Hacker Simulator takes a more grounded approach to the hacker sim and lets you employ simulations of realistic tools and methods used by contemporary hackers. Sadly it does this in the most repetitive, tedious, and slow way possible, showing a poor understanding of what makes a game fun.
It has a great first impression. The PC has a simulated OS with terminals, linux commands, a pretend browser, and it seems close to 'Welcome to the Game II' levels of depth, but you very quickly discover how shallow everything is. The OS is clunky to use, terminals only take a few specific commands, the browser isn't dynamic, apps don't take arguments, you have to click into text boxes to start typing - there's lots of annoying cut corners. Then you get into hacking and again it seems reasonable at first. You hack the wifi, hack an IP, steal some data. Then you do it again, and again, until you unlock malware and phishing.
This is where the game gets to its most repetitive. For some reason almost every hack from this point is a phishing attack to upload malware. Phishing involves a counting game, spending $3 for a burner facebook account, and running an upload command. You do this about 25 times then you unlock exploit crafting which introduces a new money sink of $12 roughly every 10 minutes and the rewards barely cover the cost. Then the game wants you to grind $350 to get a mining rig. This took me about 8 hours of repeating these phishing attacks, occasionally broken up by stealing files, and after all that you're rewarded with another uninteresting 'hack' puzzle that involves checking a long hex code for invalid characters and re-writing it.
The underlying ideas here are great - using realistic tools, doing a variety of realistic hacks - but dear god the implementation and pacing is awful. Counting items in a list and writing the same 6 instructions is mind numbing, least of all when it's all you have to do for hours on end only to be rewarded with another mechanically lazy, easy to generate, boring 'puzzle'. Throughout the grind you learn how shallow the 'generative' elements are. Files have meaningless random names placed randomly into a file structure. Every contact says one of two lines. Every problem is introduced alongside its solution so there's zero anticipation. And if you do extra work and download extra account files they soon become invalid and just take up space on your hard drive, so there's actually punishment for being a 'better' hacker.
At its core this game is just doing the bare minimum. Mechanics are implemented in lazy, simple ways that are easy to randomize. Zero foreshadowing, nothing to look forward to. Every feature has corners cut that make them less interesting to use. Every hack is over simplified, padded with extra steps, unfun, and overused. Rewards are undermined by hacking costs. Upgrades are barely of any use. At every turn the game feels unfinished, rushed, and missing variation, yet this game isn't in early access and the dev is working on other projects. The game exe doesn't even have it's own icon, the unreal logo is showing. A sad waste of real potential.
It has a great first impression. The PC has a simulated OS with terminals, linux commands, a pretend browser, and it seems close to 'Welcome to the Game II' levels of depth, but you very quickly discover how shallow everything is. The OS is clunky to use, terminals only take a few specific commands, the browser isn't dynamic, apps don't take arguments, you have to click into text boxes to start typing - there's lots of annoying cut corners. Then you get into hacking and again it seems reasonable at first. You hack the wifi, hack an IP, steal some data. Then you do it again, and again, until you unlock malware and phishing.
This is where the game gets to its most repetitive. For some reason almost every hack from this point is a phishing attack to upload malware. Phishing involves a counting game, spending $3 for a burner facebook account, and running an upload command. You do this about 25 times then you unlock exploit crafting which introduces a new money sink of $12 roughly every 10 minutes and the rewards barely cover the cost. Then the game wants you to grind $350 to get a mining rig. This took me about 8 hours of repeating these phishing attacks, occasionally broken up by stealing files, and after all that you're rewarded with another uninteresting 'hack' puzzle that involves checking a long hex code for invalid characters and re-writing it.
The underlying ideas here are great - using realistic tools, doing a variety of realistic hacks - but dear god the implementation and pacing is awful. Counting items in a list and writing the same 6 instructions is mind numbing, least of all when it's all you have to do for hours on end only to be rewarded with another mechanically lazy, easy to generate, boring 'puzzle'. Throughout the grind you learn how shallow the 'generative' elements are. Files have meaningless random names placed randomly into a file structure. Every contact says one of two lines. Every problem is introduced alongside its solution so there's zero anticipation. And if you do extra work and download extra account files they soon become invalid and just take up space on your hard drive, so there's actually punishment for being a 'better' hacker.
At its core this game is just doing the bare minimum. Mechanics are implemented in lazy, simple ways that are easy to randomize. Zero foreshadowing, nothing to look forward to. Every feature has corners cut that make them less interesting to use. Every hack is over simplified, padded with extra steps, unfun, and overused. Rewards are undermined by hacking costs. Upgrades are barely of any use. At every turn the game feels unfinished, rushed, and missing variation, yet this game isn't in early access and the dev is working on other projects. The game exe doesn't even have it's own icon, the unreal logo is showing. A sad waste of real potential.