Neon Noodles is cyberpunk, distilled Eurogamer.net If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Neon Noodles is cyberpunk, distilled Norimancer. Feature by Chris Tapsell Reviews Editor Updated on 17 Sep 2020 EGX is here! This time it's in the rather unique form of PAX Online x EGX Digital, but we're still covering it like usual. That means we'll be running a few short articles like this throughout the week, featuring our impressions from some of the most interesting, unique, or just personal favourite games we've tried from the show floor (yes, there's a show floor!). Neon Noodles at PAX Online X EGX Digital Developer: Vivid Helix Publisher: Vivid Helix Platform: Demo on PC Availability: Out now on Steam Cyberpunk, you may have noticed, is in. It's easy to imagine why: Cyberpunk 2077 is the most anticipated game of the year, and the wait for it has been a long one - but also, a resurgence in a genre dedicated to the fears of technological overreach, the dilemmas that poses for human agency and purpose, and the catastrophic, corruptive power unchecked capitalism has over our governments, our rights and our lives just feels sort of right at the moment, doesn't it? Neon Noodles, despite a somewhat superficial name, nudges up against some of that. It's a game about placing robots, workstations, and consumers in the most efficient positions available, cutting fish, boiling rice, preparing sushi - about, then, replacing jobs of legendary human craft, satisfying insatiable consumer demand, and minimising costs. Cyberpunk! It's a simple game, best approached like a series of hypnotising, late-evening puzzles. Each round you're faced with a grid, a selection of equipment, and an order that needs fulfilling - five mushroom quiches, say, or six nigiri. You place little stations for each step of the order, so: a station for the robot to pick up the fish; a station to chop it; a station to pick up the rice; a station to boil it; a station to combine both. You then have to program your robot's order of actions, including the intricacies of a separate action to put down, chop, pick back up that one piece of fish, and hopefully that program works. If it doesn't, you snip and tinker and fiddle with the order like a kind of video editor - sequence playing out in front of you, with accompanying timeline, Adobe-style, along the bottom, including everything down to the directional turn and the moments waited while sushi rice boils - until it does. Also when you finish you can instantly download a gif of your creation, which is neat. Then, when it works, the robot whirrs and bumps from one station to the next, over and over, faster and faster, until it's flying round your little circle, the order completes and you get a score - and you realise you're in the top fraction-of-a-percent of players, or somewhere in the unsatisfying middle. You get an urge, deep and primal, to economise, to maximise, to cut and chop and go through a process of "restructuring", you get into the mindset of an industry boss. And that's when you get a surprisingly good sense of how all this cyberpunk stuff might come about. Become a Eurogamer subscriber and get your first month for £1 Get your first month for £1 (normally £3.99) when you buy a Standard Eurogamer subscription. Enjoy ad-free browsing, merch discounts, our monthly letter from the editor, and show your support with a supporter-exclusive comment flair! Support us View supporter archive More Features Digital Foundry Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: a new level in graphics performance The Digital Foundry video review - and how the new GPU champion delivers for 4K 120fps gaming. 12 Feature Evercore Heroes wants to wind people up the right way "There's less rage at them, because they didn't end your fun." Feature What games get wrong about horses And what they could do about it. 34 Feature Shout out to all the Overwatch supports - where would we be without you? Merci. 55 Latest Articles Preview Football Manager's new Console edition is the best you'll get without a PC Getting Touch-right. Splatoon 3 Amiibos will be out next month Ink-coming! 3 Fans think Phil Spencer's shelf is teasing the Xbox Game Pass streaming box UPDATE: Xbox confirms old Keystone prototype. 59 Modder dives into Demon's Souls files following PS5 jailbreak, discovers fabled Ring of the Chieftain Who knows what's nexus? 4 Supporters Only Premium only Off Topic: Take a minute to appreciate Cookin' with Coolio's incredible scallops recipe. What a great book. Premium only Off Topic: Reading City of Glass in comic form "Where exactly am I going?" Premium only Off Topic: Il Buco is a transporting film about a really big hole Underlands. Off-Topic Netflix handled Sandman brilliantly It was Dreamy. 9 Buy things with globes on them And other lovely Eurogamer merch in our official store! Explore our store