Leave it to World Champ Game Co. to find the edge of a pretty established sub-genre and push past it into something weird and new. This is Cybermetal (2022), an unholy fusion of cyberpunk, heavy metal and black magic. In an alternate timeline, a heavy metal band sacrifices Ronald Reagan on stage to resurrect their dead guitarist and eventually, the gates of Hell open and demons conquer America. In the wake of their victory, they turn a Midwestern city into Pentagram City, a place isolated from the rest of the world by walls of hellfire.

Being cut off meant a greater reliance on analog tech, like radio and walkie talkies and a LAN called the Pentaweb, but citizens of Pentagram City also have access the cybernetics developed during the Hell War to combat the demons. The neuronexus makes skill learning easy (think the Matrix) and combat slow and personal (the tech basically makes the user flicker on a different frequency of reality, so fast weapons just pass right through). In addition to humans, you can play as mutants, demons and husks, which are sort of cyberzombies created in the wake of the Y2K bug.

The software system provides lots of cool skills (turn your headbanging into a deadly weapon!). There’s crafting, there’s cyber surgery, rules for gang creation and management and long-term gang projects. There is a bunch of source material on Pentagram City and so, so many passing references to heavy metal. It’s sort of shocking that A. Adam fit all this text in and had room for so much gnarly art, B. That the art in question is as aggressive and unrelenting as CyBORG’s, but also of a totally distinct temperament and C. That the game is so smoothly playable — it uses a percentile skill system and does everything you’d expect from a tightly designed modern light rules set.