Nitro Kid is a tiny tactical cop-punching brawler

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An '80s throwback through 100 storeys of hurt.

Are you a bad enough dude to kung fu the shit out of a skyscraper full of cops, martial artists, robots and mad scientists to stop an evil corporation from zapping the life force out of defenceless kids? 

Hell yeah you are.

Tonight's PC Gaming Show gave us our first look at Nitro Kid, a stylish, compact tactics game that has you kicking and punching your way through corporate towers. According to the developer's site, Nitro Kid takes place in an alt-history '80s America, one where a corporation named Infinity is using kidnapped kids to generate a safe, environmentally friendly energy source. 

Disagreeing with the sentiment that zapping kids to power VHS players is "environmentally friendly", you set off into Infinity's conveniently grid-based towers to bash some faces in.

That face-bashing takes place on small, grid-like arenas representing each floor of the tower. It's very Into the Breach, telegraphing exactly where baddies will strike on a tiny battlefield and how you can manipulate opponents' positioning and moves. But there's also a bit of deckbuilding going on too, drawing cards to determine what cyber martial arts you can pull on these goons.

Despite today's trailer having a faded tape cartoon style, Nitro Kid itself sports some extremely clean pastel pixel art. If you're a sucker for good pixel gifs, the developer's Twitter feed has been a bounty of short WIP animations that are a delight to scroll.

Nitro Kid doesn't yet have a release date. But if you want to punch up some suited blokes in vaporwave towers, a short free demo is now available on Steam.

Natalie Clayton
Natalie Clayton
Features Producer

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.