Warren! Warren! Warren!

ARRGGHHH! WHAAAA! HUHHHH! Replaced, the long-in-development dystopian platformer from Sad Cat Studios, keeps shouting my last name at me. It might because the game’s main character, a jacketed gap jumper and baddie shooter, is called Warren. It might also because I did plenty of falling and accidentally got shot by a robo-sniper in Replaced’s demo, which is now live ahead of the full thing’s release next month.

Replaced’s demo is a medley of side-scroller platforming along deserted urban streets, battling small gangs of baddies, and using cover to avoid a big robo-light that’ll blow your head off if it sees you. Warren, your typical Deckardy grizzled trench coat future fellow, is actually an artificial intelligence dubbed R.E.A.C.H. trapped in a human body.

His goal’s to infiltrate the Phoenix Corporation, an evil cyberpunk corporation who run shit in the game’s alternative version of 1980s America, which has been “reshaped by nuclear catastrophe”. So, it’s off to the corpo stronghold of Phoenix-City, via a trek down debris-strewn roads and through ruined buildings rendered in a more realistic art style that nicely blends with Warren’s more pixellated rendering. That aesthetic’s the aspect of the game I’ve found most appealing in the short romp the demo offers, though to be fair there’s understandably only a minimal amount of story given away in the taster.

The platforming and shifting from cover to cover are serviceable, if occasionally prone to jumps which Warren treats more as a suggestion than an order. That said, when you do fall, it’s usually only a short drop that’s easy to recover from via a short run back to where you were. The combat, a mixture of melee thwacking and charged pistol finishers, with both feeling decently weighty and satisfying.

All in all, Replaced certainly one I’ll consider giving a go in full when it releases on March 12th. Until then you can wishlist it and find the demo on Steam, if you’re so inclined.