Stealthy Cybermurder: Ronin Demo
Gunpoint-y action
Ronin [official site] is a cool game about cool stealthy murders. It's a stealth 'em up about a futureninja taking down a megacorp, hiding in the shadows and striking unseen, then whipping out the ole cybersword and dancing around murdering everyone in simultaneous turn-based cybercombat once you get busted. Chuck Mark of the Ninja, half a cup of rain, Gunpoint, and a neon tube into your mindblender - then step back - and you'll get the idea.
Or you could play the demo. The game's not due until May but somehow, some way, the demo has arrived first (cyberninja magic, probably), stepping out of the shadows onto Steam.
It's pretty great fun. The stealth is arcadey but satisfying, especially with tools like dropping murderlines to haul chaps up into the rafters. The combat is great fun, about choosing trajectories to leap around cybermen and strike when you can, avoiding the aimed gunshots they telegraph with laser beams and the sword strikes of their cybersamurai. Cool murders. This new demo contains three levels.
"Haven't I played this before...?" you may wonder. Sorta. Ronin began life as a free prototype, which we had a look at last year. Creator Tomasz Wacławek had started off making, in his own words, a "Gunpoint ripoff", but failed in that and ended up with a cool murdergame of his own that's simply Gunpoint-inspired. (Gunpoint's Tom Francis was delighted.) Then publishers Devolver Digital picked it up and Wacławek has expanded the ideas into a full commercial game.
The full release is due some time in May, priced at £9.99.
