Neo Cab

Its a good game. Maybe a litte to short but the characters are very interesting and all have thier own story you can discover. Sometimes I really felt like a Cab driver in the near future.
Art style is very nice. Aswell as the soundtrack.
But sometimes it wont let you respond the way you want to. It forces you to respond in a certian wa y and I really didnt like that. It kinda destroyed the illusion for me ... but it happend only like 2-3 times so its not that bad.
Overall I'd wish that there were more characters and maybe more to discover. Also a longer and more interesting story would have been nice.
However the content that is available right now, is really good and will keep you entertained for a few hours.

Nice short game with replay value. Similar to a visual novel with some survival elements. Most of the game is talking to people you've just met. You have choices to make for dialogue and actions which can alter future conversations. The dialogue is written well and isn't boring. You won't be able to experience the whole game in one playthrough. The main character Lina has some biases and steers the conversation on her own at times which I disliked. I would have preferred putting myself in Lina's shoes and forming my own opinions rather than choosing one of hers. The art is nice looking but the city can be bland sometimes. There is no voice acting which is a negative in my opinion. Lina was as much of a character as everyone else (instead of a faceless protagonist) and voice acting would have helped the game. Good game otherwise.

A great game which could have used a little more refinement.
(First and foremost, I finished the game in about 4 hours, but since I did so offline, Steam has only four minutes "on record" for me playing this game.)
But for the review: The story is set in a dystopian cyberpunk near-future, where you play as a cab driver who comes to a new town to live with her best friend, with a core element being branching timelines. The worldbuilding is excellent, and so is the art style.
Gameplay-wise the game is similar to the recently released "Subsurface Circular": you're picking options from a dialogue tree while you are interacting in static screens, with one additional gimmick - you have to manage your emotional state via a bracelet-display thing your player character is wearing. There are four emotional states which are colour-coded, and some dialogue options are shown with a marker in the same colour to indicate the type of response or the direction which the conversation might take. So you try to extract information from your passengers by picking options in the context of the game world.
And this system is exactly where my central point of criticism lies: You are always shown several dialogue options, but - depending on your actions earlier in the game - you often cannot pick one or more of them; when you click on these options, the game just tells you that your player character rejects to speak or act in the respective way. This makes you feel forced to click on that one "right" option that the game wants, instead of the one that you want. And especially in the final interaction, this made some of the emotional reactions of the player character seem pretty inexplicable.
In this regard, I would have preferred if these un-pickable options either did not show up at all or the dialogue/options tree had a lot more branches so you could always pick every one of them and have the story unfold around your choice. (It would seem likely that the small team of developers did not have the time and/or budget for this.)
You obviously just have to guess through multiple playthroughs which options are available to you under which circumstances, since the game isn't always very clear about the feelings of the other characters.
But still, the narrative and the cyberpunk world are fascinating, the characters are well-written and even if the story itself is rather predictable at times, the storytelling is still excellent. If you are like me and consider "Life is Strange" or "Gone Home" masterpieces in storytelling and prefer interesting worldbuilding over action-based gameplay, this should be exactly your thing. I surely hope to see more from this developer in the future!

Bought on sale, and finished in one day in just under 4 hours. I loved it. It takes you on an emotional journey and doesn't stop surprising you. Intelligent and beautifully crafted.
I really do want more. One of my favourite games of the last few years, though it won't be for everyone.
I'm incredibly glad I played it.

Capra, sometimes a pax wants a human driver.
We finally have the two taxi games that were announced at last year’s E3. Night Call was the first to be released a couple months ago and now we finally have Neo Cab. Funnily enough, while Neo Cab was shown first it ended up releasing second. Let’s see how this one fares as we go into the future.
In Neo Cab, you play as Lina right before she arrives at Los Ojos with her few belongings and her trusty cab. While Lina would be more comfortable at Cactus Flats, the need to reconnect with her best friend, Savy, propels her forward. Why doesn’t Lina want to be at Los Ojos? Well, it turns out that it’s home to a tech company called Capra. Years ago, Lina worked with them as a cab driver, but as technology advanced, Capra switched out human drivers for self-driving cars. Not ready to stop driving people around, Lina went to get employed by Neo Cab. Now, Lina is one of the few human drivers left in Los Ojos as Capra tries to push their competition away.
At least she has Savy, right? Shortly after Lina arrive at Los Ojos, she picks up Savy and reconnect a bit. Savy even bought Lina a Feelgrid as a gift, which shows the wearer’s mood via colors (if you know about mood rings it’s basically that, but it analyzes the wearer’s blood). Before Lina could hang out with Savy outside of the car, or even get the address to where she’ll be staying, Savy asks to be dropped off to take care of a little errand. Well, by the end of the night Savy goes missing. As they are best friends, Lina decides to stay in Los Ojos in hopes of finding out what happened.
Throughout Neo Cab, you’ll meet some interesting characters. Every night, you’ll be able to choose two pax (or passengers) with the choice of an extra, third, one. What I really liked about Neo Cab was that each pax not only shaped by their past (or present) experiences, but also the politics happening in Los Ojos. As Capra is going forward with self-driving cabs, they’re trying to push Neo Cab off the roads. In fact, this is kind of already in motion as Los Ojos is set to vote for a new bill called Sophie’s Law that will make it illegal for a human to operate a vehicle in Los Ojos. Of course, Lina opposes this bill, but what about the other residents? Sure, you’ll get a pax that’s going to a first date or one that can see multiple timelines, but many others delve into their thoughts around Sophie’s Law. Some agree that humans aren’t reliable enough to not put others in danger, some are for human drivers staying around, and others are just anti-car all together. Even those that don’t outright bring up their stance can be assumed that they’re against outlawing human drivers or at least know that sometimes they need human interaction.
During conversations, the Feelgrid comes into play. As Lina talks with a pax, her emotions will change and we get a handy way to tell where her emotions are at by a grid map. You have feel-good green, happy yellow, angry red, sad blue, and everything in between. The more intense the emotion is, the more it will creep to the edge of the grid, while the more mellow ones are in the center. This effects your dialogue choices as it can open one up and lock some off. If Lina has an extreme blue emotion (and I’m assuming red), Lina won’t be up to doing an extra ride. This mechanic has me conflicted as the implementation and how some characters react to Lina having a Feelgrid is interesting, but at the same time it can get annoying as the option you want is blocked. It can even be frustrating if it’s a forced emotion shift to push you forward story-wise (especially when going against what the game wants could have been interesting) and points out how your choices don’t really matter that much. Especially when going against what the game wants could have been interesting. Perhaps it would have been better if some options had variations or you could fail to hide how you felt in your voice in certain situations.
This also puts focus on how choices don’t really matter, which will be a huge negative for those who were looking forward to Neo Cab for that reason. The most notable one is early on when a pax named Azul jumps into Lina’s car (without going through the app mind you) and telling Lina to drive. Lina is understandably angry, but you’re railroaded into telling them to get out and then calming down and giving Azul a ride after looking into their eyes. You can’t have Lina agree or be understanding while Lina is angry and you can’t refuse Azul. Being able to refuse Azul would have given you a consequence as she has information you need whether you not she’ll actually tell you. However, as of now, there’s a bug. After gaining information about two things, Azul will tell you to come back tomorrow. Well, when you visit Azul again it skips and says to come back tomorrow. Also, late-game you’re asked to pick up someone that you haven’t met yet. On my first playthrough, I didn’t know you could visit Azul to gain information about their appearance so Lina didn’t know what they looked like. However, on another playthrough when I did learn beforehand, it was the same result.
In Neo Cab, you have two things you have to keep track of: money and your rating. While your car doesn’t need gas, it does need to be charged every once and a while. You’ll never run out of charge in the middle of driving your pax to their destination (though that would be funny), but if you don’t have enough charge you won’t be able to pick someone up or go to a location. Many Charge Stations are sprinkled around Los Ojos and while you can just wait till you’re so low that you can only make it to the Charge Station, each one has a different price per bar. One station will charge less than a dollar per bar, while one will charge $1.32 per bar. In addition, since you never got info about where you were going to stay with Savy, you’re going to have to pay for a hotel. Honestly, you won’t really be low on money unless you get a ticket. Meanwhile, your rating is based on your most recent rides and to stay employed with Neo Cab, you have to maintain a four star rating. This means that if you get one pax in a bad mood, it’s going to tank your rating. Thankfully, you do get warnings before you’re fired. In addition, some pax are premium members that can only be picked up if you have five stars.
If you’re planning to get the fail conditions, you’re in for a surprise. It’s easy to assume that if you run out of money or get fired, it’s an early end. Well, it turns out that running out of money will have Lina sleeping in her car (her mood will suffer) and have Lina go against her ethics as she turns to Capra to earn some extra money. Having a low rating is the only fail condition, but it’s considerably hard as it requires you to know which pax will give you low ratings and keep the low rating for a long time.
Verdict
While I did enjoy Neo Cab’s characters and how the personal the politics of phasing out human drivers for self-driving cars (as well as Capra sneakily gathering information on customers and doing PR stunts) was, it also has aspects that will turn some players away. If you’re someone that hates when a game acts like choices matter, the railroading and the Feelgrid mechanic is going to leave a bad taste. If Neo Cab still interests you and you don’t really mind the downsides, the story is a couple hours long with four possible endings (if you count the fail ending). There is replayability as you won’t be able to pick up every pax in your first playthrough, but you’ll have to go through Savy’s sections again.
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Short, but beautiful cyberpunk art style and kind of a perfect soundtrack. The game also has a kind of therapeutically cathartic value to it as you gain proficiency in managing your own and others' "emotions." The story is written with amazingly brilliant emotional intelligence by the developers, making the dialogue intelligent and fun for such a short and limited gameplay.

NeoCab is a futuristic, well written Uber simulator. Your choices, thoughts and feelings matters highly, like an accurate human simulator.
I finished it 4 times and every time was a completely different playthrough. So I assure that its replayability potential is 10/10.
My only disappointment was the absence of voice acting.
Thanks for this original, beautiful, unforgettable masterpiece!