We had a quick look at Anshar Studios cyberpunk themed role-playing adventure game, Gamedec at Gamescom 2019 and came away impressed with the promise it held. Fast-forward almost one year and the team has had a successful Kickstarter campaign and as of yesterday released a demo build for its backers via Steam. We sank a couple of hours into the demo via two different playthroughs and feel impressed with how things are turning out. Take a look at our playthrough 1 on the PC in the video to get an idea of what you can expect.
Gamedec comes based on the sci-fi Polish writer Marcin Przybyłek‘s works. He created the Gamedec universe with a table-top style game alongside several novels. To explain in simple terms. A Gamedec, or should we say game detective works within the field of virtual reality gaming. The game is set in Warsaw during the 22nd century where most people spend copious amounts of time escaping from reality in VR worlds. Often these worlds are open to abuse and foul-play which is where the game detectives come into force. Using various skills and composure, the detectives sort out the mess people get themselves into. That’s pretty much the basics of the demo at least.
Rather than talk specifics to avoid spoilers (unless you watch the video), let’s just say the controller support gets a massive thumbs-up , (although we did get stuck on vehicle in the video) which means comfy couch play is an option. Well done Anshar for putting this in as it was absent during the Gamescom build. Visuals are fantastic using the top-down isometric-style viewpoint. Art style is also very cool, especially having each character (well most of them) with their own 2D art. Dialogue is impressive and it’s not until you try different approaches that you pick-up different nuances and humour in the writing. Be warned though, this isn’t an RPG-lite, which means players will engage in plentiful conversations albeit interesting ones.
In Gamedec, whilst you do have direct control over your character, you can’t randomly shoot people and cause mayhem. It’s not that kind of game. However, during a conversation should the situation arise, then conflict is an option as you see in our video. The idea of making deductions based on your investigations is good, and whilst it’s not so apparent in the demo, the full-game promises much more diversity and scope. We actually could have accessed a completely different virtual world than the Twisted & Perverted world we visited in the demo but this was demo-locked when entering.
Gamedec, then is looking pretty cool where you are the sum of your choices in this game. We thought it looked interesting back in 2019, and now after playing, feel much more confident Anshar Studios can deliver a really nice Cyberpunk-themed game world to explore when it releases later this year hopefully. A console version is planned for release at a later date (confirmed by Anshar Studios).
