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
Read More: Best Indie Cyberpunk Games.
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
Mainlining
TL;DR (good deal of gameplay from free demo): Mainlining is a fun adventure game with a clever and unique twist where you hack computers, websites, and other devices to mine information on the different cases presented to you. The game doesn’t hold your hand, so the cases can present a fun little challenge beyond the first tutorial. Highly recommended! If you want to see a playthrough of the first (tutorial) case, check out this video (Demo version):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kek4zO0OF_8
– Real player with 12.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Indie Simulation Games.
Neutral Recommendation: Only Pick Up At A Discount
- Gameplay: Interfacing with the game is fairly straightforward. You’re using a simulation of a computer desktop. The main complaint is that you can only backspace to make changes to text in the Notepad program. You cannot edit the text freely, so if you want to make a change to something at the top of the file, you’d have to erase everything and start over. Luckily, you’ll find that program is mostly useless.
The lame thing is that, for most cases, you can only turn in one-piece of evidence linking the person to the crime, although there may be several in reality. Also, you have to pick the right location for the person, so even if you have the evidence correct, if you don’t choose the right location, it somehow ends up as a False Arrest. It doesn’t really make any sense that you could have sufficient evidence, but a person is Falsely Accused because they were in a different location than you originally thought they were (i.e. at work instead of at home.) That’s just dumb…
– Real player with 9.1 hrs in game
Hacker Evolution Duality
My playtime: 11.4h (based on Steam, 100% achievement)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (~4 achievements, it might take ~6h to get them all).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (7 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
As a fan of hacking games, Hacker Evolution Duality catches my eye; it looks like other hacking games at first glance despite its negative reviews. I ended up giving it a chance after some careful consideration, but is it as bad as other people say? More on the review.
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Indie Simulation Games.
I’ve bought this game years ago driven by curiosity, to find out what it takes to be one of the most hated kind of people in the virtual world. Well, i’ve gained zero knowledge thanks to the gods, and uselessness of this product. To explain myself politely, this is not a game, but a mental warfare without the cold trace of fun.
The music itself doesn’t match with my style, some electronic stuff, tastes are so different between peoples, so i can’t rate it but acceptable enough. The game itself lacks of game elements, we have 7 “maps” total, (which are nothing more but a desktop-like picture with a few dots named as servers) there are some crazy time limited memory games and thats all. You have to count down numbers in a box from 63 to 0 while enemy servers attacking you (rofl), and there is another component of the game which is totally the same…
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Debugger 3.16: Hack’n’Run
I recommend this game as the first game in your quest to learn programming. I am on a quest to learn coding via games and thus I have played many games on Steam. This game is more ‘gamey’ than ‘teachy’ on coding in the same genre as what I call, dev team level editor. Dev team level editor games have level editors that are designed for developers or software testers. Since it is not meant for end users, the level editors are crude and often use command line rather than an easy to use GUI. The learning of coding comes as you gain more and more access to the level editor as you level up and play. Debugger 3.16 , explains concepts like variables as you unlock features. You change variables of built in program functions to do everything from healing, aiming, changing volume and more. You will not be learning much coding since you will be changing variables in the developer predefined functions. However actually typing out functions and changing variables got me comfortable and prepared me for other more code teaching games and tutorials.
– Real player with 35.1 hrs in game
I just finished the game and judging by the global achievements I was the very first to do so. Yay!
Right now there are 4 worlds and 4 bosses to beat and I had great fun doing so.
The neat thing about small indie games is that they sometimes come up with a new and fresh game mechanic. In this case it’s writing programming code to influence your character. You’ll learn something about coding and having fun at the same time. It’s a puzzle platformer with great graphics and a nice story to go with it.
– Real player with 34.6 hrs in game
Hacker Evolution Source Code
Honestly I love this collection of the hackers Evolution series by far my favorite hacking simulation game out there to date. Fully immersive.
– Real player with 33.8 hrs in game
Good game cant say more, it is not my type.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
BitVault
Simple puzzle game. A good hacker puzzle. At first it seemed simple to me, but the complexity grew and it became interesting. I liked both the style the gameplay. Not a masterpiece, but it definitely deserves attention and worth to play. I recommend it.
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
An addictive logic game. A game that will immerse you in the world of a great hacker puzzle. The difficulty of the game is average, in most cases it seems easy, but sometimes you still need to think carefully)
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
hack_me 3
From the creator of hack_me and dev_me, a continuation of the acclaimed hacker simulator in 2016 and 2017 - hack_me 3 is already on Steam!
hack_me 3 is a game about an ordinary guy who is not ready to put up with new laws in his country, restricting freedom and anonymity in the network. You have to deal with this regime to prevent Orwell’s repetition of the novel ‘1984’. You will have a new messenger for communicating with new acquaintances and ‘colleagues’, a player for listening to your favorite music, working with the new terminal, and many other software and utilities. .
FEATURES
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Changing the size and position of the program (for oldies who played in 1st part)
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Nonlinear storyline with choices of answers in the dialogs
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Pleasant graphics in pixel art
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Dozens of commands and programs to fulfill your goals.
Mu Complex
As some are quick to point out, Mu Complex is not a ‘hacking game’. There’s no frenetic action, load balancing packet transfers across multiple servers or firewall cracker mini-games. Instead, you’re an e-spy, learning just enough about your targets to steal their secrets, before moving on to the next-to-be-victimized terminal. So Mu’s not a ‘hacking game’, it’s actual hacking.
The puzzles grow fairly linearly in difficulty, beginning with laughable non-effort and culminating in multiple notebook pages of nightmarish chicken scratch. Like many adventure games of the internet age, Mu requires that you befriend Google, researching beyond the in-game assets. Accordingly, the developers have created a suite of real world, online content to further your immersion into the complex world of Complex.
– Real player with 21.7 hrs in game
Too Long; Don’t Wanna Read: fun puzzle solving game, alright music, story is zzzzzz, good afternoon waster
So first off, I’ve been following this game since episode 1 was on Kongregate. I beat it way back and really enjoyed it, excited for episode 2. After a while, I found that it got removed from Kong and got quite upset, but soon after I found it on steam and wishlisted it. I bought it on sale after a year or so, and kept going on and off on the game multiple times until I finally sat down and finished the game start to finish today. I say this because I wanted to say that this history I’ve had with it has allowed me to view and enjoy this game at multiple points in time and different perspectives, and the one thing that has been very consistent over time is that the game is fun. Going through the different computers and finding the passwords through puzzle solving in multiple ways was quite fun. I especially liked the part where you’d have to use online tools such as googling a certain verse to get the information needed. The music was one thing I started to appreciate as I got older, it’s nice ambient music in the bg that quite fits the tech startup company graphics, which I also liked. It’s alright, but nothing to write home about (although I wish I was able to find the OST online somewhere….). The story, however, was the part that I least cared about. It wasn’t bad, but it was really basic, cliche, and I honestly couldn’t care about it. It didn’t affect the game much but if you were going into this game for its story then this might not be your thing. If, however, you are looking for a hacker/command line game where you jump between computer to computer, using ciphers and hints between computers to progress, pick this game up! I would say if you’re not super pressed, wait for a sale or smth, I personally enjoyed it back when it was a flash game on Kongregate and honestly, I feel this game definitely deserved more than free flash game status.
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
Omnipresent
The UI is rather janky and there are some minor bugs, but both are predictable enough to deal with. Once I got used to them I found myself entertained. It’s not an incredibly deep game, and no individual part is very complex, but all the little pieces come together pretty well. At first it seemed like another game called Endgame: Singularity (not on Steam), but it’s more like its opposite - there’s a lot less numbers and levelling and an actual plot in this one. The plot itself is pretty linear but you have a decent amount of freedom to accomplish many of the individual tasks, even if the game doesn’t always make some of the concepts involved very clear.
– Real player with 16.3 hrs in game
I like this game only one thing if you have a lower end pc its not going too work I tested it on a older gen 2 only had 2 processers. im not complaining I feel there are a lot of people complaining about game play. yes the gamplay is different and yes there is a white screen.bug but it does not seem to affect my pc.
it last roughy for 30 secnds too a 1 min.
overall I feel there could be more tutorials on stuff in game.and this game does have interesting points
its more like a learning curve for the basic. and the stock market is not hard to manipulate just hack it dont sell right away.
– Real player with 14.9 hrs in game
Replica
Replica tries to mix its serious statements about totalitarian government, the balance of personal privacy versus national security, and omniprescent data tracking with fart jokes and sicc references to various indie games and The Matrix. The tonal whiplash is enormous and the weak writing does not help. Seriously, your Orwellian jailor cannot be more blatantly reprehensible. To say the least, while the topics of this game continue to be relevant to modern society, and the core messages this game tries to impart are certainly reasonable, everything said here has been said better elsewhere.
– Real player with 8.4 hrs in game
Replica is a very simplistic graphics novel game. It has charming pixel art and some interesting concepts. The game is pretty short and interesting. You’re going through someone’s phone who is a suspect in a terrorist attack and you must decode the phone’s passwords and gather clues and send them to “homeland security”.
Graphics:
The game has very simplistic pixel art where all you see is a hand holding a phone and the screen of the phone is your gameplay area. The background is black and white. This makes a very unique graphical experience and in my opinion it was quite nice looking. The game is locked at 60 FPS. It doesn’t really matter in this type of game but there were no frame drops.
– Real player with 8.3 hrs in game