Crosstalk

You play Cal Rowe, a private investigator working off a debt. The fixer he owes calls it in at a Neon Han noodle kiosk: keep Juna Park alive.
Juna's commlink shipped with developer firmware and no safety throttle. Every few minutes it spikes. Cameras reboot, kiosks fail, and a week ago a shopkeeper's pacemaker stopped. She doesn't know you. She doesn't trust you. The city's compliance teams are already looking for her.
Crosstalk is a top-down narrative stealth game set in Nuevo Bay in 2041. There's no combat. Cal doesn't carry a weapon. You get through the city by reading it, and you get through the case by listening to the person it's happening to.
Her call
Juna follows your commands until she decides not to. Put her in danger too many times and she stops, and you choose what happens next: pull back, meet her halfway, or go on without her. You can leave her behind entirely. The game lets you, and she remembers.
Trust is never shown on screen. You read it in how close she walks, whether she warns you before a spike, and which commands she'll accept. Separately, you choose what Cal and Juna are to each other: professional, family, or something more. That choice changes how they talk, not how much she trusts you.
She is the hazard
The closer Juna walks, the louder the network around you gets. Red zones push the city's Hazard meter up. Blue lanes, the analog alleys the courier network keeps quiet, bring it down. Most of the game is routing: park her somewhere safe, cross, then call her up. A Faraday blanket buys you seconds. A breaker you pull buys you a dark room.
Getting caught costs you time
Each mission gives you one bailout. Push past it and a 60-second Sweep starts: a compliance agent hunts you to the exit or the nearest Sanctuary. It's pressure you can survive. You don't have to be good at stealth games to finish this one.
Work the case
A photo booth dead drop, a QA whiteboard, a sealed injunction. The clues you find open conversations that wouldn't otherwise exist, and Cal reads what they mean. There's no deduction quiz. What you investigate decides which ways out exist for Juna at the end. Each run plays six of nine investigations.
Every ending costs something
Three routes, each with three versions depending on how much she trusts you, plus one more for the player who finds everything. Juna gives you her view before the last choice. Then you make it.
The city
Nuevo Bay is a corporate-run federal district on the Chesapeake. Atlas Heights sells insurance on the body it financed. Neon Han runs night markets under rain canopies. Bayport's union can shut the docks in an afternoon. Almost everyone carries the same three implants. What the hardware looks like tells you what they could afford.
Side chapters
Two shorter cases from Cal's desk, set in the same city:
La Vuelta. A mother from out of town hires Cal to find her missing partner in a neighborhood that knows her better than it knows him. She leads. He follows half a step behind.

Passthrough. An off-grid woman hires Cal to find someone she met once. The trail goes into a sensory-recording operation that sells people as content.

Free for early supporters, $5 each after the full game releases.
At a glance
Single player

Text dialogue, no voice acting

No combat

Windows and Steam Deck