Indie developer Lorix Games has released the official trailer for Midnight Manhunt, an upcoming cyberpunk turn-based tactics game that puts a fresh twist on the age-old game of cat and mouse. The trailer offers the most comprehensive look yet at the game’s neon-drenched world, asymmetric gameplay mechanics, and the looming presence of LUCi, the all-watching city AI at the heart of the experience.
Set in a dystopian cyberpunk metropolis where every footstep is tracked by an omnipresent artificial intelligence, Midnight Manhunt casts you on either side of a high-stakes pursuit. As a Grid Runner, you coordinate a squad of four specialists to hunt down shadowy saboteurs moving through the city. As a Ghost, you go it alone: outnumbered, under-equipped, and entirely dependent on misdirection and psychological cunning to survive until dawn.
The trailer masterfully captures this tension. Flickering surveillance feeds, narrow grid-lit alleyways, and a pulsing electronic score set the stage for what looks like a genuinely tense tactical experience, one that rewards patience and sharp thinking over brute force.
Watch the trailer here
Two Sides, One City
What immediately distinguishes Midnight Manhunt from its tactical peers is its commitment to asymmetry. The game offers two fully realized single-player campaigns, allowing players to experience the same cyberpunk city from opposite perspectives, each with its own playstyle and strategic logic.
Playing as a Grid Runner demands methodical deduction: piecing together fragments of intel, reading movement patterns, and positioning your squad to close off escape routes before the Ghost slips away into the night. Every clue matters. Every false lead can cost you the mission.
Playing as a Ghost flips that logic entirely. Outnumbered and poorly equipped, survival depends on moving unpredictably, planting false trails, and manipulating your pursuers into misreading your position. It is a game of manufactured illusions, and one wrong move can unravel everything.
Beneath both campaigns lies a narrative thread that Lorix Games describes as a tragic story of love and loss, exploring how LUCi came to dominate the city and what it cost the people living under its gaze.
Intel, Deception, and Mind Games
The tactical systems showcased in the trailer lean heavily on information scarcity as a core tension. In Midnight Manhunt, intelligence is never freely available. It must be earned, timed correctly, and carefully cross-referenced with everything else you know. False leads are a genuine threat. Acting too eagerly or too predictably opens flanks that a clever Ghost or a reactive AI opponent will exploit.
This design philosophy, where the mind game is the main game, positions Midnight Manhunt as something distinct from most tactics titles on the market. Rather than unit management or resource optimisation, the core loop revolves around reading your opponent and making them read you wrong.
Built for Replayability
Beyond the campaigns, Lorix Games has built a sandbox mode at the heart of Midnight Manhunt, a fully customisable space where all the game’s mechanics interact without narrative guardrails. Adjustable difficulty settings, custom match parameters, and varied AI behaviours are all designed to keep the experience fresh long after the credits roll.
It is a confident design choice from a debut studio, and one that suggests Lorix Games has built their game around systems deep enough to sustain that level of open-ended play.
Demo This Summer
A playable demo for Midnight Manhunt is set to launch this summer, giving a hands-on opportunity to step into the grid and experience the pursuit firsthand before the full release later this year.
Midnight Manhunt is currently listed on Steam, where players can add it to their wishlist. Follow Lorix Games on X (@LorixGames) for further updates ahead of the demo launch.
About Lorix Games
Lorix Games is an independent game developer and the studio behind Midnight Manhunt. The game is their debut title, developed and published by the studio itself.
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