If you love Marathon's vectorheart style but not its PvP, get your aesthetic fix from the gorgeously overstimulating demo for this time trial FPS instead

If you love Marathon’s vectorheart style but not its PvP, get your aesthetic fix from the gorgeously overstimulating demo for this time trial FPS instead | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these FPS If you’re hoping to make friends in Marathon like you can in Arc Raiders, expect a knife in the back Strategy After a decade of stale turn-based tactics, Menace is a breath of fresh air FPS Hours before its open preview weekend, Marathon is suddenly very close to the top of Steam’s top sellers list Action After playing the free demo of this bloody medieval carve-‘em-up, I’m praying the devs deliver a holy gaming experience Card Game If you’ve ever had a crippling Vampire Survivors or Slay the Spire habit, avoid Vampire Crawlers at all costs Racing The creators of Rain World were tired of making something so depressing, so their next game is a ‘loud and dumb and fast’ cyberpunk racer you can try in the Steam Next Fest FPS Marathon: Everything we know about Bungie’s sci-fi extraction shooter FPS This co-op FPS Steam demo feels poised to do for spellslinging robot cowboys what Deep Rock Galactic did for space dwarves Adventure Amanita Design teases the Orwell-inspired Phonopolis with a surprisingly funny demo about messing with people, running from the cops, and fighting fascism even when you don’t really want to FPS ‘An absolute eyesore’: Marathon’s biggest issue seems to be its poor UI design that’s confusing players, ‘I have no idea where I’m at, what I’m looking at’ FPS Devil Daggers 2 is in development, as its creator confirms fewer than 1,500 people survived longer than 8 minutes in the original Rhythm I only needed 5 songs to know that In Falsus is going to be my go-to rhythm game when I can’t get to the arcade FPS Marathon has dropped another banger character trailer, making me fall even more in love with its vibes-based marketing FPS High on Life 2 review Strategy Steam Next Fest hasn’t even started, and its first must-play demo is already here PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Resident EvilArc RaidersBest PC gearGame Quizzes Games FPS If you love Marathon’s vectorheart style but not its PvP, get your aesthetic fix from the gorgeously overstimulating demo for this time trial FPS instead News By Lincoln Carpenter published 27 February 2026 Tear flesh from bone. 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From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter There are so many reasons I should be excited for Marathon, and many of them are aesthetic ones. I have a particular weakness for the stark, colorful, striking designs of its vectorheart-inspired art style that pairs cold sterility with bold, borderline-obnoxious color intensity. It’s like someone built a game from the desktop wallpaper I had—and the posters I wish I could afford—as an early-2000s preteen.There’s just one problem: I’m not an extraction shooter guy. Luckily, thanks to the demo for Cicadamata, another shooter has stepped in for me to pin all my aesthetic anticipation on. CICADAMATA” + reveal trailer – YouTube Watch On If you want proof that Cicadamata and Marathon share some visual sensibilities, any doubts you might have will be dispelled as soon as you look at its Steam page description and face the assault of flickering, animated text and pseudocode littered with ominous existential phraseology and computerized menace. Related articles Is Marathon’s time-to-kill too fast, or am I too Arc Raiders-pilled? Marathon has dropped another banger character trailer, making me fall even more in love with its vibes-based marketing If you’re hoping to make friends in Marathon like you can in Arc Raiders, expect a knife in the back But rather than walking the extraction shooter road that Bungie’s taken with Marathon, Cicadamata is more like Overstimulation: The Game. It’s a time trial FPS a la Neon White, prioritizing precise maneuvering and shooting to achieve dead sprint speed.You play as Fawn-A2, “chosen for enlistment” as a Cicada combat unit “due to unforeseen circumstances in your previous life” and tasked with “acquiring 4 cores from all spheres” of the Cascade while eliminating threats using a cybershotgun that may or may not be intelligent and may or may not be some kind of digital antichrist. (Image credit: flowergarden)I know very little of what an