We were able to sneak in a quick visit to Capcom’s booth at PAX West 2025 and got a chance to check out their new Sci-Fi shooter, PRAGMATA.
Trapped in a lunar station on the moon by an AI gone rogue, it’s up to Hugh and his android companion Diana to survive, overcome the challenges of the AI that controls this lunar facility, and escape back to Earth.
PRAGMATA looks to be a fairly ambitious title, but how does it feel to play? Keep reading to find out more in our preview!
As a scientist, Hugh’s ability to do much against the ultra-armored robots in the lunar space station is pretty limited. In this demo, he’s accompanied by an android girl named Diana who is able to hack both the enemy robots as well as the environmental triggers in order to solve puzzles and give Hugh a fighting chance.
PRAGMATA reminded me a lot of Dead Space without the explicit horror twist, though it’s still quite suspenseful to experience.
An engineer/scientist in a locked down research facility armed with some weapons and battling against a slew of enemies is a basic premise that would remind gamers of all sorts of other games, even reaching as far as DOOM 3.
PRAGMATA brings the twist of being as much of a puzzle game as it is an action shooter with platforming elements. As I mentioned earlier, the robots are all covered in a super protective armor that renders the majority of Hugh’s weaponry fairly worthless on its own merit.
Sure, you could run around and plink at enemies with single shots from his pistol, which has six regenerating bullets that come back every few seconds, but it’d take you forever to actually kill anything with it by itself.
Instead, PRAGMATA turns up the heat by allowing you to focus your aim and simulteanously complete a minigame which allows Diana to remotely hack their defenses.
Once Diana successfully hacks an enemy, they are vulnerable for a few seconds, allowing Hugh to unload significant amounts of damage depending on which weapon you wish to use. Single shots with the pistol go from doing 10-20 to critting slightly over 100.
Hugh also has access to secondary weapons that have a limited amount of ammo. Rather than cycling through an arsenal while looking for ammo, you simply discard the weapon once its resources have been expended and grab a new one when you find it.
Weapons were scattered throughout the demo we played, though the one I used the most was a defensive weapon which trapped enemies in a force net that restricted their movement. Very curious to see what the rest of the weapons will look like once the full game is released.
During the demo, I found myself hacking doors and moving platforms, ultimately having to time my hacks so that I could run and jump off a platform as it moved in order to reach the next surface area.
This adds a sense of platforming to an already tense game. The platforming was a little bit floaty, but I think that’s to be expected given that you’re in a lunar facility on the moon and the enemy AI could disable or lower the gravity at any moment.
There’s always something satisfying when a game has an environment that seemingly doesn’t like you as the player instead of being expected to forget about it and just mindlessly run and gun.
After a series of platforming and fighting, I came across a door that had four locks on it that needed to be hacked. The first one was already powered and ready to be manipulated.
The other three required that I run around in a loop to restore power to them so that I could override all four locks which then opened a big bay door and led me into a giant empty room. Any seasoned gamer knows what that means: It’s boss time.
After a few seconds of cutscene, a giant mech flew in and started unloading a barrage of missles at me while Diana screamed instructions to dodge and move.
The net weapon worked great here as I was able to stall the boss so I could get around behind him, hack him, and attack the large battery tank on his back. After a nice little battle of attrition and a flurry of missle barrages, the mech was toast and I left eager to check out more once the game releases next year.
PRAGMATA is set to release sometime in 2026 for Windows PC (via Steam), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
