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| Cruelty Squad is now heavily discounted on Steam |
The immersive sim that looks like a fever dream is cheaper than ever—and you only have until August 10 to grab it.
If you've scrolled through Steam's discovery queue over the past five years, chances are you've had a moment of sheer confusion. A screenshot of Cruelty Squad flashes across your screen: neon vomit colors, a protagonist that looks like a PS1 character melted in the sun, UI elements that appear designed by a hostile AI, and a general aesthetic that screams "this is a joke, right?"
Well, here's the thing: it's not. And right now, the joke might be on anyone who keeps scrolling past it.
Cruelty Squad is currently 90% off on Steam, and SteamDB's price tracker confirms this is the lowest price the game has ever reached. If you've been on the fence—or completely dismissive—this might finally be your excuse to look past the facade and discover one of the most uncompromising, boundary-pushing immersive sims of the past decade. The deal vanishes after August 10, so the window is narrow.
What Even Is Cruelty Squad?
Released in 2021 by the enigmatic developer Consumer Softproducts, Cruelty Squad describes itself as an "immersive power fantasy simulator." The setting? A sewage-infused corporate dystopia where life is cheap, the environment is actively hostile, and the very concept of visual clarity has been abandoned for something far more unsettling.
Beneath the eye-searing colors, the hostile interface, and the low-poly body horror lies a game that takes the immersive sim genre—think Deus Ex, System Shock, Dishonored—and gleefully throws it into a blender with absurdist humor, economic satire, and genuinely revolutionary gameplay design.
More Than Just Shock Value
A typical mission in Cruelty Squad involves assassinating a target. Simple enough, right? But that's where the game's genius kicks in. You can approach it as a conventional tactical shooter, but the game actively incentivizes you to start abusing its systems.
Find another entrance. Blow a hole through a wall. Install equipment that fundamentally changes how you move through a level. Scale a wall with your intestines. Reverse gravity. Replace part of your brain with a gun. Pick up a toilet and throw it into a room full of corporate goons.
These aren't isolated jokes or gags—they're legitimate gameplay mechanics that could help you cheese your way through an otherwise daunting mission. Levels are built with enough flexibility that the player can devise increasingly ridiculous solutions, and Cruelty Squad actively encourages experimentation. Missions can be replayed for faster times and better rankings, while implants can be swapped between runs to produce radically different builds.
The Economy of Murder
There's a lot more going on underneath the shooting, too. Cruelty Squad features functioning stock and organ markets, and events during missions can influence company valuations. Kill the right executive, and you can watch their stock collapse while competitors benefit. It effectively turns insider trading into another legitimate game mechanic. The grotesque corporate dystopia consequently functions as both setting and system—a rare achievement in game design where the worldbuilding directly informs the gameplay loop.
This depth has inspired unusually obsessive analysis. YouTuber Pyrocynical devoted more than four hours to dissecting Cruelty Squad in 2023, covering everything from its weapons and implants to its economy, hidden areas, difficulty states, and remarkably dense worldbuilding. That's not a review—that's a doctoral thesis on a game that looks like a punchline.
If you're ready to see what all the fuss is about, you can grab Cruelty Squad on Steam here while the 90% discount is still active.
The Rabbit Hole Goes Deeper
And the rabbit hole goes considerably deeper than a normal playthrough suggests. Secret equipment and levels are buried throughout the game. There are multiple endings. An unlockable late-game difficulty substantially changes existing missions with different enemies, targets, and environmental presentation. Completing the game can even unlock a Chaos mode that randomizes enemy placement and properties, wrecking routes players may have spent hours mastering.
It initially seems designed to make you stop playing. The visuals are abrasive. The controls are deliberately unconventional. The game explains very little. Death comes quickly. Stick with it, however, and that apparent hostility gradually gives way to an extraordinarily flexible sandbox that rewards curiosity, experimentation, and outright abuse of its mechanics.
The Rough Edges
Let's be honest—Cruelty Squad isn't without its rough edges. Despite the enormous freedom afforded by its levels and equipment, mission objectives can become repetitive, usually revolving around eliminating a handful of targets before extracting. Enemy AI is relatively basic compared with the player's elaborate toolset. Digging up every secret can require a fair amount of grinding, and the game's unconventional mouse-driven reload mechanic makes playing with a controller pretty cumbersome.
But these are minor complaints in the context of what the game achieves. The fact that players have overwhelmingly looked past these issues speaks volumes.
What the Critics and Players Say
Speaking of which—Cruelty Squad currently holds an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, with 96% of nearly 20,000 English-language reviews giving it a thumbs-up. PC Gamer awarded it 93/100. This isn't a cult classic that only a handful of weirdos appreciate—it's a game that has genuinely connected with a massive audience despite its deliberately off-putting presentation.
The Verdict
Cruelty Squad is a game that dares you to reject it. Its aesthetic is confrontational. Its controls are awkward. Its world is grotesque. But if you can push through that initial barrier—and the 90% discount makes that risk almost negligible—you'll find one of the most inventive, rewarding, and genuinely surprising games of the modern era.
It's a reminder that video games can still be weird. That they don't have to look like photorealistic blockbusters to be profound. And that sometimes, the most rewarding experiences are the ones that initially seem designed to push you away.
The discount ends August 10. Don't let the screenshots fool you—this one's worth your time.
Cruelty Squad is available on Steam for Windows PC. The 90% discount runs until August 10, 2026.