Capcom's Pragmata feels like it draws inspiration from survival horror, hacking combat mechanic makes every encounter into a puzzle

reveal of the PlayStation 5. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait another five years to learn more about this mysterious game. Pragmata had a playable demo at the Summer Game Fest Play Days, and I got to play for twenty minutes. I went in expecting a run-of-the-mill sci-fi third-person shooter but got something much more exciting.

Pragmata looks like a sci-fi shooter, but it can feel like a survival horror

Don’t get me wrong, this is still definitely a sci-fi third-person shooter, it’s just not run-of-the-mill. We still don’t know the details of the story so far, but in the demo, Hugh is saved and healed by Diana, who appears to be a young girl. The two are stranded in a strange moon base full of aggressive security robots and need to find a way to return to Earth.

While not quite on par with something like Resident Evil, Pragmata feels like it draws inspiration from the survival horror genre. At least for the demo I played, the enemies are heavily armored robots that take no damage from Hugh’s weapons. So, both protagonists, Hugh and Diana, have to work together to take them down. The unassuming little girl, Diana, is actually a highly advanced robot who can hack the armor of the advancing enemies, leaving them vulnerable to Hugh’s weapons.

The brilliance of Pragmata, though, is that this hacking is not a ive ability or something as simple as a button press. Focus on your target, and Diana initiates a hack. On the right side of your screen, a small transparent grid appears. Starting from one square, you’ll need to use your triangle, x, square, and circle buttons to move left and right, up and down, until you create a path to reach the green center. This will open up the robot’s armor, leaving it temporarily vulnerable. But the game doesn’t pause while this is happening; you need to keep an eye on the dangerous enemy approaching you on one side of the screen while performing a fast-paced puzzle on the other.

Some enemies have smaller grids, while others have larger ones. There are also squares that you cannot through and others that will give you bonus damage if you do. So, in the moment, you’ll need to figure out if you have time to take a detour to get some bonuses, or if you need to take the fastest route. For me, this created many tense and chaotic moments where, in a panic, I pressed in the wrong direction, giving my enemy enough time to close in and attack. Near the end of my time with the demo, I found an item that added a new type of square to the grids, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for how this hacking mechanic can become more complex throughout the game.

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When there’s just one robot in the room with you, it can be tense. Now imagine there are two or three, or even more. Thankfully, there are plenty of other tools Hugh can use to help out. His bullets may not be effective at first, but he can use a weapon that can temporarily stun targets, locking them in place and giving you time to hack. Once the robots are vulnerable, Hugh can choose between the classic pistol-like weapon or a close-range shotgun for massive damage.

Between combat, Hugh and Diana work together on simple environmental puzzles. Hugh handles the platforming using a combination of jump boots and hovering, while Diana hacks into various key points in the station to unlock doors and deactivate security measures.

As I mentioned above, we only had about twenty minutes with Pragmata. That was the time cutoff, but the team would also cut you off when you reached a certain point in the demo. Initially, there were about ten of us in the demo room, each on our own monitor. But at some point, I realized I was the last one still playing. The development team had already escorted everyone else outside, but they were now watching me finish the demo. Apparently, other people had moved quickly through the demo, worried about the twenty-minute timeline, but I got lost in exploration. The developers told me I was the only one to explore everything the demo had to offer.

The cut-off in the demo was immediately after the cut scene that introduces the game’s first boss. I had a feeling that time was running out, but it was still brutal to come so far and not even be able to try my luck against the boss once. Even though I didn’t get to face the boss, my time with Pragmata tells me that this is a game that I want to explore as much as possible, even if I’m about to be kicked off the computer.

Pragmata doesn’t have a release date yet, but it is planned for launch sometime in 2026. With a playable demo at Summer Game Fest this year, it certainly won’t be as long a wait from the initial trailer. Pragmata will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam.

Pragmata

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• Overview

• Capcom
• survival horror
• science fiction
• Summer Game Fest
• PC
• PS5
• XSX