not be a fully explorable sandbox like Skyrim, but it will be a great deal of connected hubs, areas and cities. Their goal is to make the world within Dex, a city called Harbor Prime, feel like a living 2D city, filled with shops, NPCs, markets, slums, and so on.
One of the coolest things about Dex are the hand-drawn environments and characters, and the downright synth-filled music. Seriously, the samples they’ve shown simply scream cyberpunk to me, and are the type of music I frequently listen to in my personal time.
The biggest difference between Dex and other cyberpunk games is that hacking will not be a mini-game, but rather a complete alternative to solving problems or puzzles you encounter. Once you jump into cyberspace, you’re free to do almost anything, whether it be burning out enemy chips to disabling and or overloading sentries, or door locks.
The hacking system itself has a lot of awesome visuals to represent the player and the dangers within cyberspace, like trojans, spam, viruses, and ICE, or the intrusion countermeasure electronics. If you encounter too many of these baddies, you’ll have to return to your physical body as letting your avatar succumb to the dangers of cyberspace will make you flatline.
Dex will feature full voice work from professional voice actors, music from Karel Antonin (he’s composed for games and film), and professional proofreading by Andy Wolfendon (a writer a Blizzard), as the team doesn’t speak English natively. Dreadlocks have promised that instead of giving you more content in volume, they’ll be providing more memorable, meaty side-missions. Hopefully this means less fetch quests and more intense experiences.
The game’s alpha will be finished around February of next year, so the final release will probably not be that far behind. We’ve contacted Dreadlocks to see if you  can still pledge via their website, in case you missed funding the game on their kickstarter.
