I’ve been heads-down building the first playable slice of Dystopia Punk, and it’s finally getting close to the point where I need to start putting it in front of other players.
That’s exciting, and honestly, a little terrifying.
Dystopia Punk is a co-op cyberpunk action game about taking dangerous contracts in a world of fixers, corporate security, black-market tech, street crews, and operators trying to survive inside systems much bigger than they are. The core fantasy is something I’ve wanted to build for years, and keep coming back to: you and your crew take a job, make a plan, enter a hostile space, and adapt when that plan starts falling apart.
For this first private playtesting phase, I’m not trying to show everything the game will eventually become. The goal is much simpler: get the core experience into players’ hands and find out what’s working and more importantly, what’s not.
Can players get into a session cleanly? Do they understand what the contract is asking them to do? Does the mission space make sense? Is it clear where to go, what to interact with, and when things are going wrong? Does the game feel better with a squad? Are the tense moments actually tense, or just confusing?
Those are the questions I need real play sessions to answer.
As a solo developer, it’s very easy to spend too much time inside your own head. You know where everything is. You know how every system is supposed to work. You know why that objective marker is over there, why that door is locked, why that enemy spawned, and what the mission is trying to communicate.
Players do not.
That’s exactly why private playtesting matters so much. It’s the point where the game stops being something that only exists in the developer’s head and starts becoming something other people can understand, navigate, break, question, and hopefully enjoy.
The current playable slice is focused on a contract set in a dense cyberpunk mission space, where the crew is sent in to recover valuable cargo from a heavily controlled location. It’s still early, and a lot is changing quickly, but the direction is starting to come together: tense co-op contracts, hostile spaces, cyberpunk atmosphere, player choice, and missions that can shift from controlled infiltration to desperate extraction.
There’s still a lot to build. Systems are being tested, missions are being reshaped, characters are being developed, and the world is still coming into focus. But the game is far enough along now that I need more than my own instincts to guide it.
Private playtesting is the next big step.
The goal is not to prove that everything works perfectly. It won’t. The goal is to learn where the game is clear, where it falls apart, where players get excited, and where the experience needs more work.
I’ll be sharing more updates as Dystopia Punk moves toward private testing, public demos, and wider playtests. For now, the focus is simple: get the first contract playable, get real players into the world, and start learning from what happens when they do things I didn’t expect.
If you want to follow development, wishlist Dystopia Punk on Steam, or sign up for the Playtest Waitlist on player.gg and keep an eye on future updates.
Thanks for checking out my game, and I can’t wait to get it into everyone’s hands over the coming months!