Midnight Protocol
I don’t have many games in my library - I’m quite picky in my tastes. I’m not usually one for hacking games but the Demo left me wanting more. After 22 enjoyable hours, I’m evidently happy to have added this game in my library. I waited to give this revieuw untill I finished the story for the first time - It will certainly not be the last. I’ll take some time to revieuw a few aspects of the game that might interest you most:
Gameplay/Mechanics: 8/10
A game is nothing without gameplay, and a hacking game sets a promise: it will not be just ‘a game’ - but one with depth, complexity, and decision making. To achieve this, Midnight protocol structures its gameplay around levels that feel like a labyrinth or puzzle. A Digital dungeon, if you will. To get around the various obstacles such as firewalls, encrypted nodes and ‘antagonistic’ system operators that chase you down you get access to hardware you can tailor to your playstyle, as well as a host of programs each with their own up- and downsides. You quickly learn how to balance them carefully, using fairly easy commands to allocate memory to the programs you need in order to finish the level. Suffice to say, Midnight protocol nails the hacker-feel you’ll expect. It is not all roses and sunshine of course - there is quite a reliance on RNG to many of the mechanics of the game that can make you second guess your decisions while they are actually fine, or save you when you know you had no right to make it. Aside from that, i found myself at times trying a level, finding where the hidden obstacles were, and avoiding them alltogether once I got to reload the level. This was- at times-unavoidable, and felt wrong. I’ve since noticed that these hidden obstacles are slightly randomized, at least in some levels, which alleviated this somewhat. Perhaps the developers could not just list potential ICE, but also include a map at the beginning of the mission (once you enter a mission you see the layout anyway, except in rare instances), that does not show the obstacles, but layout of the nodes beforehand. With this information I feel I personally would not have had to reload to adapt my strategy as much as I did.
– Real player with 41.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hacking Typing Games.
| 🔵 POI | ✔️ Pos | ❌ Neg | 💡 Ideas | 🍿 Video | ⭐ STAR |
FINAL REVIEW
🔵Ultimately MP is a puzzle game running under the guise of a hacker game.
🔵Each Network is a puzzle, and you must defeat the puzzle using commands & tools.
🔵MP could be considered a Lightweight Hacker game which introduces turn-based gameplay
🔵Has some additional unique and impressive gameplay mechanics.
🔵I was instantly Immersed by the story and the characters.
– Real player with 29.2 hrs in game
Cybermere
I like the idea of the game and the graphics, however, the way to play is too confusing with the game offering the bare minimum of advice for example it will tell you what each item does but it does not explain in what order to use them in or how they affect what your doing. The very first mission I played I had to pretty much guess my way though it the first time I hacked the node it took 3 minutes of real time the second time I restarted my campaign and did it again it took 32min of real time and the game does not tell you what affects it.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hacking Sci-fi Games.
Hacker Simulator
The game is fine. There are a lot of features I was expecting that are simply missing. Tab completion in the terminal is missing. A place to sell accounts a “darknet” if you will. Finding bank accounts to steal money from. Currently the only way to make money is to do contracts.
These don’t pay much and feel grindy. You will quickly get bored because there is not enough variation in mission types. Making money takes a while most missions (in the first 10 hours at least) pay out 10 “shellcoins” which are bitcoins in the universe. The more “advanced” missions require you to compile a custom exploit which costs money (you can’t sell this exploit to the darknet). You need to buy 3 different files which will cost you ~12 shellcoins and you’ll end up making maybe 15 coins from the mission.
– Real player with 30.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Hacking Detective Games.
First, I like this game. It fun. BUT devs listen… it’s slow and grindy. I hear there are cool things in the late game. I want to get there, but right now, I’m bored.
Next, just an observation about most simulator games, this one included, what do I do with all this money? I beg of you, give me something to do with this money! Can I buy a new apartment? Decorate this one? Leave my house, like… ever? Go shopping? If there is nothing to do with the money, except make more money, then the game will quickly die in our libraries. Having money is only fun if you can spend it. Otherwise, it’s just pretty paper.
– Real player with 11.3 hrs in game
Uplink
Out of a lot of the hacking games I’ve played in my time, this has to have it’s seat right next to Hacknet, as one of my ‘Two best hacking games I’ve played’.
To some extent, it is pretty much an RPG, just for hacking.
You take up a contract - Or a ‘Quest’ - You do what the contract says - Destroy a mainframe, or change a social security record, et cetera - and then you get paid with a handful of credits - Or “Gold” - which you then use to upgrade your system, be it a Gateway upgrade, a new processor, or applications that will further unlock your hacking capabilities. - Or in terms of the RPG comparison here; You level up your character, you get new weapons, and unlock new skills.
– Real player with 269.6 hrs in game
This is really everything I wanted from an indie hacking game. It is a vast and glorious sandbox brimming with opportunity. To tell its tale, let me start the story about twenty-five years ago, with a little gem from Interplay called “Neuromancer.”
Neuromancer was an amazing piece of work, for its time. A point and click adventure game, yes, but with a vast collection of BBS-like “sites” in “cyberspace,” which could be accessed and navigated spatially, a sea of semitransparent polygons on a sprawling grid. They called the book “prophetic” in its vision of what a global computer network might be like, but the game was similarly visionary, in that it offered a classic milestone-and-unlocked-door-driven main story, but with a vast and layered world of enriching side stories and tiny details easily overlooked, that add depth and character to the world in which your character lives. This was a level of detail and nuance and supporting gameworld-enrichment that Bioware would go on to become famous for, in its epic D&D games of the Nineties, and in its later adventure games, but in the Eighties, on computers that were much more limited in resources, this was a bigger feat, and a bigger surprise to the player. You could just play Neuromancer to win it, or you could play it to learn about it, follow the exchanges on the PAX and on private sites, the private message exchanges between AIs. You could learn so much more that way, if you were clever and patient enough to retain it, to piece it together, and to make sense of it all.
– Real player with 109.0 hrs in game
Crypto: Against All Odds - Tower Defense
Those who are familiar with the plants versus zombies series will be right at home when playing this game, Crypto manages to capture a frantic, fast paced tower defense that’s even a bit educational. Fingers crossed for any potential dlc or content updates in the future.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
Fun little tower defense game. Does a few things new, does a lot of things well, and scratches the tower defense itch nicely. Story bangs on incomprehensibly but, honestly, you can skip the story and miss nothing. There’s one or two other minor quibbles but, really, for the price you’re getting fantastic value. If you like tower defense games this is a solid entry.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
Hacker Evolution
Simply surprising, great music… I may not become an hacker but I can play as one without special stuff.
You’re a renowned IT specialist that retired as an ermit on an isolated island following your family’s death. However, you’re asked to investigate on 4 different problems, that seemed tied. What will you discover?
Hacker Evolution is perhaps a writing simulator, as you need to type the command but you need your brains to avoid to be traced and to have a game over. Sometimes, you’ll need to begin a new campaign because you can’t do anything but try a different manner to avoid spending too much money you’ve “stolen” or to add to your trace level. That’s perhaps the most frustrating thing in HE.
– Real player with 70.0 hrs in game
My playtime: 18.6h (based on steam, main story + all extra levels are completed).
Developer Response: ~1 month.
Intro
Hacker Evolution is a hacking simulation game which is played in terminal. You’ll use several commands to do the “hacking” and some of them are real terminal commands.This game might look similar to Uplink in the shell, although the execution is quite different.
Music
There are some soothing musics played in the background. You can also change the music selection by pressing F4.
– Real player with 18.7 hrs in game
ClusterDisaster
Nice little Game.
Fun to play. Good for short sessions, when you don’t know what else to do.
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
After playing this, I just want to put on a Member’s Only jacket and go to Flynn’s Arcade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QUxSyqVQs8&feature=youtu.be
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
Digital Siege
To put it blunt it had potential but this is obviously a money grab game that they abondened halfway if u had bought it refund it quick
– Real player with 4.2 hrs in game
Introduction
Quite some time has passed since my last review for a title focusing on hacking and other covert activities. It’s a relatively narrow niche, rather than a full-fledged strategic subgenre. In any case, I enjoy such breaks from norm and regard Digital Siege as a slightly more complex tower defense game, to put things into perspective. As in most situations, the best defense can only be offense. Developer Dreambakers had a prolific debut year, as Digital Siege is their sixth consecutive project released in 2018. Just as they describe themselves, I agree on their focus for “experimental games” transcending genre boundries. Intelligence gathering may a pill that’s harder to swallow by some, but it’s a crucial activity nonetheless. As with most “commodities”, what you do with the information afterwards is far more important than stockpiling it, so to speak. Its value never decreases, no matter the parties involved.
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
hack_me
Hack Me is the beginning of a hack simulator gaming trilogy which no longer appears on the Steam Store. It was originally created by 2 Belarus Indie Developers Egor Magurin https://twitter.com/IndoversStudio and Eugene RadaeV. I find it ironic that these developers themselves were VAC banned and caught for cheating/hacking CSGO within 76 hrs of gameplay. Who better to sell us a hacking simulator than 2 has-been wannabe noob CSGO hackers? That’s poetry right there.
If you’re expecting this to be a realistic hacking simulator you will be quickly disappointed. It’s more a press spacebar or left mouse button simulator, with all the hacking jive being filled in for you. When you do come across area’s where you do get to type, you better put in the exact info needed or the game sort of locks up by not responding properly when you put in the correct answer soon thereafter. When this happens, you will need to escape back to main menu and reload chapter. There are 10 mission all up with 14 chapters, all of them involving you to toy around with at least one of the 3 hacking programmes on your desktop and either check your mail or chat for job information. There is also a hint button on the right-hand side to help you if you get stuck.
– Real player with 12.1 hrs in game
Basic Information
Title: hack_me
Developers: Egor Magurin & Eugene Radaev
Publisher: MegawattsCo
Genre: Simulator
General Impression
Hacking simulations available for purchase on the Steam Store are neither a novelty nor even limited in numbers. Indeed this seems to be an ever expanding subgenre that attacts and nurtures a dedicated fanbase. That being said, hack_me might not revolutionize hacking sims but it doesn’t fail to deliver a compelling experience either. For a game that can be finished in about two hours or less (depending on how thorough and patient you are) it manages to offer exactly what it promises through the screenshots and gameplay video. In all honesty, it’s not the type of game that might get by with doctored images which would falsely advertise something else. What you see is what you get. Perhaps it still has some potential for gameplay expansion once it leaves Early Access stage.
– Real player with 2.6 hrs in game
Hacker Evolution: Untold
You’re an IT specialist contacted by someone warning you about a spy in your company. Guided by a mysterious person, you’re being framed by them - it’s up to you to reveal themselves so that your name is cleaned…
The plot is the prequel to Hacker Evolution, showing how you came to be a reclused person on an island. However, the end is kinda abrupt. The last level is so easy that it’s just a shame that the developers didn’t put the work they did for the entire game.
The gameplay isn’t differing from the previous game, so allow me to copy/paste part of the evaluation I’ve written.
– Real player with 58.2 hrs in game
This game is simply amazing, from the storyline to the advaced and simple to use edior program that come with the purchase of the game. This game challenges my mind more than any other game I have ever owned. The terminology is suprisingly correct, you don’t type stupid commands like “hack facebook” no, no. The interface of the game and how you type commands faintly feel like a linux OS. Don’t think that this game is going to teach you how to hack into anything, but it does give you a perspective on how websites are designed and the security flaws within them. I have to say though, it is very much like the original HE just a different design, but same layout.
– Real player with 35.5 hrs in game