The Demo for "Neo Junk City" Sparked My Curiosity! (Impressions)

I'm a sucker for a cyberpunk and/or vaporwave aesthetic. Something about the neon colors and dystopic setting has a bit of a... "charm" to it, for some reason. I happened to be scrolling through Steam's Party-Based RPG Fest (going from now until September 21) when I was once again drawn to the vaporwave aesthetic, this time by a point-and-click adventure called Neo Junk City. Before I knew it, an hour went by as I dove further into the dystopian murder mystery, and it's safe to say I am interested in the full game when it comes out later this year.

It's the distant future—the world has become the police state we have all been dreading, and robots head up law enforcement. You play as one of these police bots, Buster 09, who has recently been rebooted after their recent escapades in tackling the city's crime-ridden underbelly. Upon finishing up maintenance, you wake up to find your maintenance tech shot, and dead right in front of you. Nobody else is around, leading you to believe that you may have murdered your own creator. But how is this possible? You're hard wired to protect and serve! In comes the mystery, where you decide to embark on a journey to figure out the full story of what led your creator to suddenly appear dead in front of you that fateful night.

Neo Junk City is, for the most part, a point-and-click adventure. In true murder mystery fashion, the bulk of your experience will be interacting with your surroundings to find clues and learn more about the world around you. While these games are generally best on mouse and keyboard, I found the controls to be just as intuitive on controller. Like similar games in the genre, using items from your inventory is a must when observing your surroundings.

The start of the demo actually tells you this in a clever way: when you have to put out a robot that's on fire, your first instinct would be to grab the bucket with a water symbol on it. Doing so without checking the dialogue will confusingly make the fire worse, before the bot informs you that the bucket is actually full of gas but has a water symbol on it. While ultimately inconsequential, it's a brilliant practical way of telling the player to be attentive with everything they interact with, which is generally crucial in these types of games.

In addition to point-and-click being the main gameplay, there are also on-rails shooting and arcade racing segments, giving the game a bit of a retro touch beyond its pixelated art style. When in enemy encounters, the shooting segments feel reminiscent of Hogan's Alley on the NES, where you shoot enemies as they pop up in the background.

Since it's just the demo, it wouldn't be right to criticize too hard on the gameplay front, but I will say the shooting and racing segments are very simple in execution. While you have a handful of abilities like an "Overcharge" that destroys enemy shields, the shooting itself is very basic. You just kind of press the fire button or wait until your shot charges up to fire a slightly more damaging shot. You can duck behind cover too, but the whole experience just feels so simple to the point where it felt more like an inconvenience to run into enemies. The racing segments are even more basic, as you hold up to drive and that's it. Granted, maybe there is more to both segments in the final product, so there's a chance that might change in the full game.

One thing I absolutely loved was the visual style. I'm a sucker for pixel art, and this game absolutely delivers on the 32-bit style. The neon colors make the city look alive; ironic, given how desolate things appear in the neighborhood where the demo takes place. The character designs are also... fascinating. The main antagonist you chase, called The Rat, is aptly an anthropomorphic rat girl. Several villainous or background characters take on animalistic names and appearances, and I think these character designs shake things up compared to other cyberpunk aesthetics that only focus on cyborgs or androids that look like humans.

And yes, I do see they took some liberties with designing Buster 09's... bust. I'm just going to pretend that the engineers had a mechanical reason for building the Busters that way and move on.

While I wasn't completely on board with the simple shooting and arcade racing aspects, Neo Junk City is looking to be an entertaining point-and-click adventure with a murder mystery that I want to uncover. I will certainly be wishlisting this game, and everyone will be able to find out what really happened to that scientist when the game comes out November 2, 2026. If you're eager to give the game a try ahead of its launch, a demo is available now on Steam!