Gorgeous Blade Runner-esque delivery thriller Cloudpunk gets first-person cockpit view
Available today on PC.
Developer Ion Lands' glorious Blade Runner-esque delivery thriller Cloudpunk is already an absolute joy to meander around, thanks to its gorgeously designed open-world playground - a vast rain-slicked sci-fi metropolis shrouded in endless night - but, from today, PC players can admire its neon-streaked, voxel-based splendour while staring out the window of their flying HOVA cars, thanks to a new first-person cockpit update.
Cloudpunk, if you've not yet had the pleasure, casts players as protagonist Rania as she attempts to survive her first 24 hours in the perpetually sodden city of Nivalis, completing jobs - primarily by zipping back and forth through the night sky, ferrying packages and passengers around the place - at the behest of illicit delivery company Cloudpunk.
Before long Rania and Cloudpunk's immensely likeable cast of characters - including her loyal AI companion dog Camus - finds themselves embroiled in a suitably intriguing mystery, and while the ensuing adventure might be a little slight (there's sadly not much to do in the city outside of the main plot), careening nippily around that breathtaking cityscape is a constant delight.
As such, I've been genuinely excited to get my hands on Cloudpunk's first-person flight update (which follows the introduction of first-person on-foot traversal earlier this year) ever since it was teased back in September, and if Ion Lands' synth-infused update trailer is anything to go by, with its cockpit-view swooping and careening, it's been well worth the wait.
Ion Lands hasn't stopped at first-person flying, though; alongside various performance improvements and level design tweaks, the developer has also given Rania's apartment a bit of a spruce up, and players can now interact with pretty much all the furnishings purchasable throughout Cloudpunk's adventure - chomping on pizza, playing an arcade classic on their giant TV screen, and more in their virtual home.
Cloudpunk's cockpit update is out now on PC (there's no word on a console release as yet), and Ion Lands says its other previously teased new features - including a major story update with new and returning characters, a vehicle constructor, and optional racing - are still on the way. "These will take us longer to develop," it notes, "[but] it'll be like a second game."
And if you've been on the fence about a Cloudpunk purchase, there's currently a 33% discount on Steam, bringing the price down to £11.38 for the next few days.