Buzzing tube lights TGS 2026 emerges Tokyo Walled City, a (deep breath) “immersive retro-cyberpunk stealth action sim with survival horror and RPG elements” in development at indie outfit Grim Ronin. Hey, I like most of these things, and I like rainy, neon Japanese streets, so let’s try covering an indie imsim without mentioning Gloomwood. Oh, damn it.
Tokyo Walled City casts you as a knife-wielding, parkour-wielding mercenary trapped in a walled neighborhood of the cyberized capital. This trailer suggests he’s ready to play out the imsim’s hits: silent assassinations, shooting lights, headshots, camera hacking, oversized air vents, and some computer password theft. There’s also some chain smoking, although these nic sticks don’t appear as fatal almost instantly the Deus Ex.
Actually, forget that title comparison, because Tokyo Walled City really feels more like a near-future Dishonored homage than a Denton one. Particularly because the nervous and climbing passages are apparently directly inspired by Dishonored 2 – I would recognize this kind of vertical stabbing roof jump move anywhere. We see fewer of the survival horror and RPG components, save for a brief moment where a creepy android’s red gaze rests on the spy player’s scope, and I’m not immediately taken with the slightly stilted look of this shooter towards the end. Still, a gun going unloaded in these types of games is usually the moment I hit the fast-load button in disgust, so that won’t stop me from keeping an eye on this one.
With Dishonored essentially finished, BioShock missing, and Deus Ex parked in seemingly infinite, saddening limbo by Elias Toufexis – I’m not counting what this remaster is – it’s tempting to wait in the hopes of a new big-name immersive sim hero. Maybe from this new Harvey Smith studio. Even if they’re not aiming for the same scale, it’s cool to see more indie developers trying their hand at it, from crazy experiments like Cruelty Squad to heartwarming genres like Tokyo Walled City to Gloomwood DAMMIT. No release date yet, but it’s slated for early access, according to the Steam Page.
