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Pragmata^[a] is a 2026 action-adventure game developed and published by Capcom. Set on a lunar research station, the game follows spacefarer Hugh and android Diana as they work together to fight a hostile AI known as IDUS that is controlling the station and return to Earth. The game was released on April 17, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2^[1] to largely positive reviews.^[2][3]

Pragmata is an action-adventure played from a third-person perspective. The player is able to control both Hugh and Diana at the same time, as they look for a way to escape a lunar research station infested with hostile AI robots. Hugh is equipped with a number of firearms, and a jetpack that allows him to dodge hostile attacks and reach distant areas. Bullets cannot penetrate through a robot’s armor, though Diana can hack into a robot’s defense system, disabling it and revealing its weak point for Hugh to attack.^[4] In each puzzle, the player must guide the cursor across the grid to reach the target tile, evading obstacles and toggling optional bonus nodes which may bring additional combat advantages such as increased weapon damage for Hugh.^[5] The puzzles are solved in real time, meaning that Hugh needs to dodge and evade hostile attacks during each hacking sequence.^[6]

On a seemingly lifeless research station located on the moon, spacefarer Hugh and android Diana find themselves targeted by IDUS, the hostile AI governing the station. The two must work together to defeat IDUS and return to Earth.

Development on Pragmata took place over the course of six years at Capcom. The game was originally announced on June 11, 2020, during Sony Interactive Entertainment‘s PlayStation 5 reveal stream, as Capcom’s first original franchise in eight years.^[7] Based on Capcom’s 2021 annual report, Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku wrote, “One reason why the game looks so different from other Capcom titles is that it’s the brainchild of new development staff”.^[8] After its 2020 reveal, Pragmata spent time in development hell and was delayed indefinitely.^[9] Director Cho Yonghee said that, although the game’s core concept didn’t change during development, the team had engaged in extensive trial and error, particularly around the game’s puzzle hacking.^[10] World building was supervised by Shōji Kawamori, who worked on the Macross series.^[11]

Developer Capcom struggled with creating Diana’s visual design, originally wanting Diana to look like a full android. Creating a fully android character, however, brings challenges in character expression. Director Cho Yonghee cited Arale Norimaki from Dr. Slump as an android character with “cartoonish expressions”, such as screwing her head off her body, that they could not recreate.^[12] As they had to contend with certain restrictions such as cultural aspects and sensitivities for the game’s worldwide release, Capcom decided to translate Diana’s roboticism into something more understated.^[13] Diana visually appears human but some of her machine-like mannerisms and voice venture into the uncanny valley.^[12]

Pragmata's New York City-like level was designed to look like it was created with generative AI, appearing as “slightly distorted” according to producer Naoto Oyama with illogical errors such as taxis sinking into floors or buses sprouting out of walls.^[14] Generative AI was not used to create this look as Capcom’s “human developers painstakingly worked to incorporate mechanisms that express this AI-like uncanny feel”.^[15] Elie Gould of PC Gamer called this art direction “human-made AI slop“.^[16] However, Capcom had to consider balancing distortions in the environment to not be too distracting or to not be mistaken for puzzle clues by players.^[17]

Pragmata was developed in Capcom’s RE Engine.^[18] It supports ray traced global illumination for indirect lighting and ray traced reflections. On PC, the game supports path tracing to enable multi-bounce lighting and higher quality ray traced reflections.^[19] Engine development support manager Masaru Ijuin said that path tracing “fundamentally transforms game visuals” with it enabling “cinematic quality visuals” in Pragmata “reminiscent of high-end sci-fi films“.^[20] Capcom spent 18 months working with Nvidia on implementing path tracing in Pragmata.^[21] Shader Execution Reordering (SER), first introduced with Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs, is utilized for Pragmata's path tracing to save frame time. The initial SER addition without compaction increased frame time to 23.5ms which was reduced to 16.9ms and later 13.3ms through respective optimizations on the engine and driver side. Nvidia recommends SER for future path traced titles as SER was added to DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2.^[21] ReSTIR Global Illumination is used to reduce noise from indirect lighting as Capcom found that denoising using DLSS Ray Reconstruction produced ghosting artifacts.^[21] Scenes in Pragmata could be lit entirely with Image-Based Lighting (IBL) which reduced noise. Accurately lighting RE Engine’s strand-based hair in Pragmata with path tracing was a challenge. Diana’s long hair diverged too far from the regular proxy mesh used as a fallback in the ray tracing bounding volume hierarchy (BVH). Full strand geometry, on the other hand, is included in the BVH for path tracing.^[21] Path tracing enables sharper, more stable reflections that are physically accurate in Pragmata's highly reflective environments such as its lunar base.^[22] Path tracing is only available on Nvidia GPUs due to forcing DLSS Ray Reconstruction without a fallback to another denoiser.

On PlayStation 5 Pro, Pragmata has a single graphical mode that runs at 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. Xbox Series X uses a native 1080p resolution to upscale to 4K while Series S renders at a native 720p resolution upscaled to 1440p.^[23] The Switch 2 version runs at 540p upscaled to a 1080p output resolution.^[24]

For hair rendering, Pragmata uses RE Engine’s strand hair system which first appeared on shorter hair in titles such as Resident Evil 4 (2023). RE Engine’s hair strand system is a physics-based hair simulation system that aims to make hair look more natural and realistic compared to the traditional rasterized hair cards technique. Further development on the hair strand system to better simulate long hair was prompted by Diana’s long hair in Pragmata that needed to accurately move. The team working on the game had to ask the RE Engine development team to make such additions to the engine’s hair system.^[25] This work on Diana’s hair rendering in Pragmata was later transferred to Resident Evil Requiem for Grace Ashcroft’s hair.^[26]

Initially, Pragmata was announced for 2022, however in January 2021, Capcom announced that the game was delayed to 2023.^[8] In June 2023, Capcom released a trailer stating that the game had been delayed indefinitely.^[27] In the June 2025 installment of State of Play, Capcom announced that the game would be coming out in 2026.^[28]

At The Game Awards 2025, it was announced that the game would release on April 24, 2026 and a demo titled Pragmata: Sketchbook was made available on Steam.^[29] It was also announced that the game would be coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 and it would also get an Amiibo based on Diana.^[30][31] The demo was released on consoles on February 5, 2026.^[32] On March 5, it was announced during a Capcom Spotlight presentation that the release date had been brought forward a week to April 17, though the Nintendo Switch 2 version would retain the original April 24 release date in Japan.^[1]

Pragmata received “generally favorable” reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic,^{[33][34][35][36]} with 95% of critics recommending the game on OpenCritic.^[37]

Pragmata received praise for its story and the relationship between protagonists Hugh and Diana. Tom Regan in The Guardian's four star review called Pragmata a “beautifully made, heartfelt single player adventure” that is able to pull off “its father-daughter relationship with surprising deftness”.^[52] In a review for Hardcore Gamer, Adam Beck called it “a heartfelt experience not only about the human experience, but also parenthood”. He called Diana the “heart” of Pragmata while criticizing Hugh for not having a significant character arc throughout the game.^[44] Giant Bomb commended Diana for not being an annoying or obnoxious companion, despite being a talkative child, as she is able give useful information to the player.^[43] TechRadar's Rob Dwair highlighted Pragmata's depiction as AI as feeling timely.^[53]

IGN's Michael Higham saw Pragmata as being a game “straight from the Xbox 360 era” with its primary focus on creative gameplay mechanics over storytelling. The hacking mechanic requires balancing solving puzzles quickly while paying attention to and dodging enemy attacks.^[45] This multi-faceted system recalled Dead Space for Steve Watts of GameSpot, imbuing the game’s combat with a sense of tension.^[41] Likewise, Dom Peppiatt of Eurogamer cited other third-person titles from the Xbox 360 generation like Watch Dogs, Vanquish, Lost Planet, Gears of War, and Dead Rising, writing that Pragmata “manages to feel so derivative and so original at the same time”.^[39] He argued that the game’s action “carries a very mediocre story with ease”.^[39] Rob Dwair of TechRadar criticized the game’s pacing in the latter half with its increasingly constrained areas that lock the player into multi-enemy battles.^[53] Jasmine Gould-Wilson, in a review for GamesRadar+, criticized the collectibles system as being difficult to navigate due to a lack of a minimap. Scanning for objectives adds visual noise as nearby collectibles clutter the HUD rather than being shown on the larger blueprint map.^[42]

• Official website