Chill cyberpunk city builder Dystopika’s B-Sides DLC offers up polished experiments for you to play with

I think games are generally quite bad at acknowledging that they are things that are made by people. These people tend to have conversations about ideas, which turn into implementing those ideas, and sometimes these ideas are abandoned. We’ve all enjoyed a deleted scene in the extras of a DVD, yet the cutting room floor does not seem to be a thing for most games, at least not publicly. Which is why the new B-Sides DLC for Dystopika, a chill cyberpunk city builder quite liked by some former RPSers.

Developer Voids Within explain in a Steam post that, “like the B-sides of a record, this DLC contains unreleased experiments and concepts that were previously cut at the sketchbook or concept art phase which have now been fully realized as new props and districts.” So, less of a deleted scene, and more of an alternate cut, but I’m liking their musical metaphor too.

In terms of what’s included, for starters there’s a new district called Rustport. This, you will not be surprised to hear, looks like quite a reddy orange locale, so at least it lives up to its name. There’s a new megastructure called Port Terra which looks like two Beyblades stacked on top of each other. You’ll also find a new utility district, Scaffolding, again a place that looks like it lives up to its name. Aside from that, there’s more than 20 new props, like a couple of monorail styles and airships, a bunch more hologram projections, and 12 new C-ville and Labber’s Row signage variations.

This DLC also coincides with a new update, bringing in version 1.7.0 of the game. Included in this are a couple of new tools, the first being a density brush that lets you paint up or paint down smaller procedural buildings. The other tool is literally called the “Nothing” cursor.

“That’s right, a tool that does nothing!” the devs explain. “Admire and navigate your city without those pesky building previews. The cursor tool can be found next to the Destroy tool in the toolbar.” And there’s also a new prop, a hologram wall emitter, which “allows placement on walls and angled surfaces for more versatile placement of holograms.” Not to mention there’s a bunch of quality of life improvements and bug fixes – you can take a full gander of the patch notes right here.