Cyberdark RPG: Neon lights won’t save you from the dark when the firewall collapses
Epic Party Games and Lightfish Games dare you to run on the edge in this brutalist cyberpunk adaptation of the ENnie-winning Shadowdark system.
The OSR is darkness, dust, and dungeons filled with horrors. Life is cheap, and there are no real heroes. Although the imagery of reference titles is often fantasy, cyberpunk is not so different: behind the gleaming chrome and fluorescent lights hides a hostile, brutal world made of worthless bodies where survival is the only thing that matters.
For this reason, Lightfish Games (of Farsight 5E fame) has decided to partner with Epic Party Games (Brancalonia, Inferno Dante’s Guide to Hell, Assassin’s Creed RPG, Massive Darkness - Dungeons of Shadowreach) to take inspiration from the Shadowdark engine and create Cyberdark RPG, swapping skeletons and dungeons for AI demons and the endless sprawl of the Meatgrid, a decaying lattice of street zones and cursed code.
In Cyberdark RPG, players take on the role of darkrunners: scavengers, slicers, and synth-born mercs scraping by on the signal frontier. Every victory could be your last, because when the Firewall collapses, you are exposed in body, code, and soul.
Shadowdark Reimagined
Shadowdark’s most iconic mechanic is the real-time torch timer, which returns in Cyberdark with a twist. Light, the only lifeline for adventurers in Kelsey Dionne’s game, becomes the Mine-Canary Firewall (MCF): a living, bio-synthetic decoy that hums with protection for precisely one hour of real-world time. When it dies, your feed fills with static, and the Cyberdark, that digital abyss beneath the Net, starts to feed back.
The tension of an OSR timer remains, but it is anchored to the logic of Cyberdark’s techno-horror, where technology neither helps nor saves, but is a disease impossible to eradicate that crawls under the skin.
From Shadowdark, it maintains the roll-1d20-and-hope style that makes every session a visceral affair, with fast, lethal, and unforgiving combat. You’ll die fast, and gruesomely, and love every second of it.
A Pitch-Black Cyberpunk Experience
Cyberdark RPG is built on a unique duality: two worlds, inseparable and equally deadly, two battlegrounds where survival means mastering both flesh and code:
The Meatgrid – a labyrinth of neon and rust, rain-slick streets, corporate strongholds, and gang hideouts. Here, the dungeon walls are alleys and high-rises. Explore the contested city-sprawl, where credits, bullets, and blades decide survival.
The Cyberdark – a digital underworld of broken code and rogue AIs, where every incursion plays like a dungeon run. No safe vision. Every incursion risks ICE programs as traps and guardians, and rogue AIs as demons and monsters. Cyberdark doesn’t forgive mistakes.
You can play one of the four classes (although at least a couple more have been unlocked during the ongoing Kickstarter campaign): Breaker, Slicer, Codecaster, and Synthsmith. These are the cyberpunk reflections of “the classic four”—fighter, thief, wizard, and priest—rewired in neon lights.
The Minds behind the machine
This project is launched by Lightfish Games (Farsight RPG), in partnership with Epic Party Games (ENnie Award winners, with design credits including Brancalonia, Inferno: Dante’s Guide to Hell, Assassin’s Creed RPG, Massive Darkness RPG, and more), and with the artistic and conceptual force of the Lichdom College collective (Faerie Fire RPG).
Together, this team blends publishing expertise, award-winning system design, and cutting-edge art direction to create a fast, lethal, old-school-inspired roleplaying game for cyberpunk adventures.
The Campaign (and the Free Hit)
The Kickstarter hit its funding goal in under 1 hour, a rare feat for an indie, OSR-adjacent project. Aspiring darkrunners still have a few days to participate in the crowdfunding and be the first to get their hands on the corebook, zines, and a plethora of goodies, such as one-page folios and cards, to speed up codecasting.
For those not yet convinced, Cyberdark launched with a complete, free quickstart, Cursed Code #0: The Halo, a playable module that includes four pre-gens, new mechanics, and the entire “Compression Run” scenario set in HALO-1, a vast orbital arcology decaying under corporate compression cycles.
It can be downloaded for free from this link without providing your email.
The Kickstarter runs through November 19, 2025.
