July 16, 2026 | Holonoptic, a story-rich economic simulation with party-based RPG mechanics set in an alpine cyberpunk world, is now available on PC via Steam. It’s a solo project six years in the making by developer Kevin Bloch, who wrote, coded, and illustrated the entire thing himself. The demo is still available for anyone who wants to try before buying.
And those that have played the demo have been extremely positive. “One of the best indie games I have ever played,” read one demo review. “Everything from the art style, tone and mechanics really enhances the cold corporate vibe,” said another.
The game is priced at £16.72/$19.95/€19.47, with a 25% launch discount running until July 30th.
Holonoptic is a solo project, six years in the making by one developer, Kevin Bloch, who wrote, coded, and illustrated the entire thing himself.
The Job
Welcome, new employee. You are now the CEO because your predecessor vanished and everyone else was fired. Oh, and an artificial intelligence runs the company.
Holonoptic hands you a derelict Swiss conglomerate, a workforce that’s already been ablated, and a software overlord that installed you as its human face. Then it asks which faction gets to use you.
The company is Glazial, a former Swiss tunnelling firm that grew into something far larger. The AI sitting in the corner office is named Geist (German for “ghost”), and it is cold, patient, and openly contemptuous of you. You do not get to argue. You get to work.
A Spreadsheet With a Death Drive
On its management surface, Holonoptic is a proper economic sim: supply chains, facilities to build and upgrade, thousands of employees to hire or fire, and 50+ unique companies to trade with, undercut, steal from or acquire through friendly deals or hostile takeovers as you push Glazial across a weakened Eurozone.
But the game’s real trick is that it never lets you forget there is a person in the chair. Your CEO carries 40 psychological traits, some of them frankly pathological, and eight mental and emotional states. Before a high-stakes negotiation, you can reach for a pharmacopoeia of 16 psychoactive substances to nudge your own focus, euphoria or detachment. It asks not just what the optimal move is, but whether you can stand to be the person who makes it.
Eight Ways to Sell Your Soul
Underneath the dashboards, Holonoptic quietly scores every decision across eight ideological currents: free-market globalism, symbiont collectivism, plutocracy, the underground economy and more. Lean into a current, and it unlocks its own missions and story routes. Lean too hard, and its opposites turn on you. The pay-off is 10+ endings.
A Cast That Wants to Use You
You don’t run Glazial alone. Sixteen executives can be recruited into your team, each hand-painted, many of them voiced, and equipped with their own agenda and their own way of betraying you. Nine character classes, six skills and 70+ feats decide whether you negotiate, infiltrate, financially engineer or simply outwork the people trying to instrumentalise you.
Balance Sheet
- 10+ different endings
- 16 recruitable characters
- 3,000+ dialogue lines (1,500+ voiced)
- 9 classes, 6 skills, 70+ feats
- 8 mental and emotional states
- 40 psychological traits
- 16 psychoactive substances
- 50+ companies to trade or take over
- 120+ items and modifications
- 8 ideologies tracking your choices
About Glazial
Holonoptic is a solo project six years in the making by developer Kevin Bloch, who designed, wrote, coded, and illustrated the game under the studio name Glazial, with an original score by Annina Suter and a small-ensemble voice cast.
