Phalanstery is a cyberpunk point-and-click adventure

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This is Phalanstery, an upcoming game its creator, 'lectronice', describes as "Cyberpunk adventures in a modular city where the freedom and privileges of inhabitants are physically defined by their social network." That makes it sound dark and dystopian, but a look at the scene above of a character 3D printing a big black "Syndicoat" to wear suggests its tone may be much more in line with the classic adventure games—which is to say, delightfully goofy.

Here's our hero going to a bar with a blinking neon sign to order a drink called a 'Russian multitool'. So, like a white Russian but with grease in it? Yum.

And here's what looks like a hacking minigame, because you gotta have one of those. All it needs now is a flying car or a motorbike in primary colors and we've ticked all the boxes. There are plenty of cyberpunk games around, but what we really need is one that pokes fun at the genre's sillier aspects. Phalanstery could be that game. It's due out in 2018, although lectronice adds "let's be optimistic!"

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.