Hacknet

This is a decent effort, but it's not all there. It's full of design problems and weird little bugs, and it's quite short. Let me give you an example of a bug that really hosed up one playthrough attempt. When you first connect, you're typically in the / directory, the top of the file tree. Starting there, you can successfully change to any of the other directories (typically at least /home, /bin, /log, and /sys), either using a prepended slash or not. In other words, just after connecting, I can type either 'cd log' or 'cd /log', and either will work. But that doesn't hold true as you move around in the directory tree. Once you're in a dir, prepending a slash will no longer take you back to the root, like it does in Unix. (which this game strongly resembles.) So if I'm in /home, and I type "cd /log", I go nowhere. OK, so, consider: you're under time pressure. You need to move fast, or you'll get caught. One of the important things to do is to wipe log files before leaving, and one of the fastest ways to do that is to change into the log directory, and type "rm *". What happens if you're in /home, and needing to go fast, you type "cd /log; rm *"? You blow away the home directory, of course, and you can't interrupt it, and worse, even disconnecting will still do absolutely nothing. All of the files will be gradually deleted, even though you're not even connected anymore. If you've done this on the wrong computer, bam, game over. Which leads me into the 'bad design' part. Fundamentally, the program is deeply confused about 'where you are' at any given time. You can't tell where your programs are running; are they local or remote? I don't think even the author(s) know. This game is a mess. It doesn't have legs. Stick with Uplink. It's old, but its abstractions are correct. You know where you, your programs, and your data all are, and you have near-perfect control. That team was far more talented than this one.

Not sure why my review disappeared, anyways... This game is neither a clever puzzle, nor a programming game. All you have to do is to type names of 4 hacking programs you have, and do it fast enough. This game gets boring and repetitive before it even starts. +1 for using bash.org to fill in the data -1 for using only the oldest of old quotes

The game is full of "oh, this kind of looks like $THING... but it isn't" moments. The interface looks like tiling window manager... but you can't resize it. The shell looks like bash... but the commands are extremely limited (no ls -R, I get that, but no ls --help? For real?). The game makes you a graph of the network... but you can't move any vertex. The game consists of few basic steps, repeated over and over again. Your hack^G^G^G^Gcracking tools work like magic, you run 'em, you get access to the computer, you do the job, !next. The game lacks challenge - pressing time limit is more an annoyance. It's fine on the first break: show me the tools, thank you very much. It's fine on the second: I can use them, thank you. But the only advancing in the game is the amount of magic tools you shall be running. This task cries out to be scripted, but all you are given is the not-bash. For people outside from the world of informatics, the game is plainly enjoyable. It gives you the thrill, you work with real services like FTP and SSH on their standard ports, but move a single bit deeper and the rest is pure fiction. If you've written 10 lines of code, do yourself a favour and skip this title.

First off all the negative reviews about bugs and broken game are heavily outdated. The game is currently fully functional. Secondly... WOW! What an experience! There are maybe like two good hacking games and this is one of them so you don't want to miss something original. If you like RetroWave this is exactly your cup of tea with superb music and artistic animations in minimalist style to support the atmosphere of oldskool era hacking groups. There is strong spirit within this piece and I have enjoyed it very much. All the hacking here is somewhat simplified to the very core so you can actually learn to play the game and not just stare at linux manual pages with dumb face or spend hours digging through irrelevant data. First missions might occur like boring repetitive monkey job but that is only to enforce your practices so later on you can focus on real investigation instead of thinking what commands to mash in the keyboard an in which order. There are few very intense moments when you think you have screwed big time but if your IQ is above average and you can read you will get out of every mess. The story itself enfolds into something serious and you might wonder if this is not some kind of legacy to real life events. And I really recommend to grab the DLC Labyrinth which gets this to another lever. It's like almost everything gets even better there and more serious. See my review on the DLC page if you're interested.

Nice music, atmosphere, gameplay and story. I had no issues with bugs, running this at 1440p and it looks beautiful. Side note - if you're looking for a game to teach you hacking or programming, you're better of looking elsewhere. This is a terminal-based hacking game (I wouldn't even call it a 'hacking simulator'), and you basically run commands and tools through the terminal - though the commands you can use are very limited outside of the ones you're offered in-game. If you want a simplified intro. to hacking, this is ok. If you want a fun, typing-based game that requires no knowledge of coding or hacking, this game is great.