Demo shines light on Cosmic Void's Neon Hearts City

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Point-and-click cyberpunk adventure unveiled by the creator of The Corruption Within and Twilight Oracle

Cosmic Void is right back at it. After not one, not two, but THREE games released in 2024 (Twilight Oracle, Tachyon Dreams Anthology, Devil's Hideout), the prolific indie developer has now set its sights on a brand new game, the upcoming cyberpunk mystery Neon Hearts City.

With a title like that, if you imagined the game will be set in a dystopian metropolis, you'd be absolutely right. Taking place in the "grungy heart of a cyberpunk future," the post-war world of Neon Hearts City is one where extinct animals like cats have been synthetically resurrected and androids long to be more human but are "offered as sacrifices" instead. The city at street level is "all gutter and grime," while out at sea the mysterious Berwyn Tower "harbors secrets that could unravel the fabric of civilization." And above all of that, as a warning for everyone to see, drifts Roark, a "colossal airship where thought criminals face imprisonment." Against this already miserable backdrop, a teenager named Audrey has been missing for three weeks. Her mother doesn't think the police are actually trying to solve the case, so she hires the ramen-loving private investigator Elijah Crow to investigate. Before long, Crow "uncovers a sinister plot targeting society’s outcasts," and it's up to players to help untangle the "dark conspiracy" that weaves all of these seemingly disparate elements together. 

Cosmic Void has been quite diverse in its use of different aesthetics over the years, but Neon Hearts City hews closest to Twilight Oracle, with its third-person perspective, single-screen environments, simple point-and-click interface, classic-styled adventuring and retro-but-not-TOO-retro pixel art. With a handy quick-travel map for getting around easily, there will be a variety of ever-increasing number of locations to explore in and around the city, populated by different characters to question, "hunted-down androids" to assist, items to collect and puzzles to solve along the way. 

There is no target release date for Neon Hearts City just yet, but you can begin your search for the missing Audrey right away as a playable demo is available now to download from Steam or itch.io for Windows PC.

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