Best Cyberpunk Games: 18 Picks From 1988 to 2021, With a Start-Here Pick

Start here: Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)#

Cyberpunk 2077 is the pick if you want a big city to wander. CD Projekt Red's open-world RPG is set in Night City and played as V, a customizable mercenary. It launched in December 2020 with serious bugs, especially on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and Sony pulled it from the PlayStation Store for several months. It has been patched since, and it has sold over 40 million copies as of July 2026.

Play it with the Phantom Liberty expansion. Our Cyberpunk 2077 page covers the basics, and the story explained page is for after you finish.

The old guard (1988 to 1999)#

These are the games the later ones borrowed from. Most are playable today, but expect clunky controls.

• Neuromancer (1988), Interplay: An adventure game loosely based on Gibson's novel. Historical interest more than a game to love.
• Snatcher (1988), Konami: Hideo Kojima's adventure game about robots that kill people and replace them in society. Set in a future Japanese metropolis.
• Syndicate (1993), Bullfrog: An isometric tactics game where you run a corporation's four-man cyborg squad. It's the megacorp fantasy before Night City made it a setting.
• System Shock (1994), Looking Glass: A hacker versus a rogue AI called SHODAN, set in 2072. Warren Spector produced it, and Deus Ex followed. Dated controls, a great villain.
• Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), Revolution Software: A point-and-click with comic art by Dave Gibbons, free since 2003. Dystopian setting, humorous dialogue.
• Blade Runner (1997), Westwood: A point-and-click 'sidequel' that runs alongside the film's plot instead of retelling it. See Blade Runner lore.
• System Shock 2 (1999), Irrational and Looking Glass: Ken Levine designed it. Survival horror with RPG skills. Opinion: scarier than its reputation.

The 2000s and 2010s#

The genre mostly went quiet after the dot-com years, then returned in the 2010s.

• Deus Ex (2000), Ion Storm: Warren Spector's conspiracy game, set in 2052. Still the one fans quote. See the Deus Ex lore page.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), Eidos-Montreal: A prequel set in 2027 with Adam Jensen, a security guard rebuilt against his will. Easier to start with than the first game.
• Shadowrun Returns (2013), Harebrained Schemes: A turn-based RPG set in 2054 Seattle, funded on Kickstarter. The magic-plus-chrome option. Compare it in Shadowrun vs Cyberpunk.
• Remember Me (2013), Dontnod: Nilin is a memory hunter in 2084 Neo-Paris who steals and remixes memories. Opinion: the memory-remix idea is better than the combat.
• Technobabylon (2015), Technocrat Games: A point-and-click about three people in a city governed by an AI.
• VA-11 Hall-A (2016), Sukeban Games: A bartender visual novel by a Venezuelan studio: you mix drinks and listen. Opinion: the closest thing to the Afterlife as a game.
• Observer (2017), Bloober Team: A horror game set in 2084 Krakow, starring Rutger Hauer from Blade Runner as a detective who hacks people's minds.

Recent and odd#

These are the newer ones. Some are cozy, some are not.

• Cloudpunk (2020), Ion Lands: You play a delivery driver in a flying car above a vertical city, Nivalis. Slow and moody.
• Ghostrunner (2020), One More Level and others: A one-hit-kill platformer set in a tower after a global cataclysm. Fast and unforgiving.
• Cruelty Squad (2021), Consumer Softproducts: A Finnish indie shooter about an augmented assassin, with a deliberately abrasive look. You'll remember it, and you won't recommend it lightly.

Fixer's notes: what to play next#

If you finished 2077 and want more of the same, play Deus Ex: Human Revolution, then the original Deus Ex. If you want mood over action, VA-11 Hall-A or Cloudpunk. If you want the tabletop side, run Cyberpunk Red with your friends.

For the books and the films that fed all this, see Best Cyberpunk Books and Cyberpunk Movies.

Deus Ex gets its own breakdown on the Deus Ex lore page.