Patrick Hoey's Blog

Current iteration of my game entitled “CityPunk: A Hacker’s Story” slated initially for PC release with Android/IOS support on the roadmap. CityPunk is a 2D top-down hacking adventure game set in an alternate cyberpunk future.

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
– William Gibson, Neuromancer

High Level Concept

CityPunk is influenced by games such as Shadowrun for the SNES, Burn Cycle, DreamWeb, Rise of the Dragon, and Snatcher for PC. Movie influences are Bladerunner, Terminator 1 & 2, Strange Days, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix and Dark City. RPG paper and pencil game systems influences are Cyberpunk 2020, GURPS Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Card game influences are Netrunner and Shadowrun. Music influences are Bladerunner OST (Esper Edition) [Vangelis], Tangerine Dream, Ed Harrison’s NeoTokyo, and Ghost in the Shell OST.

Summary

A top down adventure game set in a near future dystopian cyberpunk city called CityPunk.
This is a future in which there has been a slow recovery from the Great War. Cybernetics and robotics have all practically been banned because the brutality of having war without the human conscious guiding the robots, without emotion. The other issue that plagued those using robots during the war is that the robots that were remote controlled were easily hacked and turned on their own. World society has moved to biological solutions including cloning to solve their problems and have put strict laws and regulations severely restricting the use of cybernetic technology.

Out of the embers of the “Great War”, sprawls that covered hundreds of miles began to grow. These sprawls all have their story to tell, but there is one city in particular, CItyPunk, that has stories unique to its location in North America. One story involves one loner that has just started hacking to survive in this high tech, low life city.

The player character, “Ronin”, starts off in the game as a loner just trying to get by. His roommate threatens to kick him out if he doesn’t get his act together and start contributing towards the rent. The player’s roommate recommends that he talk to a local thug about doing some odd jobs. You find out soon that you have a particular knack for hacking computer systems, and find out that there is a need for that line of work, even though the burn out rate is high. This is where the game begins…

“It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself. Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species, relies upon genes to be its memory system. So, man is an individual only because of his intangible memory… and memory cannot be defined, but it defines mankind. The advent of computers, and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data has given rise to a new system of memory and thought parallel to your own. Humanity has underestimated the consequences of computerization.”
– Puppet Master – Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Please email me with comments or questions at ronin@citypunkgame.com

Website: http://www.citypunkgame.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CityPunkGame
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/CityPunkGame
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CityPunkGameOfficial
Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/user/citypunkgame/

Languages:         Java, Lua.
Platforms:          Windows 7, Android, iPhone/iPad.
Environment:    Eclipse IDE, Git
Libraries:            libGDX
Source:                GitHub Link
Demo Video:      YouTube Link