Replaced is a side-scrolling cyberpunk beat 'em up that wants to feel like a playable movie: "We were heavily inspired by games like Inside, the Batman Arkham series, and Uncharted"

What does it mean to be human? Replaced asks that question through Reach, a machine whose consciousness has somehow been transferred into its creator's body. Reach speaks aloud to Warren as he gets his bearings in the new body, addressing his host as if still inside a computer. Whether that's because he's lonely or simply used to it, I'm not sure. But Reach's hunt to restore Warren's consciousness leaves me feeling oddly philosophical.

Set in a neon dystopia where human body parts have market value, Replaced takes us beyond the walls of Phoenix-City to explore the lives of the Disposals – the humans deemed "trash" by the corporate elite – in a retro-futuristic 1980s America. My two-hour demo taster walks me through the broad strokes of this post-apocalyptic side-scroller, from the Cyberpunk 2077-like grit to the strangely nostalgic tech… but my biggest takeaway is how Replaced has somehow made me fall in love with beat-'em-up combat as an arcade noob.

I'm sorry, Warren

It takes all of ten seconds for Replaced to grab me by the throat. The opening cutscene sees Warren engaged in a conversation with his computer's AI system, Reach, that reminds me acutely of an iconic scene in 2003 Space Odyssey – although this time, the machine is not the villain.

"Gameplay-wise, we were heavily inspired by indie games like Inside, the Batman Arkham series, and Uncharted in terms of platforming," Sad Cat co-founder and composer Igor Gritsay tells me of how combat and exploration work in Replaced. "If you're talking about, like, overall vibe and story, [we draw from] lots of stuff like Deus Ex and older games like System Shock."

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I definitely get the System Shock vibes in these early moments. Reach is a piece of computer software, a machine AI represented by a giant face upon a screen – much like the rogue SHODAN's manifestation in the 1994 original and Nightdive Studios' System Shock remake back in 2023. But unlike SHODAN, Reach doesn't want to manipulate and control humans; it wants to actually save his master, Warren.

But the world is not what Reach expects it to be. Themes of information control and machine learning come into play as Reach encounters hostile after hostile human, chased from Warren's lab in the heart of Phoenix-City before eventually making it beyond the wall. Reach has been programmed to see the supposed "best" of humanity, with little to no understanding of how society has been fragmented following a major disaster in the 1960s.

It's a clever way for Sad Cat to gamifiy a key aspect of worldbuilding: information gathering. Armed with a Walkman-like tapedeck, here called a Wingman, Reach can scan items throughout the world to learn more about it. From eviction notices to newspaper clippings, signs, graffiti, and personal notes, I feel like I am learning alongside Reach as he experiences the ugly truth of humanity for the very first time.

If you're wondering whether Sad Cat is trying to make a comment here on the role of AI in 2026, with conversations around generative AI in game development an increasingly hot topic, Gritsay sets the record straight.

"This is totally an accident," he tells me; the game has been in development for seven years, long before the discourse kicked off. "I think our main topic here is what it means to be human," says Gritsay, with Replaced pondering questions like "what if things go wrong when AI actually has some sort of elevated purpose, more than creating somebody in a bikini and or a cat on a unicycle, whatever. I think that those topics that never have an answer are always the most interesting. You can speculate on it in whatever way you want – you cannot really be wrong, because you will never know [the truth]."

As Reach stumbles upon the forgotten Disposals – to recap, the "damaged" humans whose bodies hold no further value to the transplant trade governing Phoenix-City's elite – it recognizes one of them from Warren's files. I'm unsure how Replaced's bio-medical dystopia works, but it seems like this ex-friend of Warren's – who now goes by a new name, Tempest – was either banished beyond the wall or ended up here by some other means. He doesn't seem to recognize Warren, in any case, so Reach decides to stick with Tempest and learn more about life beyond the wall.

Dodge this

Amid all the history lessons, stunning pixelated vistas, rusty detritus of a world long gone, and letterbox framing fresh from an arthouse picture, Replaced's dynamic combat encounters are an easy highlight of my hands-on session.

It starts out as a simple beat-'em-up – X to hit, A to dodge, and Y to counterattack, with colored markers over an enemy's head indicating when to do what. It makes it easier to zero in on a given enemy, as does Replaced's sidelong perspective preventing groups of bad guys from overwhelming my screen.

I get the hang of things pretty fast. Reach stumbles upon a group of cannibalistic rebels who call themselves Termites – picture the unholy union of Cyberpunk 2077's most disturbing gangs, Scavs and Maelstrom – and I make quick work of them, using the hilt of a gun Reach looted off a dead soldier as a baton. I wonder if I'll always be using the gun as a makeshift melee weapon, a symbol of humanity's resourcefulness in the face of extreme prejudice and segregation, but Tempest and his buddies have other plans.

When I reach The Station, a sort of safe zone for Disposals, I learn how to deliver a charge shot finisher. Dealing damage and countering enemy attacks builds up power in my gun, while dodging or remaining idle depletes it. I can glance to the gun-shaped meter in the lower-left corner of my screen to gauge my progress, and once the meter fills up, it's time to pull the trigger.

Replaced has some surprisingly flashy finisher moves. Hitting RT sees Reach go full Matrix, the screen tilting to an angle as the AI-turned-human drops Termites with a single shot to the head (or chest, or anywhere else, really). It's a slick touch, leaning into the cinematic immersion Replaced aims to deliver while never straying far from the arcadey, combo-based format itself.

After spending just under three hours with it, it's safe to say that Replaced is not what I thought it would be. Unexpected moments of emotional depth and innovative tweaks to the side-scrolling platformer rulebook prove this one of the most unique new games of 2026. I completely get why Gritsay describes it as "no cookie-cutter" cyberpunk narrative; Reach's journey is a heartfelt, somehow optimistic one despite the unforgiving landscape, and I can't wait to see how the story ends when Replaced launches on March 12.

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