CapcomIf you’ve ever played Yakuza 0, there’s a disco dancing minigame where you move a little ghost-like figure around a grid as fast as you can. It’s infectiously fun, leaving you wanting more. Pragmata is like if you took that minigame, grafted it onto a fast-paced third-person shooter, and sprinkled in a healthy dose of trademark Capcom weirdness. It’s an utterly bizarre game that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and the small snippet I played has me salivating for more. For the last two years, my biggest surprises of the year have been Capcom games, both the Dinosaur-infested shooter Exoprimal and the brilliant twist on tower defense that is Kunitsu-Gami. There’s no big AAA publisher doing it like Capcom right now, taking chances on weird projects — and Pragmata fits that to a tee. In a short 30-minute demo, we had the chance to dig into the game’s combat and bit of the story setup. While you might see Pragmata and think it’s a shooter, it’s actually more apt to say that this is a puzzle game with shooter elements. In a near-future setting, you play as an astronaut named Hugh, trapped on a Lunar Station that’s been taken over by hostile AI machine lifeforms. Hugh meets a small android named Diana on the station, and the two have to help each other survive. The interesting thing, though, is that you’re technically playing as both characters at the same time. Diana rides on Hugh’s back, and while he’s blasting enemies with weapons and pulling off split-second dodges, she’s activating hacking programs to break down the mechanical enemy’s armor. You need to use both these elements simultaneously.By pressing the right bumper you can use Diana’s hack on an enemy, which pops up that little grid-based minigame. The objective here is to navigate through the various nodes to reach the highlighted area, thus blowing the enemy’s armor and opening them up to damage. Combat in Pragmata feels like an adrenaline-induced juggling act. | CapcomBut the catch is this minigame plays out in real time, so you need to be moving and dodging enemy attacks while it happens. Once the armor has been blown off, Hugh can use his weapons to blow enemies away, with our demo having a pistol, shot gun, and net gun that launches a spherical field that damage enemies. Pragmata’s gameplay is a lot to wrap your head around at first, but it feels fascinatingly exciting to juggle puzzles, shooting, and dodging. It’s like those performers who hold a bunch of spinning plates on sticks — a lot to keep track of, but unbelievably satisfying. It’s hard to overstate just how unique this system feels. I’s almost scintillating how refreshing this particular puzzle twist on shooters is.But that idea applies to more than just the combat, as the section we played was essentially one big puzzle box, forcing us to find a number of nodes to activate to open the door forward. This self-contained area was filled with connecting pathways, switches to activate rising platforms, and a host of equipment and upgrade items to find. It was almost an Escape Room situation, but one filled with homicidal robots that want to rip you limb from limb. Pragmata has light platforming elements mixed into its exploration and puzzles. | CapcomThat focus on the puzzle-y side of the game really makes Pragmata feel unique. Yes, it’s a shooter, and one that feels good to play — Capcom knows how to make a good shooter after all. But the way it integrates a puzzle experience, both on a macro and micro level, requires you to rething how you play these kind of games. It also seems like there’s some interesting narrative layers being introduced as well, juxtaposing the gruff old man astronaut with a whimsical android that looks like a young girl. It’s easy to see a kind of found-family theme that’s likely in the game, but I have hope that it might be able to bring something unique to the trope. With only 30 minutes, it's obviously too early to say how these elements will factor into the entirety of Pragmata, but what's there is already incredibly compelling. Pragmata is one of those rare games that’s wholly unique — its not inventing something new, but combining elements of what we’ve seen before into a new concoction. And if Capcom’s recent track record is anything to go by, Pragmata might end up being something truly special.Pragmata launches in 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.