Ferrying passengers along the way.
Neo Cab is a 2019 visual novel-type video game developed by Chance Agency and published by Fellow Traveller. Players explore the city of Los Ojos through the eyes of Lina Romero, one of the last human taxicab drivers in an increasingly automated world. Lina has just arrived in town to move in with her old friend Savy, but while Lina is trying to get her life on track to somewhere worthwhile, tension is rising in Los Ojos between the wealthy techies and those who feel left on the fringes.
The game has light survival aspects as Lina needs to keep herself in coin by driving passengers through the service "Neo Cab" (an Uber-type ride service) and to do that, she needs to maintain her "star rating" by not getting into too much conflict with those passengers, no matter how obnoxious they are...
Neo Cab provides examples of the following tropes:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: No year is given, but the game seems to take place not much further down the road, where automated and electric cars are safe enough to be the norm, but where most other technology is recognizable.
- Affectionate Nickname: Lina and Savy have nicknames for each other: L-bunny for Lina, and Savviest for Savy.
- All Issues Are Political Issues: Many of Lina's pax will redirect seemingly innocuous conversations (like the fact that she's a human cab driver and not a machine) into a political discussion or press Lina to take a stance.
- All Take and No Give: Savy asks a lot of Lina, and gives her very little in return. From the first night they meet up she has Lina ferrying her around town, leaving her hanging indefinitely without giving her a key or directions to their place, and barreling from one emergency to the next. She tends to get snappy if Lina pushes back on any of this.
- Always Night: Lina sleeps most of the day and works at night, which highlights the neon decor.
- Artificial Limbs: Azul, one of Lina's first passengers, has a prosthetic arm with all kinds of wires and bolts.
- Autosave: The game saves every time Lina drops off a pax.
- Back-Alley Doctor: When Lina first picks Carlos up, she thinks he's a doctor, but it becomes clear near the end of his ride he has no actual medical training and is just offering advice based on his own personal medical studies. If Lina keeps things friendly with him, she can go visit his clinic. What he's doing may seem shady, but Carlos sees himself as offering assistance to those who can't afford a visit to a real doctor.
- Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Lina and Savy's last fight is definitely still hanging in the air when Lina arrives at Los Ojos. By Lina's own admission, when Savy announced she was leaving Cactus Flats, Lina screamed at her and cried until she couldn't breathe. However, the two women seem genuinely happy to see each other again, and Lina is eager to get "in sync" with Savy again.
- Broken Pedestal: When the game starts out, Lina is very excited to see her old bestie Savy again and eagerly looks forward to their new life together. It's clear her feelings for Savy are very strong. By the end, Lina is exhausted by Savy's manipulation and lies and can barely bring herself to speak to her anymore.
- Camera Fiend: Liam Baird, who left his tech job in the UK to travel to Los Ojos and take photos to "see if [he] can make something of it."
- Cloudcuckoolander: Oona St. Clare—is she a brilliant statistician or totally off her rocker? With the way she goes on about quantum timelines and probabilities, she can have you believing both at once.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Lina and Savy's "feelgrid" jewelry changes color based on mood, with the colors matching stereotyped mood colors—red for angry, blue for sad, green for calm/positive. If Lina's moods get extreme, the dialogue options will become colored according to her mood.
- Cool Old Lady: Oona again. Though she's frustrating to deal with at first, she's quite skilled with technology and can become Lina's friend. She graduates into this when she helps you get the passphrase for Savy, even though it puts you in her debt.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: If Lina gets pissed enough (shown by her bright red "feelgrid") you will have no choice but to pick the aggressive/nasty response options.
- Et Tu, Brute?: At the game's climax, when Lina and Savy are pulled over, Lina can out Savy to the cops, at which point Savy will try to throw Lina under the bus.
- Fair-Weather Friend: Savy is perfectly happy to make use of Lina while she's around, but somehow, never seems to have time when Lina is having difficulties...
- Fighting Your Friend: The closest thing the game has to a "boss fight" is the final fight Lina has with Savy, where she has to try to pry the truth of what Savy's been up to out of her.
- Friendship Trinket: When Lina arrives in Los Ojos, Savy gifts her a "biofeedback" bracelet that displays varying colors depending on her mood. Savy wears a necklace of the same type.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: While Capra and the techies are usually portrayed as wealthy yuppies who are at best ignorant of the harm they're causing to folks who are already struggling, or outright dismissive, the other side gets some knocks too. A few of Lina's pax make good arguments about why self-driving cars are safer and therefore better, and some of the anarchist-types who are fighting against Capra's domination seem out more to cause trouble rather than serve a cause.
- Jerkass: Because of the premise involving a rideshare, a few badly behaved customers are a given:
- It's pretty easy to view Savy this way, given the way she treats Lina, especially later in the game (although, you get the sense this is pretty on-par for Savy's behavior...).
- Charlie Elliot, Savy's "work husband" is pretty unconcerned with Savy's recent disappearance and refuses to give up any useful information. Depending on the chosen dialogue options, he also threatens to call the cops on Lina if she ever tries to talk to him again. However, if Lina picks him up again, he will apologize and offer to share more information about Savy.
- Luke, who's drunk when Lina picks him up, pukes in her car, and then gives her a one-star rating, alleging the puke was already there when he got in the car.
- Ludd Was Right: Lina was fired from Capra after they switched entirely to self-driving vehicles, and generally opposes what she sees as excessive integration of technology that robs people (usually already low-income) of their jobs.Lina: I guess I'm biased.
- MegaCorp: Capra. In one of the opening scenes of the game, Lina complains that they have a monopoly on the tech sector, to the point of having their own currency and a heavy influence in politics.
- Neon City: Neon is everywhere in Los Ojos. Even the jewelry glows.
- Old Friend: While Lina and Savy haven't seen each other in years at the start of the game, Lina describes them as having once been extremely close, and she clearly has a lot of feelings about preparing to see Savy again.
- Only Friend: Since Lina's just moved to Los Ojos, she has no friends there and Savy is her only real connection. That makes it all the more distressing when Savy ditches her.
- Parting-Words Regret: The game never tells us exactly what Lina said to Savy when Savy left Cactus Flats, but the fact that she's still feeling guilty about it years after the fact suggests it wasn't great.
- Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Savy and Lina talk about their fight prior to Savy's departure for Los Ojos like a break-up, and when they see each other again, Savy comments that seeing Lina again is like coming home. Whether their relationship is viewed as purely platonic or with unspoken romantic undertones, it's clear the two women feel very strongly about each other.
- Scripted Event: Things will always get tense during Liam's first ride and Azul will always get into Lina's car at some point on the first night, introducing Lina (and the player) to Radix and giving more perspective on the situation Los Ojos.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Lina and Savy have elements of this. While they do appear to get along, their fights are spectacular, and a lot of their "getting along" seems predicated on Lina not rocking the boat or contradicting Savy.
- We Will Spend Credits in the Future: Even Lina can't avoid the necessity of using Capra Coins—the currency has virtually usurped dollars.
