Summary
True to form, the renowned indie team at Trese Brothers has returned with another shockingly deep strategy game withCyber Knights. Trese Brothers games have historically been filled with cleverly interconnected systems and features, andCyber Knights' turn-based heist gameplay is similarly complex under the hood. Although the moment-to-moment gameplay appears to be a typical tactics game with some stealth elements, there are more than a few mechanics and systems that help the game stand out significantly among the many titles within this classic genre.
In an interview with Game Rant,indie gameduo Andrew Trese and Cory Trese went in-depth regarding their approach toCyber Knights' various systems. They weighed in on the game’s stealth mechanics and whether or not players can simply “go loud” in every mission, and they also spoke about how they opted for a gridless playfield that stands in contrast to the vast majority of tactics games that tend to rely on neatly-placed tiles for their level design.
Stealth Always Matters In Cyber Knights
As acyberpunk heist gamefirst and foremost,Cyber Knights' stealth mechanics are meant to constantly be on the players' minds regardless if they are going for a silent approach or something a little more overt. Every enemy in the game essentially has a mind of its own, and players will need to carefully consider each enemy’s potential to alert others either via radio or inadvertently as an unfortunately rag-dolled corpse.
I think it’s really important to understand that we believe that stealth is crucial to the game working correctly. We designed the enemies for a player that thinks about stealth. Maybe they don’t use it all the time, but they do think in that mode because the game is designed where each guard, soldier, or drone has its own mind. The overarching security system that is watching the whole level only gets information from the guards at the end of the turn, so she’s not omniscient. None of your opponents know everything. So even if you’re thinking about shooting people, like Andrew said, you should be thinking about tying it off. Who saw that guy? Can’t have any witnesses, he’s got to go. Somebody else saw that? He’s got to go.
Players have myriad tools at their disposal to assist in stealth including abilities and items that disrupt security systems, but also some more unique mechanics such as the game’s leverage system. Through missions or story-related events, players might gather leverage that can assist them in a mission. This can take the form of a bribe, convincing a guard to leave a door open, or hacking security systems ahead of time. It was important to the Trese Brothers that each mission feels like a real heist where players engage in some planning beforehand in addition to theusual tactics gameplayduring the mission itself.
Cyber Knights Does Away With Grid-Based Tactics
Cyber Knightshas also steered away from the usualgrid-based tacticsgameplay often found in the genre and this has led to a number of benefits. Going gridless had an immediate effect on level design, allowing the team to create more fluid and believable environments. Cyberpunk is a messy genre by nature, and having an environment that isn’t beholden to a sterile grid format has givenCyber Knightsmuch more freedom to express the genre’s distinct mood.
I think the biggest thing that we wanted to change or try differently was to take a real step away from grid-based games. It’s sort of turn-based tactics comfort food to have a grid where someone has neatly placed all these crates of the exact same size in a very ordered way across the map and all the desks are perfectly aligned. Forcing everything into a grid creates this sterile feeling environment that feels like it’d be harder to bring the real messy cyberpunk places that we want to be able to create and show in the game world. So we wanted to get away from that for visual aesthetic reasons, and also because we believe that stealth systems can be more fun. We’re really thinking about ray casting and sightlines at all times in a true, physical sense. It’s a physics-based rendering of the senses, as opposed to trying to approximate with grids.
In terms of gameplay, foregoing a grid also allowed Trese Brothers to design a tactics system that is more realistically driven by the physics of not only objects like grenades but also sight lines and senses. Moving a character a few inches in either direction could be the difference between being spotted or heard, meanwhile, a grenade blast can be carefully placed in an ideal location more granularly than would be possible on a simple grid. The final product is a more thoughtful execution of heist strategiesin cyberpunk environmentsthat truly look the part.
