Neo Cab

Neo Cab is a visual novel game set in a cyberpunk world. You play as a taxi driver, Lina, who arrives in the city of Los Ojos for the first time to move in with her old friend Savy. You’ve spent a long time apart and are eager to rekindle your friendship. You meet Savy who gives you a digital bracelet called a Feelgrid that displays your emotion as a colour. She then asks you to drop her off as she needs to sort out a work-related matter.

You do a couple of jobs yourself to pass the time, then drive over to pick up Savy who is in trouble. When you get there, she is nowhere to be seen, but you find her smashed mobile phone.

You carry on picking up more passengers, known as Pax, hoping to learn about the city and track down Savvy.

On each day, you must pick up 3 passengers who give you a rating based on your conversation. You can’t let your rating fall below 4 stars over consecutive days or it is game over. However, some of the characters are either guaranteed to give you a low rating as part of the story, or are quite volatile to your choices. I wasn’t sure how the rating system was calculated because one day I received 5, 5, 1 which worked out to be 2.6; I would have expected more like 3.5.

To move onto the next day, you choose a location to sleep which costs money. You also need to make sure you have enough battery power for your electrical car to reach each location; which also costs money. Sometimes passengers will ask you to pick them up from an alternate location, but this will be a restricted parking zone. You will get fined by the cops and the fine is massive. I assume running out of money would lead to a game over too.

There’s no voice acting which is a shame, but the writing is generally good. There’s a lack of environmental sounds, but the electronic soundtrack is nice. I liked the bold, visual style and colour palette.

The characters are an interesting bunch with some good stories to tell. Oona is some kind of hacker but also talks about alternate timelines. Gideon is a young girl placed in a mech suit and is determined to rebel against her mother. Carlos seems like a really nice guy but is an unlicensed doctor. Another is a con-man, and there’s plenty more. You will have the chance of picking up these characters multiple times over the course of the game to get to know them more.

You will learn of the Capra corporation who seem to be gaining power, and plan to ensure all cars are automated which will put Neo Cab out of business (therefore Lina will lose her job). A gang plans on disrupting them.

Savvy’s gift, the Feelgrid bracelet, ties into the story and is sometimes a topic of conversation. Some conversation options are available/unavailable based on your mood. In some ways this is interesting, but other ways it is quite annoying because a dialogue option may be there, then Lina will refuse to say it outloud because she isn’t in the mood - so you are forced to choose an alternate option. If you really want to select that option, I guess you have to reload and try and pick options to move you into the required mood.

There are multiple endings to the game, but since it takes around 5 hours, I’m not sure I’d want to replay it any time soon. I tend not to care about visual novels or walking simulator type games, but I actually found this one pretty interesting. Maybe I might come back to it in a few year’s time.