Honestly, I’m a little torn on whether I like the idea of kids playing this game. Teenagers are definitely fine to play this game, as the themes are not very heavy at all. Pre-teens might enjoy the cool landscapes and pretty colors, but I’m sure much of the dialog will go right over their heads. Kids younger than about eight are likely to run into skill and coordination issues. There’s not a lot of fast driving or quickly tuned button presses that are a concern, but you do need to be aware of all your surrounding, the cars don’t handle well, and the city blocks can be a bit confusing to navigate.
The game is very relaxing, however. You take the role of Rania, a country girl from the East, dropped into the cyberpunk dystopia, just trying to earn enough pay through the night’s odd jobs. All the themes of cyberpunk are here: rogue AI, sentient robots, mega corporations, underground crime rings, government corruption, doomsday cults, cybernetic augmentations. However, they are discussed from the perspective of effectively an uber eats or door dash delivery driver, if uber eats or door dash accepted person to person deliveries of mostly illegal goods with strongly encouraged “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies. You are not the hero of Nevalis. You are just trying to make ends meet. You’re just trying to pay rent.
This is a message that is far too relatable to today’s life. I will think the ideas will go right over your children’s heads, as they likely will not have had to worry about things like paying for rent vs paying for groceries. However, this could serve as a good method to introduce these ideas to your children. I believe that we need to be able to terrace our kids about empathy and help them recognize when someone else might be struggling. This could be the perfect game to have your children watch you play.
There are no violent scenes, there’s no weapons. The only things to consider as far as content are some conversations about sex work and drug use, but neither happen on screen. Nearly the indication that they happen within the world, i.e., you talk to a person who has sold themselves to sex work, and a bouncer asks you to pick up some in universe drug for him from a “dealer”. If those are conversations you don’t want to have around your kids, maybe wait until they are at least 8-10.
I’d also only recommend this game for that age for the main mechanic of the game: driving. In most games, I’m sure children could figure out driving, but most games drive on a two-dimensional plane. This game has an asthetic closer to The Fifth Element with its flying cars and floating buildings and dedicated roadways. You will need to manage not only what objects are in front of and to your sides while driving, but also be aware of anything that might be above or below you. It can become very easy to get caught on something as you try to descend, run into a car above you as you try to get off the roadway, or get lost on which level you need to be at to park your car. Given that this is the main mechanic of the game, I recommend that your little gamer have a strong grasp on three dimensional spaces before attempting to drive a rather poorly handling flying car on variable speed highways and a boost button. That being said, the game is very forgiving with its damage rates. You can crash the car, but there are plenty of locations to fill up on gas or repair your vehicle. It also does give you fair warning on both systems.
The interaction you have is “talking” to the wide array of NPCs. The game in my opinion pays a bit more like a Visual Novel in how it presents large text dialog boxes that cover the bottom eighth of the screen, including a thumbnail of who is talking at the time. Each character also has a unique voice (or at least as unique as I’ve been able to hear). And boy, are there some characters in this game.
The only other thing of note is that it also acts a bit like a collectathon, but more of the Ubisoft formula where everything is scattered across the map, and everything is marked on the map without having to look for it. You just follow the marker and move on. Some items can be sold for “Lims”, the currency of the game, some are used to access different areas of the game, and others are used in your interactions with NPCs, i.e. you give a boy a driver’s trading card, you give an android punch cards to retrieve their memories, you give a guy his hand back.
My absolute favorite part of this game however has to be the ✨vibe.✨ This game looks absolutely gorgeous. The use of voxels isn’t my favorite art direction, especially for the characters, but when you are far enough away from building and cars, you can see the artists but a lot of work into building the world. There are so many walkways, hidden alleys, balcony lookout spots. Honestly, you can almost stop at any location in the game, switch to the first person camera, turn off the HUD, take a screenshot, and you just gave yourself a CyberPunk desktop wallpaper (don’t be a smartass and look at the ground with that screenshot). Get in your car which also has a first person mode, and you can just feel like you’re racing around the city for some of the missions, desperate to get the job done on time.
So, the ultimate questions: Should your child play this game? I recommend this game as a nice way to slow down, listen to a good story with interesting character, and just walk around in some artistic architecture. I feel like the conversations are - for the most part - tame enough that you children could be in the same room as the game playing. If your children are experienced enough with games to manage movement in a three dimensional space, then they should be perfectly fine to pick up the controller. It does ask some questions around morality, though it doesn’t provide any specific answers. It could be a good conversation starter for certain topics if you feel your child is old enough to have those talks. In general, I recommend it as a positive experience, probably for kids that are around 8-10 years old.
Note: I have only played the base game. I did see that there is some DLC for this game. I haven’t done any research on the DLC, so I cannot speak to the content or recommended age to play. On a very quick watch of the trailer and read of the description, it looks like it’s going to be mostly more of the same, but with maybe a bit more intense story line. I imagine that this will translate to more precise skills needed, any possibly heavier topics in the dialogs. If i decide to play it, I’ll link to the review I make for it here.
You can buy a digital copy of CloudPunk at the following locations:
