Aneurism IV Review
Dystopian GTA RP Meets Asymmetric Chaos in 2025’s Boldest Multiplayer Experiment
This is a review I’ve been dreading to make. Mind you, this is not going to be a negative review. Aneurism is my favorite multiplayer game in the last year and quite possibly in the last decade.
I’ve dreaded making this review because I’ve been afraid I couldn’t do the game justice.
Strap in everyone, because I’m going to spend this article gushing about a game most of you may never play.
What is Anuerism IV?
The simplest description I can think of is one that I used for my Steam Curator.
I get it. That description is daunting, it feels like asking your normal friends to join you for an evening of VR Chat, but I promise it’s far more interesting than that. Plus, the GTA RP scene is thriving, and drives in huge numbers of views.
Art is made for an increasingly small number of people and you’d better believe it feels like this was made for me.
I have, and always will, believe that the width of your target audience is inversely proportional to how connected to it they are. Feel free to disagree.
Believe me, Dystopian GTA RP is not something I expected to hit me so hard, but the bruise it left I can’t seem to get rid of. I recorded a review of Aneruism which I’ll post it here because you can see my reaction change over time.
Secondhand Happiness
Life in Aneurism is temporary. You start your legacy as a Prole —The grunt and primary laborer. You spend every waking moment of your life slaving away for pennies on the dollar.
Life in Aneurism is also fragile. There is not enough food to go around, and the water fountains are riddled with parasites.
Sure, the government rations help, but they don’t prevent a slow death from starvation.
War
Every prole performs their desolate job hoping for war to rescue them from their miserable existence. Not because they die, though MANY MANY will.
Speakers blare, announcing the start of the war. Sirens scream, and propaganda floods your thoughts. Bombs rain from the sky, threatening immediate obliteration. The streets become barren, devoid of life.
Granted, the streets aren’t barren because of the danger. Everyone is Anuerism is ready to die at any moment. The streets are barren because everyone has rushed to the bomb factory. The country is at war, and the government is paying top dollar for anyone who contributes to the creation of bombs.
A single war is capable of moving the lowest prole up multiple social brackets if they work hard enough. Just ignore the fact that the bombs peppering the streets are the same ones you’re building.
Legacy & Fates
Aneurism as a game is about more than just one life. A single life in the city is disposable. The game’s depth comes from living lives in many other shoes.
Any money you earn in one life can be transferred to another life through Bankers, other players who you can deposit and withdraw money for a small fee.
Having money on the mind isn’t the only priority for the denizens of Anuerism. A second currency, a spiritual one, exists that quantifies your karma in the afterlife determining who you will be next: amnescytes.
The other lives, called ‘Fates,’ are where the depth of Aneruism’s gameplay comes from. A city requires many people to function. Sewer workers are needed to handle waste just as much as musicians are to entertain them. Aneurism is no different.
Proles get work done.
Liquidators clean and repair the streets.
Dealers make sure people’s needs are met.
Corpsemen supply drugs and keep people healthy.
What’s unique is that every fate has it’s own goals and motivations. None is directly contributing to the other through shared common goal, but through selfish necessity of their own goals.
This is what separates Corpsemen from healers in Overwatch, or Marvel Rivals. Their allegiance is not to “the team” but to their own personal advancement.
Asymmetric Gameplay
This is a concept called Asymmetrical Gameplay, and is literally my favorite mechanic in multiplayer games. Here’s a super quick example.
Chess is an example of a symmetrical competitive game. Both players have the same starting conditions and the same goal [Though there is asymmetry in who is taking their turn first].
Dead by Daylight, a horror movie competitive game, is totally asymmetrically competitive because it’s a team of four human survivors vs a single powerful demon.
Things get more interesting with Root. Root is asymmetrical with incidental conflict. Each animal has diffferent goals and the combat between them comes from friction in completing goals rather than direct competition.
Aneurism lies just beyond all of these because its asymetric in its fates. Some are incidentally cooperative, others are in conflict, and some can be totally ambiguous. The social element introduces complexities to the lives of seemingly cooperative fates. You are both in cooperation and competition with your peers and must judge each individual accordingly.
Factions
What you might not expect from what I’ve been describing is that the core of Anuerism is rooted in asymmetric competitive combat.
The world of Aneurism has three factions:
The Cotex: Those who are loyal to Anuerism and maintain status quo
Neutral: Proles and other classes who live in Anuerism but may not be loyal to it
Scum: Those who oppose The Cortex and aim to bring it down
Everything I’ve talked about up until now only applies to Cortex and Neutral aligned fates as they are the only ones allowed above ground.
The third faction, Scum, exists entirely in their own underground sewer system. Anyone who enters the sewers is immediately marked for execution or “Limited.” Scum are born below ground, and are only safe when surrounded by their peers.
Scum only emerge from underground to cause chaos. The weaker ones, known as Scumbags, use cunning and stealth to destroy utilities and spread rot.
Stronger Scum known as Zealots steal bodies of the cortex and use them to perform horrific rituals.Rituals that cause temporary status effects on the world enabling mass destruction and death.
Should The Scum destroy anuerism the server is reset, and any progress anyone has made is deleted (outside of cosmetics). The metaphorical implications align with the physical consequences.
Those who fight for The Cortex fight to maintain the status quo as awful as it may be in order to keep their own progress and the progress of others safe.
Meanwhile Scum may only ever fight as a means to oppose The Cortex.
Each class choice is up to the player and they can change at any time if they have the amnesytes. I’ve had my own personal interesting stories of changing sides for one reason or another.
My Story
One server I joined as a founding member of the server. I owned expensive property and worked as the highest officer under the Cortex. I did a good job too. However the city grew stale and desolate. I struggled to secure food for myself and wondered how I was going to survive. Then in one fatal battle with a Zealot I lost my life.
Seeking that power I changed sides, and found pleasure in destroying the same infrastructure I worked so hard to protect. It had failed me, and so it had no reason to exist. I fought to bring down the Cortex and restore the server.
Final Thoughts
What I’ve described is just the tip of the iceberg. The game is updated by its developers roughly every two weeks with new content adding more gameplay opportunities and complexity. There are many fates that didn’t make it into this review because this was already getting out of hand.
I love Aneurism IV and I think you might too!
Check it out on Steam: Anuerism IV
What a wonderful article, and well written. Truly a writer who ACTUALLY plays the game!