The Technomancer (2016)
The Technomancer is a 2016 role-playing (rpg) video game made by Spiders and Focus Entertainment.
Mars, generations after the colonies lost contact with Earth, is parched by a war over water. You play Zachariah, a newly raised Technomancer, a warrior-caste able to channel electricity through his own body and hunted for a secret buried in his blood. Spiders builds a mid-budget sci-fi RPG around four combat stances, craftable gear, and companions whose loyalty bends with your calls. Talk your way past a fight or shock it into submission. This Red Planet is grimy corporate dystopia, closer to cyberpunk noir than space opera, rough at the seams but earnest about the world it has built.
Quick answers
What is The Technomancer about?
Mars, generations after the colonies lost contact with Earth, is parched by a war over water. You play Zachariah, a newly raised Technomancer, a warrior-caste able to channel electricity through his own body and hunted for a secret buried in his blood. Spiders builds a mid-budget sci-fi RPG around four combat stances, craftable gear, and companions whose loyalty bends with your calls. Talk your way past a fight or shock it into submission. This Red Planet is grimy corporate dystopia, closer to cyberpunk noir than space opera, rough at the seams but earnest about the world it has built.
When was The Technomancer released?
The Technomancer was released on 28 June 2016.
Who made The Technomancer?
The Technomancer was made by Spiders and Focus Entertainment.
Similar games
Explore The Technomancer guides
The Technomancer in our writing
- Companion guide: The European RPG: Gothic, The Witcher and the Continental School
A few thoughts on The Technomancer
The Technomancer's rain-slicked Martian noir sits close to Blade Runner, all Vangelis-style synth dread, and to the cybered future of Ghost in the Shell. Muse's Simulation Theory and Del's Deltron 3030 supply the same neon paranoia in album form. For the deeper cyberpunk RPG it reaches for, Deus Ex: Human Revolution delivers stance, augmentation, and moral choice on a bigger budget.
Mars colonies and space frontiers far from Earth
The Technomancer strands you on a parched, generations-removed Mars, and that same far-flung colonial unease runs through Total Recall's conspiracy-riddled Mars, The Expanse's corporate-choked belt, The Mandalorian and Grogu's dusty outer rim, and Project Hail Mary's lone crew light-years from home.
Cyberpunk noir where corporations own you
Zachariah's Mars runs on corporate control and back-alley violence, the same grime found in Ghost in the Shell's networked, surveilled bodies, Half-Life 2's occupied city, Portal 2's testing-obsessed Aperture Science, the Blade Runner score's synth-soaked noir, and Repo! The Genetic Opera's biotech-owned future.
Bodies re-engineered into weapons
The Technomancer hunts Zachariah for the power running through his blood, a hook shared with Old Man's War's soldiers rebuilt into new bodies, the Shatter Me series' heroine hunted for what she can do, The Scorch Trials' test subjects held for their biology, and Galaxy Express 999's quest for a body that lasts.
Sci-fi concept albums for a used-up future
The Technomancer's grimy, electrified Mars pairs naturally with sci-fi built for headphones: Deltron 3030's futuristic hip-hop, Muse's paranoid, space-scaled Simulation Theory and Black Holes and Revelations, Ayreon's concept-heavy Universal Migrator, Part 2: Flight of the Migrator, and Floppy Disk Overdrive's chiptune circuitry.