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Born Punk - light-hearted cyberpunk adventure now launched

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Update 02/08/2021: Our demo is out now! You can download it from Steam HERE.

Hi there!

Time to end my six years of lurking. After having read the forum rules three times, I’m reasonably sure now that I can post about our upcoming game without getting banhammered, so here goes.  Innocent

My name’s Falko, head of Insert Disk 22. We’re currently developing a cyberpunk point & click adventure called Born Punk. We had a successful kickstarter campaign in 2019, and have since been working hard on what we hope is a bit of a fresh take on the cyberpunk genre.


Here’s our current trailer:

GOG Store Page | Steam Store Page

 

And here’s more info about our game, including some screenshots!


Overview
The game follows three characters. A former corporate combat hacker who got fired after she was gravely injured in a firefight with a rival corporation, a malfunctioning android who believes himself to be a famous rap-star, and a disillusioned CEO of a multi-billion-dollar corporation who was just about to quit her job. Our three protagonists have something in common: their brains have been infected with ominous entities claiming to be on some sort of mission.



What we want to achieve
During their travels to unravel what the heck happened to them, they will meet lots of wacky characters. Sports-bots who earn money on the side by mugging people in the sewers, Finnish separatists who are obsessed with geese, a cult living on a zeppelin, and even talking microphones stuck in cyberspace. We hope to present the player with a rich and sometimes absurd cyberpunk scenario, a scenario which can sometimes be dark, but sometimes also be silly. Cyberpunk is by its very definition dark and moody, and we want to inject a good dose of classic point & click humor into it.



The World
Scenario-wise, Born Punk is set in the year 2155 on the island of Bornholm. In the real world, Bornholm is a quaint Danish island where nothing much ever happens. In our game, Bornholm - thanks to various climate and war refugee waves from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe - has evolved into a bustling metropolis. One that even has its own space elevator. The island is ruled by The Conglomerate, a council of corporations that bought the island from Denmark when the civil government couldn’t handle the influx of refugees anymore.



Gameplay
As far as gameplay is concerned, the different chapters focus on different aspects of the genre. Some are very dialogue-heavy, some are more puzzle-heavy, some can be described as having a ‘sit back and relax’ mood. Many puzzles allow for different approaches, characters remember how you treat them and will be more or less helpful based on your choices, and the ending of the game will change based on various decisions (that the player may not even be aware of) as well.



The Sound of Music
We’re also very proud of our soundwork. Jeff Kurtenacker (composer of Wildstar’s soundtrack, now Blizzard’s senior composer) made an awesome synth-score for us, with a lot of Danish/Scandinavian influences. We have had a couple of budding/aspiring composers contribute to the soundtrack as well, and thanks to that probably have about two hours of musical content to offer. All our characters will be voiced, and all scenes feature really immersive soundscapes. Yeah, that last sentence sounds like pure marketing speak, but I don’t know how else to describe it. I really really love our sounds and music.



Lore
Last but not least, Born Punk features a comprehensive lore journal. As the player explores our world and interacts with objects and characters, their journal will fill up with entries about the world. Biographies of the people you meet, the history of the districts you travel to, and summaries of what happens in the rest of the world - if you’re interested in delving deeper into things, that’s definitely possible. In a few places, knowing a bit of background info is even useful for puzzle solutions (but never a requirement).



Born Punk will release at some point in 2021 (likely Q2 or Q3), and will initially be available for Windows, Mac and Android. A Switch port will follow shortly thereafter, and then we’ll start working on ports for Playstation/Xbox and mobile devices.

I hope that a few of you lovely people like what you see, and if so, you can wishlist Born Punk on GOG and Steam:

GOG Store Page
Steam Store Page

Thank you and have a lovely day!

     

Falko, Lead Punk at Insert Disk 22 and making the game Born Punk
Steam Page | GOG Page | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website

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I already have it wishlisted on both, but it’s nice to get more info and that we don’t have too much longer to wait.

I think a couple others had it on their list in the anticipated upcoming releases thread.

     

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All sounds good and ambitious, so naturally I’m skeptical :p , but it’s on my wishlist for a while now. Hope everything goes well with it. We need more adventure games with choices.

     
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Pyoro-2 - 28 January 2021 09:43 AM

All sounds good and ambitious, so naturally I’m skeptical :p , but it’s on my wishlist for a while now. Hope everything goes well with it. We need more adventure games with choices.

I’m trying to be as non-ambitious as possible here! Grin Not saying that the story will branch into quadrillions of different outcomes. It’s still a classic point-and-click-adventure, the player will still go through the same scenes, it’s just that many puzzles have different approaches, and that the way the player interacts with the characters opens and closes different puzzles, dialogs, items etc. Has been done before many-a-times, I fondly remember gems like Beneath a Steel Sky.

Unless you mean something else, of course. All I can say is that we’re trying to make sure that we don’t do things that our small team can’t handle. There’s a ton of things I’m still pouting over that I wanted to implement but in the end had to scrap.

Also, thanks for your wishlist!

     

Falko, Lead Punk at Insert Disk 22 and making the game Born Punk
Steam Page | GOG Page | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website

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TheLongestJourney - 26 January 2021 09:03 PM

I already have it wishlisted on both, but it’s nice to get more info and that we don’t have too much longer to wait.

I think a couple others had it on their list in the anticipated upcoming releases thread.

Oh cool, have to check that thread out then!

     

Falko, Lead Punk at Insert Disk 22 and making the game Born Punk
Steam Page | GOG Page | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website

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Played the demo you guys put out before and I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to this one. The pixel-art in the trailer was really expressive and it kinda gives me Technobabylon vibes, which is one of my favorite adventures.

Glad we’ll get to play it this year, good luck with the release.

     
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Is the demo still available. Technobabylon is one of my favorite adventure games of the last decade.

     
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PlanetX - 31 January 2021 06:50 PM

Played the demo you guys put out before and I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to this one. The pixel-art in the trailer was really expressive and it kinda gives me Technobabylon vibes, which is one of my favorite adventures.

Glad we’ll get to play it this year, good luck with the release.

Thanks a lot!

Jdawg445 - 31 January 2021 08:11 PM

Is the demo still available. Technobabylon is one of my favorite adventure games of the last decade.

The demo was from February 2019, for our kickstarter campaign. It’s not really representative of the game anymore. We will be recording the voice overs for the first chapters this month though, and plan to release a new demo (that is representative of the game when it comes out) when that’s done. I’ll definitely update here when it happens.

     

Falko, Lead Punk at Insert Disk 22 and making the game Born Punk
Steam Page | GOG Page | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website

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This looks and feels like one of the modern greats, but I’ll be honest, the android character worries me.

Hip Hop: I think the reference (“Grandmaster Flashdrive”) is actually legit, but the whole concept is open to a lot of bad ideas. I can imagine this type of character done right, but it would require a pretty good understanding of the culture.

Racism/stereotypes: considering their namesake, there’s a chance the android thinks they’re African-American. All I can say is: please don’t let this be another Neofeud-situation.

That being said, very impressive work.

     
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Vegetable Party - 02 February 2021 03:05 PM

This looks and feels like one of the modern greats, but I’ll be honest, the android character worries me.

Hip Hop: I think the reference (“Grandmaster Flashdrive”) is actually legit, but the whole concept is open to a lot of bad ideas. I can imagine this type of character done right, but it would require a pretty good understanding of the culture.

Racism/stereotypes: considering their namesake, there’s a chance the android thinks they’re African-American. All I can say is: please don’t let this be another Neofeud-situation.

That being said, very impressive work.

We try to be as accurate as possible in the instances where we engage with a culture in a serious manner in the game. That goes for all three of our main characters, as well as the different cultural concepts they engage with. We’ve done a lot of research, and our team consists of members of almost all the cultures represented in Born Punk (including the one that Flash is trying to imitate). Regarding your specific concern: Flash doesn’t consider himself to be black or African or American or African-American, no.

Having said that, considering this game is not only serious but also comedic in nature, it is to be expected that some people will find parts of it insensitive or inappropriate. Born Punk isn’t an exercise in trying to achieve world peace, and every character and every culture in our game could become part of a joke or unflattering situation. I’m confident though that we’re not overdoing it, as this is very much a ‘We want everyone to be able to enjoy this’ project.

Last but not least, thanks for the compliment!

 

     

Falko, Lead Punk at Insert Disk 22 and making the game Born Punk
Steam Page | GOG Page | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website

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I really like the art style and the vibrancy really makes it pop.

     

Been playing games since ‘82

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sparrowtm - 15 February 2021 05:31 PM

We try to be as accurate as possible in the instances where we engage with a culture in a serious manner in the game. That goes for all three of our main characters, as well as the different cultural concepts they engage with. We’ve done a lot of research, and our team consists of members of almost all the cultures represented in Born Punk (including the one that Flash is trying to imitate). Regarding your specific concern: Flash doesn’t consider himself to be black or African or American or African-American, no.

Having said that, considering this game is not only serious but also comedic in nature, it is to be expected that some people will find parts of it insensitive or inappropriate. Born Punk isn’t an exercise in trying to achieve world peace, and every character and every culture in our game could become part of a joke or unflattering situation. I’m confident though that we’re not overdoing it, as this is very much a ‘We want everyone to be able to enjoy this’ project.

Last but not least, thanks for the compliment!

 

Great answer. Would be sweet if you achieve world peace with this, though.

Jokes aside, it may seem weirdly specific, but that bot/android/blank slate-character thinking they’re African-American is.. out there. I think Neofeud wanted to ride a line between parody and representation that was just ill-advised, but the whole concept reminds me of that comedian using hand puppets to promote stereotypes and say some f’ed up things. It’s more about being toxic than just being offensive.

If Hip Hop is actually represented in this game: YES. If it’s more of a side-note, then cool.

Best of luck! You picked the right theme (cyberpunk) and going by your words, the trailer and the screenshots, you definitely did the work. I hope it pays off!

     
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Thanks again! And also thanks for the vibrancy comment one post earlier. The graphics style is a constant battle between me and our main pixel artist. I’m always going ‘GIMME MORE NEON STUFF AND DARK BACKGROUNDS’, and he gleefully ignores me and does his own thing.

Which in this case is a good thing, because as far as I’m concerned, his visual cyberpunk interpretation is quite distinct from the cyberpunk ‘mainstream’. He’s definitely influenced by his Estonian upbringing, which in turn was influenced a lot by Soviet architecture and art. Cyberpunk is often quite japan-oriented, and if I would have pushed 100% of what I wanted through, we’d probably be looking quite stereotypical as well.

But hey, that’s why he’s the pixel artist and I’m not.  Grin

     

Falko, Lead Punk at Insert Disk 22 and making the game Born Punk
Steam Page | GOG Page | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website

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I only skimmed this topic because I am a real weenie when it comes to even the smallest spoilers, but what I saw looked good. I’ll buy it as soon as it is released.

     

Player, purveyor, and propagator of smart toys and games for all ages.
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Hi again!

I updated the initial post with a link to the demo we released this week on Steam.

Hope you enjoy, and any feedback is greatly appreciated. Player feedback has made the game better numerous times since we started developing it. Cheers!

     

Falko, Lead Punk at Insert Disk 22 and making the game Born Punk
Steam Page | GOG Page | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website

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Joined 2015-07-01

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I tried the demo, and I am intrigued. Since it was such a small slice, I dont have much to say, but here are some thoughts.

The voice acting is extremely hit or miss to me. the security guard was really bad. I do like the interaction between host and parasite though.

I do not like how interactions are handled at all. let me just scroll to top of screen to access everything including all pdas. we dont need so many prompts and button presses to do simple task. I also HATED how reading books were handled. Most times in adventure games if you right click something in the inventory the character will go ahead and read the book. It took me forever to realize I had to select the book than select the character to read the book, especially bc the main character is not listed as a hotspot when you hit the spacebar.

I know it is a small slice of the game but the two puzzle in the room, left a lot to be desired. I need a key to open a drawer, how convenient it is 2 feet away. I need a cord to access the internet well it is right there too. That is not a puzzle at all and makes me roll my eyes every time I see something like that.

I am intrigued by the game but less so now after the demo.

     

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