I feel like Sobaka Studio’s outings get less and less interesting with every new release, even if they always grab my attention right from the getgo. It all started with the over-the-top, but amazing Redeemer: Violence Awakened, an ultraviolent top-down brawler with an amazing combat system and pretty good presentation. Their next game was 9 Monkeys of Shaolin, which looked promising at first, with its “beat ’em up set in Medieval China” appeal, only for me to find out it was visually dated and somewhat janky. Their third outing is KIBORG, a roguelite reminiscent of Redeemer when it comes to premise, setting, and sheer ludicrous ultraviolence. One that ended up being a lot more flawed than I was expecting.

This blob never shuts up… and its voice acting is downright atrocious.

Set in your typical cyberpunk dystopian setting, KIBORG is a combat-oriented roguelite where you play as an inmate perpetually bound to participate in a televised deathmatch against other enemies, in a show hosted by a disgusting blob that reminded me way too much of Spaceballs‘ Pizza the Hutt. KIBORG explains its “die and repeat” mechanics with the following: in this uture, a criminal dies while serving their sentence, they are reconstructed to return to their suffering. And you’re supposed to serve a 1300-year sentence. Neat. Wholesome. Gotcha.

Since you have way too much free time to spare, might as well beat up a neverending onslaught of foes for the rich to enjoy. KIBORG boasts excellent visuals, with great lighting effects, interesting environments and great animations. Every single punch and kick feels painful and impactful. When you rip off a dude’s limb, it’s oh so gory, and oh so delightful. As expected, the combat is fluid, brutal, and cathartic. It is comprised of a mixture of melee-ish combat and usage of (breakable) weapons, both melee and ranged.

Use the spinning kick to get rid of multiple enemies surrounding you at once.

What the game is actually trying to sell as its main roguelite gimmick is the possibility to enhance your character’s body with cyborg implants throughout each run. You start out as your average bald fella with a moustache, but by the end of a (somewhat) successful run, you’ve basically become a mech. It is a visual spectacle, without a doubt, but to call those enhancements crucial to the success of the game as a whole is a bit too far fetched. They are visually cool, but mechanically-wise, they’re merely status enhancers. At the end of the day, KIBORG is all about numbers: if a piece of equipment has a bigger number than the previous one, use the new one instead.

In theory, a neat, if not the most creative, roguelite loop. Punch your way through hordes of enemies, grab new tech, die, spend resources on permanent upgrades, repeat. In practice, there’s an issue. As visceral as the combat might be, the difficulty curve is all over the place, and KIBORG simply doesn’t make the earlier rounds feel appealing.

This is a huge problem, as you’ll die pretty quickly at first, with the game not doing a great job at motivating you to move along. Between the nonsensical spikes and absolutely atrocious voice acting, KIBORG almost feels like an exercise in patience at first. It takes a while before your permanent upgrades feel meaningful enough for you to notice any semblance of a difference. You also need to take bugs into account, such as the camera going haywire on occasion, or your character refusing to move at a pace faster than an elder snail’s at some points, for no apparent reason.

You can wield firearms, but their ammo is quite limited. Their aiming is also clunky, as you can’t manually aim at all.

I think this is the best way to sum up KIBORG: a neat premise that just ended up feeling like a mixed bag. For every admittedly interesting aspect, such as its visuals, ultraviolence and combat, there’s something else that brings it down a handful of notches, such as the awful voice acting, difficulty spikes, and bugs. With that being said, considering how flooded and overly saturated the roguelike/lite market is nowadays, KIBORG does manage to stand out, even if by just a little bit. It’s not terrible, it’s also far from being amazing, but it’s certainly not entirely fogettable.

KIBORG is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of KIBORG was provided by the publisher.