Hands on Pragmata – Exploring the enigmatic lunar hacking shooter

Since its reveal in the middle of 2020, Pragmata (pronounced more like ‘prag-matter’) has remained one of the most enigmatic and fleeting games out there. With years between trailers, and a handful of deeply apologetic release date delays, we’ve been none-the-wiser about what this game actually is. Until now, that is, as we’ve finally had the chance to go hands on and play this fascinating new sci-fi adventure.

It would be easy to assume that this is a glitzier, cleaner riff on Dead Space horror. The third-person camera angle, the bulky space suit with a hard-headed helmet cover, the abandoned space station all give that feeling. Heck, in the scene in which the little girl Diana saves stranded astronaut Hugh’s life, she grabs something that looks a heck of a lot like a Plasma Cutter and holds it to his leg. “This is getting very, very dark, very quickly,” I thought to myself, only for this to be revealed as a Lunafilament tool that repairs the broken patches of Hugh’s suit and allows it to start applying emergency aid.

Pragmata is actually forging its own path in a lot of other ways. As IDUS, the Cradle lunar station’s AI, becomes aware of your unsanctioned presence and starts to command nearby robots to expel you. Rather forcefully.

As they stomp towards Hugh, his pistol’s bullets pinging off the armoured skin of the humanoid robot, Diana is determined to help. She has all the appearance of a 6-year-old girl in an oversized puffer jacket, but as she fights to get past the instinctively protective Hugh to help out, she’s immediately revealed to be a highly advanced little android girl instead – her actual designation is DI02367, but let’s stick with Diana – able to shoot hacking laser beams and project a HUD from her hand.

Hacking enemies becomes a vital part of combat right away, as it’s used to open up their armour and expose weaknesses for you to blast away at with Hugh’s guns. This is far from a simple button tap, or even a button hold, but rather throws up a minigame for you to complete to launch the hack at the targeted enemy. Thankfully, it’s not the most mentally taxing of tasks (at least initially), as the grid appears and you simply need to fill blocks to paint a path to the exit point. Along the way, you’ll want to also pass through marked nodes that will power up the attack, while avoiding those marked as a hazard. It’s very simple stuff, but what makes it feel different is that you need your thumb on the left analogue stick in order to move Hugh and Diana away from any dangers, so directional inputs are instead mapped to the shape or letter face buttons.

Jumping deeper into the game, tougher enemies like a big stompy boy that leaves behind puddles or arcing electricity to stun you, provide a larger grid to quickly skim your way through. You also have access to special nodes like Decode, which is able to lower enemy defence further if you are able to integrate it into the path you hurriedly chart through the puzzle. The thing is, nodes are consumables that you collect, rather than a permanent upgrade, so you might want to avoid those spots when battling more standard enemies.

Naturally, there’s different weapon types, so in addition to the unlimited ammo available to Hugh’s standard pistol, there’s a shotgun-like Shockwave Gun, where damage will fall off the further away you are, while the Stasis Net drops a bubble that will stun enemies caught within its radius.

It adds up to a style and tone of combat that’s really rather active and engaging without really feeling overwhelming. Dashing is assigned to a shoulder button, so you’re not having to perform exotic claw grips to play the game to the fullest.

Exploring the Cradle is also interesting, though here we’re left with a lot of questions for the game’s overarching form. Diana unlocks save points by hacking floor hatches with ladders, which could be taken to hint at a Soulslike style where enemies respawn if you use them… or they might just be basic save checkpoints.

There’s definitely a ton of secrets to uncover, though, with hidden fake walls shimmering and certain interactive points that can shift parts of the level around. We also wandered through a room that looked like it had been half generated from a 3D printer, finding a datapad with emails that all about Read Earth Memory technology that can be used to replicate furniture, decorations, and even food for the disappeared residents of this base.

Our hands-on time came to an end, rather abruptly, as the full scale of the moon base is revealed, the dome covering a control room peeling away to show the sprawl across the dusty grey surface. IDUS takes great offence to this, calling once more on nearby robots to come and put an end to your intrusion. In this case, it’s ED-209… or a bipedal bot that looks an awful lot like the RoboCop icon, anyway. Sadly we didn’t get to face off against this boss, but I’m definitely keen to do so whenever the chance does come up.