Welcome to the neon-lit back alley of design despair, where “Alpha Agent” by Kevin Do emerges from the shadows like a half-rendered video game cutscene gasping for processor power. If this cover is supposed to scream high-tech cyberpunk thriller, it instead yells I downloaded Blender yesterday and accidentally elbowed the glow effect slider into oblivion.
Let’s start with the central figure, who appears to be mid-sprint, mid-crouch, and mid-existential crisis. Is he landing from a jump? Is he about to sneeze? Hard to say—his limbs are bent in directions that defy anatomy and narrative clarity. His arm is doing something no joint should attempt unless you’re in a Japanese horror film or a yoga class gone terribly wrong. The figure is drenched in electric blue veins of energy, which I assume are supposed to look cool but instead resemble a static-charged spaghetti fight.
And then there’s the background—a seizure-inducing collage of every cyberpunk trope ever uploaded. Neon signs in kanji? Check. Futuristic billboards? You bet. Random city chaos rendered in dollar-store Blade Runner smog? Naturally. It’s as if someone typed “cyberpunk aesthetic wallpaper” into an AI generator and forgot to deselect the “overcooked visual soup” checkbox.
Now to the colour palette, which is less a cohesive scheme and more a violent argument between purples, blues, and reds. Every single part of the image is glowing—everything. The ground glows. The character glows. The background glows. The only thing not glowing is the viewer’s faith in digital illustration. The glow effect is applied so liberally, the entire cover looks like it’s about to short-circuit your screen.
Typography? Oh, dear. The author’s name is presented in a font that seems to be spelling out “Kevin DO NOT.” And just like that, I obeyed. It’s an angular, sci-fi font that manages to be both unreadable and boring. Meanwhile, the title “ALPHA AGENT” is set in block letters that scream “action” but whisper “Microsoft PowerPoint 2007.” And then there’s the subtitle: “A CYBERPUNK LITRPG.” That’s right—we’re not just deep in genre territory, we’re triple-dipping in niche. If you didn’t catch the cyberpunk from the glowing tech vomit, don’t worry: the text will tell you. Twice.
Ultimately, this cover is trying to be cool with all the subtlety of a teenager blasting dubstep at a funeral. “Alpha Agent” doesn’t look like the future of publishing. It looks like the digital ghost of a broken graphics card. It wants to jack you into the matrix—but all it does is yank the aesthetic cable out of the socket and set it on fire.