It isn’t typically that I get to name a cyberpunk cityscape “cozy” however chill constructing sport Dystopika describes itself as “the darkish facet of cozy,” for those who discover neon-streaked skylines to be soothing. I’ve taken this metropolis constructing toy for a spin in its new demo, which you’ll be able to attempt for your self on Steam this week as half of the present Steam Subsequent Fest and it’s nice at churning out new candidates for my desktop wallpaper.
The closest touchstone for Dystopika is Townscaper, the stunning little constructing sport that is spawned a kind of micro-genre of different low-stress constructing video games launching within the subsequent 12 months. As a substitute of water, the canvas is an ocean of tiny lights in a nighttime skyline on which you’ll be able to construct huge skyscrapers stretching into the environment. Just like the others impressed by Townscaper, Dystopika says it has “no targets, no stress, no goals. Simply your creativeness.”
Dystopika is a bit much less tactile than Townscaper, the place I might click on to plop particular person blocks in or out of existence. As a substitute I place every to-be-skyscraper on the bottom after which use an arrow to tug it upwards to my desired top. I can then rotate or transfer it across the space freely and use my mouse to brush on lights throughout the constructing faces, producing a mixture of large lit ads, indicators, and logos.
Up to now although, it does not have fairly the identical stage of reactivity that I keep in mind from Townscaper, or that we have seen in trailers for Tiny Glade. My skyscrapers do not appear to sprout skyways or morph into new shapes primarily based on what I construct round them, and extra appear to react to their very own top, producing a little bit skirt of accent buildings close to their bases. In the meantime antennae and helipads and flying automobiles all pop in round taller buildings. The cable bridges and different particulars I’ve noticed in my builds have all generated fairly near the bottom in order that they shortly get misplaced within the fog or cluster of buildings quite than being an enormous visible function.
The place Dystopika goes in very onerous is its photograph mode. It is a toy for producing a whole suite of cool desktop backgrounds. There are such a lot of sliders and filters that I might get a dozen cool screenshots from a single construct. There are controls for the roll, pitch, and FOV of the digicam, depth settings for the fog and daylight, coloration of the sunshine, time of day, and fog top. And if you do not need that stage of granular management there is a listing of filters for straightforward visible pizzaz as an alternative.
It is bought some fairly slick sound design to promote the expertise too. Moody ambient synths fade out and in as I construct whereas digital blips and ticks punctuate my constructing and scrolling round every surroundings as I design.
The present demo for Dystopika offers you quarter-hour to construct, at which level you possibly can device round in photograph mode so long as you want or simply begin a recent metropolis. You possibly can obtain it to start out your individual folder of cyberpunk-y screenshots within the Steam Subsequent Fest demo till February 12. Dystopika hasn’t set a launch date but however plans to launch someday in 2024.
