RED CIRCUIT · WORKING TITLE · PRE-PRODUCTION
01 / The game we want to make
RED CIRCUIT
A 1–4 player, fully 3D, top-down cyberpunk action extraction roguelite about choosing what matters before the city chooses for you.
A vault is opening two streets east. A wounded faction officer is transmitting from the transit line. Whether you descended alone or with a crew, there is room for one more objective, maybe two, and the district clock has already begun to turn red.
You move, aim, fire, sprint, dash, time defenses, and commit active abilities yourself. Then the run starts changing you. A precise weapon becomes a chain engine. A defensive tool becomes an orbiting threat. The build can grow spectacular—but the game never begins by playing itself.
Quick Facts
- Players
- Solo or 2–4 player online co-op
- Perspective
- Fully 3D, top-down
- Control
- Manual aim, fire, movement, and defense
- Structure
- Timed districts chained into expeditions
- Status
- Working title in pre-production
More opportunities than time. More power than good judgment.
The City Is Alive Because Something Else Is Paying
RED CIRCUIT takes place beneath a grim vertical megacity whose institutions keep millions alive by making atrocity ordinary. Infrastructure is conditional. Care has an owner. Reclamation does not always distinguish property from people.
Players create persistent characters from readable combat archetypes and descend through that machinery. The character comes home with equipment, talents, implants, reputations, enemies, and a history. The temporary expedition build ends; the person who survived it does not.
Active by Default. Spectacular by Choice.
The combat promise is deliberate: WASD movement with mouse aim, or the equivalent twin-stick grammar; chosen shots; readable telegraphs; active abilities; sprinting, dashing, and defensive timing. Positioning and execution matter before a build begins producing automatic damage.
Drones, orbiting attacks, chains, summons, and bullet-heaven density are possible build directions. Automation is a build outcome, not free baseline damage. We are designing toward the pleasure of constructing a machine without surrendering the pleasure of operating it.
Win, Then Make the Dangerous Decision
Every district contains more worthwhile opportunities than its pressure window comfortably permits. Eventually the District Hunter enters the live map and pursues every surviving operative. Defeating it does not simply end the session—it creates the central choice.
Extract, bank the haul, and turn one violent trip into permanent momentum. Or descend into a harder district with the temporary build intact, carrying more power, more greed, and more unprotected value. RED CIRCUIT is built around wanting both answers at once.
