This is going to be an unusual review, because Neo Cab isn’t a book. It’s a visual novel that people experience as a video game, a novel set in a dystopia that touches on so many topics — corporatocracy, the multiverse, free will, the way social media reduces people to shallow performance artists — that as soon as I finished, I began replaying it to see what characters and threads I’d missed on my first run. The setup is simple: we open on a gig cab driver named Lina approaching the city of Los Ojos from the countryside, reflecting on the change she’s about to make in her life. An old friend of hers named Savvy, who she had a fight with some time in the past and has not seen since, has just invited Lina to stay with her in the city, and it seems like an opportunity not only to restore their friendship but to make a little coin. Almost immediately, though, Savvy disappears, and as Lina desperately works the streets in her cab trying to earn money to meet the necessities — energy for her car, a place to sleep for the night — she also begins asking questions, trying to figure out what Savvy was involved with and what might’ve happened. The story is nonlinear, evolving as the character chooses different fares for the night, and has different conversations with passengers. They’re a capricious lot, and even fares who seem to like Lina may leave her a three-star review or worse if the conversation doesn’t go a way that pleases them — but conversations that please the fare don’t necessarily bring Lina any closer to the truth. I haven’t re-played the game enough to know if reaching a resolution is inevitable, but in every instance I’ve tried the clues start turning up soon enough. I was personally surprised by how absorbing the story and the characters were: I honestly felt invested in what happened in their fates. The environment is very cyberpunk, of course, from the neon-saturated city to the soundtrack — and the main story is about a group of activists trying to take on a huge corporate behemoth. Lina will get involved with this as she tries to find out what’s happened with Savvy, though their relationship is more important to the exact ending one gets than the player’s decisions to take on Capra. This isn’t Tech Support Error Unknown where the player’s role as a tech troubleshooter makes them choose between hacktivists, the corporation, and the police. There’s also the disturbing amount of bio-tech and human augmentation, from people having holoscreen surrounding their heads to one girl living in a mechsuit to protect her from the elements. Although the ending is a little rushed, between the writing and the aesthetics Neo Cab is unforgettable and cool.