Dystopia is a team-based, objective-driven, first-person shooter video game, developed as a total conversion modification on the Valve's proprietary Source engine.

Dystopia has been received positively from critics, with praise being given for its graphical quality, unique meatspace/cyberspace gameplay, overall polish and its representation of cyberspace.

[2] Dystopia takes place in a high-tech futuristic world spanned by computer networks.

[3] The gameplay of Dystopia is objective-based, in which both the Punks and the Corps fight against each other to complete a series of objectives within a set amount of time to win the round.

This is similar to games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory and Unreal Tournament's Assault mode.

However, Dystopia's dual-layered gameplay means that it is possible to complete objectives in either the realworld (meatspace) or the virtual world (cyberspace).

[5] Dystopia is class-based, and as such, each of the three classes is unique in terms of weapons, implants, and overall performance during gameplay.

The light class can choose from one of four primary weapons, a doubled barreled shotgun, a fast firing Boltgun (that fires electrical bolts), a charge-up laser powered rifle and a pair of automatic pistols called the Smartlocks.

To access cyberspace, a player must equip one of two "cyberdeck" implants and find a Jack-In Point, or JIP (a sort of Brain-computer interface).

Nodes are large rooms that often appear convoluted inside, and they often resemble an M. C. Escher image in complexity.

[4] Whilst the player is in cyberspace instead of taking damage to regular Health Points, Energy is lost when various actions are performed.

In their reviews of Dystopia, Planet Half-Life have described Dystopia as “a third-party modification that comes in an extremely crisp, clean-cut and well-planned package”, and praised the mod for managing “to combine great, balanced gameplay with very clean and impressive graphics”.

[9] An early version of Dystopia, prior to its first release was featured in the modding section of PC Gamer magazine.

In the feature they called Dystopia “an ambitious conversion for Half Life 2” and briefly describe Dystopia's gameplay and the cyberpunk setting, “It's like Enemy Territory [Wolfenstein] in [Judge] Dredd's Mega City One” the article goes on to describe the map dys_vaccine.

[10] Dystopia was briefly mentioned in a small paragraph in PC Poweplay's MODLIFE section.

The writer opened the paragraph announcing Dystopia is a finalists in the Independent Games Festival “fingers are crossed for my friends working on Dystopia [..] who have just been announced as mod finalist in the Independent Games Festival”.

The release of Dystopia Version 1 prompted PC Zone to give the mod coverage in their “Freeplay” section.

[20] Dystopia was featured in a blog post by Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher developers CD Projekt Red.