// 2025-11-30 // by Elder0010
VirtuaVerse is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Theta Division Games and published by Blood Music for Windows and Mac. It was released on May 12, 2020 on the online platforms Steam and GOG. On October 18, 2021 it was released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
Release date: 12/05/2020
Credits:
VirtuaVerse is a point-and-click adventure game set in a cyberpunk future: it features a unique art style and an atmospheric soundtrack. After creating the Power Glove Ultra, I went in touch with Master Boot Record, who is a great musician and a friend of mine, and we decided to collaborate on a project together. He introduced me to Valenberg, a talented artist who helped bring the game’s visuals to life. We wanted to create something that could be a tribute to the 80s cyberpunk culture. Being huge fans of the classic point and click games (mosty Lucasarts and Sierra), we wanted to create a love letter to them.
The result is VirtuaVerse, which has been released on multiple platforms and received positive reviews from critics and players alike.
The game takes place in a cyberpunk future where most of humanity experiences the world through a permanent augmented-reality layer. People wear implants or devices that constantly overlay digital information, advertisements, avatars, and virtual environments over the real world. This system is called AVR, and it has become so widespread that many people barely interact with physical reality anymore. Corporations control most of the infrastructure, while a powerful AI named Xenon manages the global network from space. Because of this technological dependence, society is highly automated, heavily surveilled, and culturally obsessed with digital identities.
You play as Nathan, a hardware smuggler and tech specialist who lives mostly on the fringes of society. Unlike most people, Nathan owns a custom device that lets him switch off the augmented-reality layer, allowing him to see the raw physical world. This gives him an unusual perspective compared to others who rely entirely on digital overlays. Nathan lives with his girlfriend Jay, an artist known for creating illegal AR graffiti-visual art that appears inside the augmented world. Nathan must decide who to trust while navigating a world where technology, artificial intelligence, and human freedom are tightly intertwined.
One day Nathan wakes up to discover that Jay has disappeared. She left behind only a strange message on the mirror, which becomes the first clue in the mystery. While trying to find her, Nathan begins exploring different parts of the cyberpunk world-underground hacker communities, black-market tech dealers, and digital subcultures that exist both in physical space and inside the augmented layer. The search gradually reveals that Jay was involved in something far bigger than Nathan originally realized.
Nathan learns that Jay had connections with a hacker group called The Blade. This group opposes the global augmented-reality system and believes humanity is becoming dangerously dependent on it. Their members include programmers, cyber activists, and digital rebels who operate outside the corporate networks. During his investigation, Nathan encounters various eccentric characters and factions, including people who mix technology with mysticism, sometimes called “technomancers.” These groups believe advanced code and artificial intelligence can interact with reality in unexpected ways.
As Nathan follows Jay’s trail, he discovers hints of a hidden plan involving:
These clues suggest that Jay and the hackers were preparing a major operation involving the system that runs the entire virtual infrastructure. Nathan’s journey slowly moves from a personal search for Jay into a much larger conflict involving corporations, artificial intelligence, and the future of human society.
Over the course of the game Nathan travels through several environments, including:
Each step reveals more about the world’s dependence on the augmented network and about why some groups want to bring it down. At the same time, Nathan keeps uncovering clues about Jay’s role in the conspiracy and how deeply she was involved.
The game has been created using Unity Engine. I never released a full game before, so this was a big learning experience for me. I took part in the puzzle design and part of the dialogs writing, but of course the main part of my work was the coding. It was a long and challenging process, but also very rewarding.
I am responsible for all the retro computers content in the game, which is a big part of the game itself. Also, I put some demoscene references in the game, there’s a part where you see an Amiga (codenamed “Lorraine 500”, as a reference to the original Amiga 500) running a demo!
As soon as the story kicks in, the player is thrown into a cyberpunk world full of references to the 80s and 90s pop culture, but also to the demoscene and the retro computing world. The game features a lot of puzzles that require the player to travel around different locations, everyone with a different vibe and atmosphere. This is inspired by the classic point and click games, where you had to explore different locations and interact with the environment to solve puzzles and advance the story. I think that the game that inspired us the most in this regard is “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis” from Lucasarts, which is one of my favourite point and click games of all time.
