Cybercore Protocol Impressions: A Mixed Reality Sci-Fi Home Invasion

Cybercore Protocol is a mixed reality action game that blends elements of tower defense, wave shooters, and melee combat games into something not wholly unique, yet undeniably fun.

I've spent the past few days shooting, slashing, and occasionally panic-flailing my way through Cybercore Protocol, a mixed-reality action game that turns your living space into a futuristic battleground.

Through mixed reality, your scanned space transforms into an enormous elevator. You stand beside a central power core as the platform descends lower and lower into an underground facility, stopping at every floor. Every time the elevator doors open, long sci-fi themed corridors extend beyond your walls, and in these corridors enemies spawn and attack. At the same time, portals in your immediate space spin to life as well, dumping enemies a little too close for comfort.

It's your job to use any and all means necessary (guns, melee weapons, and tactical units placed throughout the spaces) to eliminate the onrushing threat and save yourself and protect your central core from annihilation.

The resulting gameplay is delightfully immersive. You'll find yourself constantly shifting your attention between distant threats streaming in from the corridors and enemies materializing just behind you. You'll spin, duck, reposition, and occasionally retreat across your own living space. You'll also, every now and then, suffer a terrifying jump scare.

You'll battle back with an arsenal of firearms and melee weapons while strategically placing defensive units around your space. Gun turrets, freeze traps, force fields, and other deployables fight back the oncoming waves. This gives the game a light tower defense element without detracting from the action pacing, and on the whole, it creates a satisfying blend of action and strategy.

I've played this sort of game before, most memorably in Mythic Realms, a mixed reality game that similarly transformed your living space. In that game, everything was painted with a fantasy brush, transforming your rooms into fantasy dungeons teeming with skeletal warriors and aggressive evil bards. I loved that game for its use of fantasy tropes, and its engaging combat. I expected Cybercore Protocol to be (basically) the same, just with a sci-fi skin.

And that's true to an extent. But Cybercore Protocol has narrower ambitions.

Unlike Mythic Realms, Cybercore Protocol lacks an overworld to explore, it has virtually no story, and it's not a roguelite. It's essentially a combat game with light strategy elements. It's a game about surviving wave after wave of increasingly dangerous and powerful enemies, with just enough strategic upgrading and tactical decision-making to keep the whole experience from becoming a mindless shooter.

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But that limited scope isn't necessarily a bad thing. It puts the most engaging aspect of games like this front and center. Within moments of firing up your headset, you'll be slashing and shooting onrushing enemy waves, ducking and dodging around your couch, stepping over your pets while blasting vaguely Doom-esque technomages with a machine gun.

It's chaotic, physical, and fun. Imagine that!

Of course, being the work of a solo developer, Cybercore Protocol is a somewhat limited experience as it exists currently in Early Access. There isn't a massive variety in enemy types, there's not a lot of weaponry to choose from, and the combat system essentially boils down to pulling a trigger or flailing a sword (or both at the same time).

But, again, that's not necessarily bad. With 45 levels to descend through, nine enemy types, a handful of boss battles, and a few special stages (target shooting, etc.), the combat is balanced enough that you don't ever get bored, but not so complicated that you become fatigued. There's enough variety to keep things interesting, and the steady escalation of enemy pressure keeps you adapting and trying to keep up.

Combat is well balanced. Enemies rarely overwhelm you unfairly, but they're aggressive enough that standing still is never an option. The game's best moments come when you're juggling multiple threats, firing at enemies down a corridor, running to close distance on a cyberninja who's slashing your core, then twirling away to shoot a sniper with your own well-placed headshot.

When things get chaotic, you should expect to break a sweat. With my air conditioning cranked to full, I was sweating by stage 10. And I wasn't even playing on the tough difficulty. (Hardcore mode is diabolical.)

If there's a caveat to Cybercore Protocol, it's that you'll need a pretty robust play space to get the most enjoyment out of the game. The game encourages a surprising amount of movement, and while that's one of its great strengths, it also means smaller rooms can frustrate the program. During my testing, I occasionally found myself triggering Quest's boundary warnings with almost every movement. Not until I remapped my room with a significantly larger boundary (and moved some furniture) did the gameplay really open up.

As an Early Access release, Cybercore Protocol still has room to grow. Greater enemy variety, more varied environments, a bit of improvement to the sound design, and we'll have a truly excellent game. As it stands, it succeeds because it understands what makes mixed reality so compelling. It turns your home into a shooting gallery and keeps you constantly on your toes.

It may not have the scope of larger adventures, but what's here is polished, energetic, and consistently entertaining.