Pragmata hands-on preview — The weirdest bring your daughter to work day ever

It’s been a while. Pragmata was somewhat dead, at least, that was the public perception. Although it seemed headed for Deep Down status, Pragmata proved to be alive at the recent PlayStation State of Play. Even better, Capcom had it playable at their booth at Summer Game Fest, and if they hadn’t had a time limit on my appointment, I’d have probably stood there playing it for many more hours.

The demo began with Hugh, our heavy duty spaceman, laying on the ground. He seems to be in pretty bad shape, at least, until Diana finds him. This android girl does a bit of computing and gets Hugh back on his feet, and just in time. The system for whatever moon base-type facility you’re on wants you gone, and is sending robots after you to do so.

This is where Pragmata got incredibly interesting for me. While you aren’t going to be surprised by movement, dodging, or shooting, an added element heightens the combat. See, robots are armored. That means your gun comes off as more like a peashooter to them. To do more damage, that armor has to go, or at least, needs to move out of the way.

Insert Diana. Her hacking ability gives you a chance to do the real damage, but it’s more than a simple button press. It’s quite a few, funny enough. Aiming down your sights at these metal boogeymen, you’re presented with a hacking challenge. This mini-game has you operating face buttons like a D-pad (Up is triangle, down is X, and so on). You’ll play this centipede-like challenge, maneuvering through a few nodes, and exiting through the finisher node. Suddenly, their armor bursts open, allowing Hugh to take them out more easily.

If Capcom made you hack with the D-pad, it wouldn’t work at all. Making this decision allows you to move around the battle arena, dodge, and most importantly, get your hack off to start delivering damage. Some of the weaponry allows you to stall for extra time as well, like the stasis gun which slows robots down. I also love the addition of special nodes that drop for you to pick up, which give extra buffs (like an attack boost) for navigating your hack through them.

One of the other intriguing elements of this game is the setting. I’m not sure any of us knew exactly how it was going to work, but it’s almost cheery in nature. Even with these shambling, almost zombie-esque robots chasing after you. Some may think space Death Stranding, but I’m getting more Dead Space in Portal vibes. At any rate, it’s visually striking; Capcom always seems to put out graphical showcases in their lineups.

While there wasn’t a lot to the story shown in this preview, I’m certainly interested in knowing more. Who is Diana really? Is this going to be another Lone Wolf and Cub kind of narrative? Why are we stuck in this facility? There’s a lot of questions left in this area, and we’ll have to wait a little longer to find out more.

Pragmata really grabbed my attention in this demo. I was already interested; it’s certainly a unique idea for a video game. But seeing it in action along with a couple of cool features just pulls me in further. Pragmata releases sometime in 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles.