Capcom may be a legendary studio, but it has not had the best of luck with games outside of their biggest franchises. Exoprimal, despite experiencing flashes of brilliance, did not last long as a live service game. I am of the opinion that the game could have fared better as a single player story driven game. Dragon’s Dogma 2 remains a moderate success. It has yet to reach the status of cult classic that the first game managed to achieve. Maybe Capcom is waiting for the right opportunity to announce the big story expansion. At least there is a want and need for new content there, which is something I can’t say about Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess.
Let’s just say that PRAGMATA has its work out for it. Thankfully, this game is a single player story driven action game. It’s going to take effort for it to be actually bad. It also helps that Diana is set to capture the hearts of many.
For those who don’t know, PRAGMATA is an upcoming sci-fi action adventure title that mixes active combat with a unique hacking twist. Players take control of Hugh, a human trying to figure out what’s going on inside a lunar research station. Accompanying him is the android companion, Diana. Together, they must explore the complex and unravel the mysterious condition that led to the loss of control of the station and the fate of its human occupants.
PRAGMATA SKETCHBOOK is the demo that was released well ahead of the game’s official release mid-April 2026. It provides players with a glimpse of everything we can expect from the full release, including combat, puzzle-solving elements, and even a boss fight. More importantly, the Steam demo gives players the opportunity to see if their rigs have the ability to run the game in the first place. An important piece of information we should be learning from after Monster Hunter: Wilds‘ complicated release.
The SKETCHBOOK demo contains a pair of vertical slices, each taken from two different points in the story. Combined, the cut-up sections tell you everything you need to know about the pace of the game and all the important mechanics you will encounter in the full release. The demo can be completed in less than 20 minutes, and doing so will unlock costumes and weapons to use in your following playthroughs. You’ll also see what Diana’s been working on here titular SKETCHBOOK that changes depending on certain factors.
You will be assuming control of Hugh for the most part. As Hugh, you are expected to run and gun and dodge rough androids that wish to harm you. It becomes abundantly clear from the first seconds of the game that your measly little pistol barely does damage to enemies. This is where Diana comes into play. Diana is able to hack electronics to bypass defense. The vulnerable machines now take a considerable amount of damage for a short period of time.
The unique active hacking aspect is one of the game’s biggest selling points. The way it works on controller starts with you looking at a hackable target. This activates the soft lock feature for better tracking in a chaotic battlefield. After entering hacking distance, a small window opens up at the top right of the screen. This essentially starts a minigame where you have to press the right-side face buttons to light up boxes that have different effects, such as damage multipliers and debuffs. Think of it as you writing up the hack, but instead of writing lines of code, you are lighting up boxes and eventually hitting the activate button.
I like this system despite my earlier misgivings about it potentially ruining the pace of the game. When I understood that the slowdown in pace was an intentional design choice, I was able to slow down a bit to allow for greater utilization of hacks for more advantages. And the more I applied the hacking gameplay while combining active dodge combat, the gameplay flow started to click on all cylinders. I can’t wait to see what kind of situations we end up stress-testing our reaction speeds.
For Hugh’s part, he first has access to a tiny security pistol that barely scratches the androids’ metallic shells. The pistol becomes slightly decent after a target has been hacked, but it requires you to make more than a few shots to effectively take down weakened enemies. The only advantage it has is the fact that it has unlimited ammo that restores up to 6 shots. The shotgun, charge rifle, and submachine gun are far better guns, but they have limited ammo in their magazines.
The demo features a puzzle section that requires players to go to different locations to open locks at different locations. It boils down to going to different places that require some level of light platforming. There have been a couple of fighting sections in between lock locations. It’s straightforward enough for now, with nothing that suggests that the player is required to flex their puzzle-solving minds. Unless you think going from Point A to Point B is the puzzle.
In the final part of the demo, you are confronted with a boss that applies all the mechanics you’ve learned throughout. The boss itself is like the larger bots that try to ram you over and bully you into submission. It also comes equipped with rockets that mark the area where they are going to land, the typical action-adventure stuff. I admit that when I first saw this huge chunk of metal, I was intimidated. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for me to get a handle on the mech’s attack pattern. It was a lot slower than I thought it was going to be. Nevertheless, I still needed to respect it if for nothing else other than the obvious fact that every attack hits like a truck.
The fight itself may have been short, but I did enjoy the cinematic finishers, something Capcom is famous for. On top of that, we got to see the true extent of Diana’s support potential. I think we’re going to have some pretty epic boss fights.
And that’s everything you can expect to see in the PRAGMATA SKETCHBOOK demo. I am now more excited than ever for the game’s release. I really hope that the story emphasizes the bond between Hugh and Diana. Anything less will damage the game’s reception with audiences. There are plenty of action games from Capcom that are just straight up fun. But it’s been forever since we’ve gotten anything new that resonates with audiences at large. I am also concerned with the game’s overall length. Knowing Capcom and how the demo played out, I can safely assume that the runtime is as long as a Resident Evil game. Whether that means Resident Evil 3 or Resident Evil 4’s standard runtime remains to be seen. Personally, I prefer a runtime closer to the latter.
PRAGMATA launches on April 17, 2026! The Deluxe Edition includes the Shelter Variety Pack on top of the “Hugh Outfit – Neo Bushido” and “Diana Outfit – Neo Kunoichi” bonus costumes.
