http://store.steampowered.com/app/365450/

So it's a computer game where you pretend to hack into stuff.

You'll be unsurprised to learn that it's approximately 0% like real 
hacking. It *is* quite entertaining, though.

99% of the gameplay involves figuring out how to hack into network 
nodes. The remaining 1% involves figuring out what you're supposed to do 
once you're in there. You get given missions like "steal this file", 
"delete that file", "replace the other file" and so on. Usually you have 
to figure out exactly where to look, though.

A game like this needs to tread a knife edge. On the one hand, it's 
supposed to be playable be people who know almost nothing about 
computers. So you can't make it too challenging. On the other hand, 
experts like me end up playing it, so you can't make it too obvious either.

I enjoy how you naturally figure stuff out with pretty minimal 
tutorials. You basically learn most of your stuff on the job, yet you 
never end up feeling like "um, WTH am I meant to be doing?" or "how the 
heck am I supposed to do that?"

It would be easy to end up making the game way too hard, by making it 
too difficult to find the clues. And there *are* clues; you'd never find 
anything otherwise. On the other hand, it would be easy to make the game 
laughably easy by having *too many* clues. The designer seems to have 
struck a nice balance.

I enjoy how you can operate the whole game using just the GUI, or using 
just the CLI. That's a nice touch. Not wishing to spoil *too* much, but 
there's a point in the game where *you* get hacked. All the hacker 
actually does is delete your X configuration file and crash your system. 
So it reboots and then... no GUI. You have to somehow restore the X 
configuration file to get the GUI back.

If forum posts and Metacritic reviews are anything to go by, this is one 
of *the* defining moments of the game. A lot of people report that they 
"froze up" or were "terrified" when this happened. "I just sat there and 
didn't know what to do next!"

This is where I get to feel really smug; I do this crap FOR REAL! >:-) 
As in, people may me money to fix Unix systems which *really are* broken.

I really enjoy how if you just calmly think it through, you can 
eventually restore the file, all by yourself. The game hints like crazy 
that getting this specific file back is the thing you need to do next, 
but gives you absolutely no help beyond that. And yet, I saw no evidence 
of people who *could not* figure this out at all. It's one of those 
moments where figuring out a challenging puzzle makes you feel really 
smug afterwards. (The solution is really trivial once you already know 
what it is!)

I also really enjoy the flavour text. Some of it is hilarious! Of 
course, if the people running the systems were half-way competent, you'd 
never get into anything. (Which would be very boring.) So of *course* 
the passwords have to be scattered somewhere you can find them. But you 
gotta invent a reason for why. The result? Cutting social commentary. 
People will defeat any and all security mechanisms if it stops them 
doing stuff. ;-)

Also still chuckling over "Macrosoft", "eOS devices" and "FaceSpace".

The CLI tries to be a Unix environment. If you've never used a computer 
before, this is a passable emulation. If you actually get paid money to 
use Unix systems all day... not so much. I keep wanting to use commands 
that don't exist! Who the hell uses "cat" to view files? Obviously you 
use "less"! Why is there no "mkdir" command? Globbing doesn't *quite* 
work right... it's nearly there, but it's slightly buggy, unfortunately.

It amuses me how when you break into a system, 80% of the files you find 
are directly related to the specific task you're trying to do. A "real" 
system would have thousands of files, and only a tiny number of them 
would be related to the one-off task you're trying to pull off. Then 
again, I guess if the systems had thousands of files, you'd never find 
what you were looking for, which would make a very boring game.

In a similar vein, when you hack into somebody's email, they will always 
have about 6 messages, one of which contains the next clue you need. A 
*real* human being would have hundreds if not thousands of emails. Then 
again, you can't easily auto-generate flavour text for all of that; a 
human being has to write it. And paying somebody to write tens of 
thousands of emails which will never be read sounds... yeah, not very 
cost-effective.

The final mission was definitely the best. Most missions involve hacking 
one server, modifying a file or two, and then you're done. Occasionally 
you need to get clues from one server and use them on a second server. 
But the final mission, oh man... That was you scanning networks, trying 
to find gaps in the security, following clues here, there and 
everywhere... It's like the rest of the game, but on a way grander 
scale! It's cool stuff.

The first time I typed "SSHCrack 22" and saw a box of multi-coloured 
ciphertext pop up and a little animation of the digits being 
progressively matched up, I thought "oh man, this is cool!" After the 
400th time of watching that same identical animation? Yeah, maybe not 
quite so much. Still, overall I think this is a really nicely done game, 
and I'm glad I played it. Even if it *is* short as hell!


last time you got multiple hours of gameplay out of 100MB? ;-)

Not sure it has much replay value though... Really the gameplay needs to 
get more complicated / varied before it's worth making a bigger version 
of the game. But it would be really exciting if they do...

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