Reviews

• 

  Lafleur

  Sep 24, 2016

  If you likes games like [url=store.steampowered.com/app/1510/]Uplink[/url] and [url=store.steampowered.com/app/365450/]Hacknet[/url] then you should definitely try this game. It begins with a 3-4 hour single player tutorial which is really well done and teaches you the ropes in a clear way - while still being entertaining - before throwing you into an imposing, and initially impenetrable, multiplayer version. Without guidance this monster of a game would be impossible to comprehend, especially for someone like me whose only experience with hacking is watching WarGames with Mathew Broderick when I was a kid. Fortunately, ｈａｃｋｍｕｄ has an amazing community. Like... seriously. One of the most 'famous' (i.e 'rich and clever') players just gave an hour long lesson for newcomers like me on how to start writing code. He does this several times a week. There are scripts available for free that will provide you with 'locs' (I think I got that right) to break into if you can’t figure out how to do it yet yourself. If you have a question you can just type it into chat and you will get a response within seconds... although it's always more likely to be a hint than a full solution because the community 'get it' and don't want to spoil the joy of discovery for you. It’s important to note that I experienced all of this in the first two days after launch when the servers were pretty much on fire. However, while it is certainly frustrating to play with high amounts of lag (those negative reviews aren’t making that stuff up) it was actually kinda cool to see the (sole) developer in chat asking the same people that I was asking “what colours do c003 locks use?” to help him test out a new build of the game to fix it all. I loved Uplink and Hacknet, but they were short, single player experiences. This is a game for people that are in it for the long haul. It will never have masses of players, but it already has a strong and dedicated fan base, and It is genuinely exciting to think about what this game will look like a year from now. So, yeah… it’s good! Play it… maybe…. I’ll be playing it! You might not like it… but you might love it! (I can’t tell because we haven’t met.) P.S. I downloaded Notepad++ to make a script that says “Hi, friend!” which I feel is proof that this game can teach you how to program irl. P.P.S. I know that this review has gone on too long, but I’m not sure how to end it. kernel.hardline{dc:true}
• 

  TheOctagon

  Sep 25, 2016

  Like Hacknet, only much more abstract, much more difficult, much more buggy. The game requires you to think outside of its own meta, and the tutorial only holds your hand insofar as to prepare you for the madness that is the multiplayer portion of the game. While there are server issues abound, such is the way of the multiplayer. Shoutout to the lone dev who had the drive to make this game. Mad props :-)
• 

  Anihillator

  Sep 25, 2016

  This game made me start learning JS. I think it's awesome. Well, I didn't finish, but still, someone as lazy as me started something... It's impressive. TRUST NO ONE. YOU ARE NEVER SAFE.
• 

  SilentSeraph

  Oct 14, 2016

  Here is an example of why this small game (more on that after the recap) is so huge, with truly huge creative ways of taking advantage of the limits and freedom within it. I logged in yesterday afternoon in the limited time I had to check up on my account. I am doing some stupid things - I'm running a completely naked Tier 3 rig with about 60 or so upgrades on it. This cost over 200M GC to accomplish on it's own. But, I've got an alt, it's loc has never really seen the light of day except for some farming. Of which I've been doing a lot of T2 farming. I now had over 250MGC from some light farming when I could (you break the locks and it's 10-20M GC at a time. This money was basically all I had in the world of Hackmud, and I was only 25% of the way to my *real* goal. As I check the balances, I quickly realize that neither of them have any balance. I was done. Someone got to both my accounts. They got to SilentSeraph, then they got to the npc that connects the alts together, and then they got to my alt. I was now the proud owner of two very expensive and very burned locs. And I like them both so much. They are my first two I made. But this is hackmud. I have locs, logs. I know people. Let's give it a shot. And I have literally nothing to lose now. So I start to probe the loc that breached me. T2 locks. And, brutally, a "glock", a special type of lock, is in the front of likely 9 other locks. A "glock", the in game lock, is a 100M - 500M GC Tier 2 lock that you can use as an upgrade. You can buy them on the market even. It forces the attacker to have an exact amount in their balance, which is given to the lock in a transaction, and it only unlocks each time you attack if that *exact* balance is present. So you MUST have coordination with friends, some really fast fingers, or even two computers, two copies of the game, etc. After the "glock" lock is opened, there was now an acct_nt lock, which is hard as hell because you have to know the right net amount in your transactions log. That's the easy part though. You have to try and do this while the person being attacked (victim) is actively sending you a spam of random GC amounts, filling your transaction logs up with a downpour of 2 - 23GC in random amounts (they can do this if they are online and watching themselves be hacked). This is one of the BEST defenses in the game and is impossible to crack for someone receiving so many transactions. But it's an ACTIVE defense. You have to be continually aware of who to defend against next. So there my 250MGC is sitting. I have two burned locs, nothing to lose. I reach out to the community on discord. I work with a benefactor who has a few more locs he wants. And he wants to remain anonymous. He appreciates my situation, two burned locs... he suggests we work together. I start paying people to be decoys for 2MGC up front, to just send an amount every few seconds. Noise basically, and pretty safe for them. Then I took on three breachers. People willing to burn a loc. I had two burned locs to give, and the benefactor was paying me well for it. I split all of this with the breachers and promised that up front. We spin up a game channel with password (ala the tutorial - I just couldn't resist) (and later joined a Discord chat), and began coordinating. I was to go in first, per normal operating procedures, like I had been doing for the past few hours. Once I knew the glock amount, I shared it in the channel. Everyone all at once began spamming him. Two out of the 5 of us were breachers. It was easy to tell, of course, but all we wanted was a few minutes head start. And we began breaking each and every lock down, each of us gaining just enough time while the victim spammed us with transactions, forcing us to wait for a gap in his own defenses. At a certain point, more breachers on my benefactors' side joined the fray. We bet that there was likely no way for the victim to withstand the attack for much longer, especially after our 7th broken lock. And then suddenly, we were through. Breached. Everyone cheered. When we check the logs, though, the person who breached us? Wasn't any of our group. And the balance we find: less then 1MGC. Everyone is bummed. There's no huge pile of money we were hoping for. Might have been a breach from elsewhere. But being a hired gun has it's benefits: we took risk, and our reward was guaranteed GC. The benefactor who wished to remain anonymous? He doubled our rates for jobs well done: totalling to 220MGC for each breacher on my crew. I funneled the money to a much more secure spot, and am now enjoying a new life of services work, building a pool of willing talent, both helpers and breachers and coders and alliances... There's talk of code being written to coordinate an entire team of us, and as a group of eager architects (what the game dubs you if you can script), we know we can build it to make the whole effort faster. Do you see now? This game can be what you want, because you can LITERALLY CHANGE THE GAME WITH YOUR CODE. YOU CAN MAKE NEW WAYS TO ATTACK: SOCIALLY, USE TOOLS, PHISHING, GAMBLING GAMES, BANKS, GC TRANSFER SERVICES, BLACK MARKETS, BRUTE FORCING ... YOU CHANGE THE CODE! THERE IS NO SPOON. TAKE THE RED PILL!
• 

  Karabiner

  Oct 21, 2016

  This is one of the cases where I wish games had a "neutral" rating button. Basically, this game is not meant for everyone. You should definitely consider this game if you like puzzles & riddles, know or are willing to learn javascript (seriously, this game cannot be aced without writing your own scripts), and are a generally fast typer or are familiar with computers. This game is not exactly close to real hacking, but defenitely has cool aspects to it. Pros: - Not too realistic but fun hacking is present. - An interesting tutorial. - The developer is really passionate about his game, which can be seen clearly. Cons: - NOT suited for non-tech people. - A flood of puzzles and riddles, which some may like, but I'm sure most won't. - The game interface is really annoying to work with (The "scratch" pannel where you keep notes does not even support carriage return! I have to hold space until a new line starts). - The lack of a campaign/story after the tutorial. - First time outside of the vLAN (the tutorial area in the game) can be really intimidating, - The hacking in this game is solely based on guessing numbers and words, which I personally don't like. All in all, I recommend this game only to people who are tech-savy, willing to learn javascript, and can cope with being betrayed, which is a large part of the game. I personally don't like the fact that the hacking is based on guessing things and I don't like the user interface, so i gave it a negative rating. However, the game has fun aspects, but I find them hard to enjoy. I rate this game neutral.
• 

  wervyn

  Nov 30, 2016

  Is it time to do the autopsy yet? hackmud is a game that by all rights I should really like, and for a brief time I really did. I'm a big fan of hacking games in general and this one is no exception. It scratched all of the right itches, hell it got me to look up the QR code specification and dig back into Reed-Solomon error correction codes, math I haven't done since grad school. But after a couple weeks I just stopped playing it. Not out of frustration, though the game certainly presents a hostile and cutthroat environment, I never did get hacked or scammed while I was playing. Nor because the game was too hard, though it's definitely beyond the average player, I actually found it well below the speed I generally prefer when I want to be intellectually challenged. No, I just got bored of it. After a brief time I realized I'd seen pretty much all the game had to offer that I cared to experience, and the pace of development was (and still is) far too slow to keep up with adding content. For some reason I keep checking back on it though. Watching the numbers burn down as the userbase slowly evaporates, I can't decide if I'm rooting for hackmud to turn it around somehow, or fail in a glorious fireball. Right now though it's just stuck in a tedious death spiral, circling the drain. I keep thinking: this game OUGHT to be good, a multiplayer hacking sim a la Uplink sounds like a great idea! But as it stands now it's hard to recommend to anybody. It's more of a fascinating case study in MMO design failure: really neat as a social experiment, not much fun as an actual game. If you think you're going to pick up the game and learn to be a l33t h4x0r, you're going to get chewed up, exploited, and spit out. If you're interested in socializing with other hacker types, they've already got their cliques (which they've moved to out-of-game channels) and aren't really interested in you. If you have dreams of empire building, those empires have already been built, there's not room among 50 or so people for more. The existing community has reached the point where it's realized that a currency entering extreme hyperinflation is worth far less than hoarding knowledge. Both factors, unfortunately, are anathema to new players. But really, when you premise a community on a trust-sparse environment, you're essentially baking community dysfunction into the game. It's only natural for it to become insular and exclusionary, driving new adoption down. And then, all it takes is a few flareups and hurt feelings to blow the rest of it apart.
• 

  HappyCat

  Feb 15, 2017

  I wanted to spend some time with the game before giving it a review. I’ve been playing this game for a few weeks now and while I haven’t experienced the whole game, I’ve experienced enough to cast my thoughts. I have been interested in this game for a while, but I am a student and don’t often play games during semester and typically wait until the breaks between semesters to get stuck in. I am a late comer to this game so this is review is based on the current state of the game. I typically play hacker/programmer games so Duskers, Else.heartbreak(), Hacknet, Screeps, etc. They are great games, but I’ve always been on the lookout for a multiplayer experience so as you can imagine when I saw this game that included; hacking, programming, MMO, sandbox, I nerdgasmed. [h1]Game doesn’t hold your hand[/h1] This game doesn’t hold your hand, and I love that personally, lots of games these days have quest helpers and often gives you a satnav style directions. This game does not do that; you must use your brain and think about things. [h1]Everything is text[/h1] Everything in the game is text, so expect lots of text, but don’t panic, if reading is not your thing, you get good at spotting keywords quickly the more you play it (a life skill fo-sho yo), but to be honest most of the text is interesting and worth the read. [h1]Programming and hacking?[/h1] Yes, yes and yes! This game absolutely embodies the real nature of hacking. The tactics are very close to the real world more than any other game I’ve played. Footprinting, phishing attacks, social engineering, programming malicious scripts. The game is also a sandbox so pretty much anything goes. The game supports three types of play style, architect (programmers), infiltrators (PVP) and scavengers (PVE). [h1]What is the goal of the game?[/h1] This is a difficult question to answer, it’s a bit like asking you the goal of Minecraft, it depends? Basic idea is upgrading your system to a new tier, there are 4 tiers (including 0), your goal is to upgrade to the highest tier, to do this, you need GC. How you obtain that GC is down to you: Do you play a PVE game, finding and cracking old NPC dead accounts for GC and upgrades? Do you PVP and search out other players and run phishing campaigns where you trick other players to running malicious scripts that allows you to breach them or maybe you social engineer a player into giving you information you can use against them? Do you play as a programmer, who can be contacted by other players to build custom scripts and get paid? Do you write your own scripts to automatically search and break accounts while you chat with your friends in discord? Of course, you can switch it up, you can be any mixture of the above examples. These are just simple examples. You're limited only by your own imagination. [h1]Is the game buggy?[/h1] Yes, but to be honest whether this is by design or just buggy it adds to its character because let me tell you, real world systems (even though polished from a user perspective) are buggy as all hell. Just ask any windows user (Mwhaha). [h1]Community and social aspect[/h1] The game has a strong community, but to experience it, you need to go to discord, there you’ll find a Hackmud channel that is always active and buzzing with life. They are very helpful and passionate about this game. There you will find all types of players. Outside game, you often find a lot of calibration between hackers, programmers, artists (ascii artist) and even some awesome story writers. It isn’t uncommon for groups of people to work together to add new content to the game that people can play and enjoy. Last night in discord, we were talking about how people play this game. We are all different, some spend more time writing scripts for the game, others like analysing data from the game, some enjoy the problem solving and others just like the social aspects. There is no wrong or right way to play the game, in fact, this game IS what you make it. [h1]Who is this game for?[/h1] Anyone who enjoys problem solving, programmers or anyone who wants to learn to code and anyone who likes to think out of the box. [h1]Final thoughts[/h1] This game is underrated, I think it is because of the steep learning curve at the start of the game, If you stick with it though, I know you’ll come to enjoy this game. The game costs $20 (two coffees?) for that price you really can't go wrong. I really recommend you give this game a go.
• 

  n00bish

  May 9, 2017

  This is one of my favorite games I've ever played. It's hard to explain exactly what the draw is in a concise way, so be prepared for a little reading. It's easy to say that I love it for the scripting, which is my primary focus, but the reason I love it is so much more than that. The atmosphere really clicks for me, where the lore is presented "Dark Souls style", which takes some digging to reveal - and what it shows you makes you want to know more. The npcs in this game talk from time to time, and as you see what they have to say you may start to realize they are not just making jokes, spamming weather reports, and adding to the lore, but they also hint at secrets that players can find. Exploring content in this game is one of the most interesting things I've found to do when I'm not scripting. A lot of reviews I've seen on the store are posted from 2016 - and I can say without a doubt that the game has had a lot more content added, and is constantly getting minor updates interspersed with periodic larger ones. There's the obvious things - finding NPCs to hack, learning how to hack them, maybe even writing your own scripts to hack them (and other players). That's only scratching the surface - there's hidden content everywhere, much of it undiscovered or unsolved. Unique chat channels with interesting messages, information and buried in NPC corporations only available to those who look carefully and dig deep, and unsolved (and likely undiscovered) puzzles and solutions still waiting to be found. PvP and hacking is something I specialize in when playing this game. It is a constant arms race for attackers and defenders, usually an exciting (if sometimes imbalanced) one. The PvP aspect of hacking is still being balanced and tweaked constantly. I'm not going to gloss over it and say "it's fine" - there is definitely work to be done here. As someone who writes scripts primarily focused on releiving others of their assets (and dignity), I find this to be interesting more than frustrating the majority of the time. By spending time to learn and use game mechanics to your advantage, you can excel far beyond your peers. There's multiple layers of competition - not just how much "stuff" you have, but also the tools and scripts people write, the strategies and plans people come up with, and how well you can leverage mechanics to help your cause. The community also is a large contribution to why I have spent so much time playing. It's not the largest community ever - but one common theme I've seen is that people are passionate about this game. You don't have much middle ground where people say "this game is fine" - my guess is you'll likely either love it or hate it. Having so many people who are passionate about the game makes the community much more interesting than other larger games that I've played, and there's usually people around who are happy to help with questions you may have. Time for some cons, as it would be misleading to leave them out. - The ingame chat experience is not great. It's currently a work in progress and there is a chat API and an open source webchat project that can be contributed to, but chatting in the game itself still needs work. - It has a steep learning curve. You will likely run into scams, get hacked, and/or need to retire your user. This is all normal and expected, and is part of the gameplay, but it can be off-putting to some players. - The community is present nearly always, but not always visible. There's often a lot going on, but it's not publicly visible, making the game seem quieter than it really is. - There is a fairly heavy community driven focus on scripting. This is a problem not with the game so much as with the way the community approaches the game. This is a sandbox game, and most things can be done without scripting even if people try to claim otherwise. We are also given the tools to make our own content that [b]can't[/b] be scripted - but as things are today that mentality is a bit lacking. Given all of that, I can only say that you should give this game a try. It pulled me in and I'm guessing it could do the same for you as well, if you stick with it and are willing to take on the learning curve.
• 

  Kanavoy

  Jun 6, 2017

  I mean I'm not saying the MUD's full of Illuminati agents or anything, but... No, I guess that's exactly what I'm saying. It's a hacking sandbox, and I don't just mean programming (though sure, it helps). Social engineers and spies are more than welcome. There are casinos. A news network. Bounty hunters and mercenary hackers. Wars going on in the shadows, bank heists where billions or even trillions go missing. Data gathering efforts that beggar belief. Market manipulation. Botnet administrators defending their allies and attacking their enemies. And then behind all of that, a genuinely friendly userbase who are around at all hours - because sleep is for the weak - to help you learn the game, how to program, or even just chat while you get on with it. There's also pictures of cute doggos, but you'll have to work real hard to find them.
• 

  Aniketos

  Jun 23, 2017

  hackmud is the first "hacking game" I've truely enjoyed, and before long came to love. Unlike most "hacking games" out there, hackmud doesn't boil down gameplay to bizarrely simple and monotounous visual puzzles. Instead, you're dropped straight onto a command line and given true freedom. Any monotony you encounter, you can automate. Anything you see in-game, you can build. Anyone you meet could be a potential ally or an enemy or an easy score... or maybe someone's chatbot has you fooled and is nudging you into a trap. As an MMO offering such a high degree of freedom, a lot of the most exceptional content in the (known) game is that which is created by the players themselves - all variety of systems, infrastructure, stories, puzzles, games, and tools. Not to mention a boatload of memes and nonsense; the other day I ran into a manuscript of "The Book of The Ori" from Stargate lore. It wasn't a program, it didn't overtly lead anywhere - but it seemed strange and large enough that I can't help but wonder why it's there... sometimes it's best not to ask. The 'mud still surprises and confounds me at times. At time of writing there are over 11,000 user created scripts in the game - many available for public use (for free or fees), others private tools and systems for individuals or "corporations". The public script lists are full of traps and treasures, as well as NPCs and lore. The tools that you create, find, or otherwise gain access to can help you explore the 'mud more efficiently. The players are the real meat of the experience in my eyes, and the community is exceptional. Hop into channel 0000 in-game, or onto the hackmud Discord with any question regarding gameplay or scripting (even if you've never touched code in your life), and you're bound to get an answer or guidance in the right direction in short order. It's a good place to find collaborators for challenges and coding, get information on current events, and promote your scams (among many other things). Or just hang. There are always familiar sentients around. If you're interested in networking or the politics of players and corporations you'll definitely want to spend some time on Discord It's clear that the creator of the game (Sean) and Drizzly Bear love their work and the community. Sean often drops into the game or swings by the Discord to casually chat about the game experience and it's future or just to chew the fat, not to mention drop the rare hint to a puzzle, or collaborate with players for various things. A public Zendesk for the game provides a place where the community can suggest, discuss, and vote upon changes and new features. It's clear that hackmud will not "die" anytime as far as I can see, and the continued addition of new content and features keeps the core player-base captivated and inactive players returning to see what's new and become ensared once more. A couple months ago a Sean + players collaboration produced "Cortex" - a multiplayer puzzle arena competition of sorts heralding the arrival of (and implemented using) a new game feature ("bot brains" - player-created cron-jobs, of a sort). Appropriately, Cortex blew my mind - between the awesome gameplay of the arena puzzle itself and the pace of the event (such that many found themselves scrambling to automate brand new puzzles in between rounds of the arena), Cortex is definitively my favorite script to date. The "security" aspect of the game boils down the mindset described by the tagline, "In Risk we Trust". True to real-world security, you are ever-faced with the questions "how much can I trust x" and "how can I minimize the risk I'm taking by trusting x?". When using 3rd-party scripts, look before you leap. When granting code access to a new corp member, consider their rep and their relationships with other users. When writing a script for others to use, think about how they might try to break it or turn it against you. Working maliciously, think about your paper trail and how others perceive you. The game provides good exposure to the foundational ideas of information security alongside countless opportunities for social engineering. If you've coded before and enjoy a good puzzle or like to create, get this game - there's a good chance that you'll find that the community feels like home. Overthrow the banking industry, create a chatbot to send Dr. Pug tweets into hackmud whenever someone types "sick", create something that no one else has and charge users on a freemium model - there are vast possibilities and opportunities to explore. If you've never touched code but would like to learn, get this game - often the most difficult part of teaching onself is breaking down the process into manageable, incremental goals. And that's where hackmud really excels as a teaching platform. By the time you complete your first T1 cracker (which I've seen done by someone with no prior coding experience in under a week), you'll have a decent foundational understanding of working with logic. Another month and you'll grasp the basics of JavaScript (a language which has become extremely popular in the industry, lately). In short, I wish hackmud were around when I first began coding (I started in web dev, and learning PHP/HTML/CSS/JS all at once was at times overwhelming). If you don't code and don't intend to, there's still plenty to enjoy within the game and the community. To really progress monitarily, you'll likely need to play a more social role or spend more time searching for the tools and people to fulfill your needs. Joining a corporation can give you access to trustworthy tools, and corps often have a need for people to take on non-scripting roles (rival infiltration, front-line attackers, etc.). Or maybe you're not even interested in the cash - maybe you just want to seed dissent and stir up some EVE-Online-esque drama and intrigue. There for a while I thought my claim to ritches would be playing a user-created stock market; then the entire market toppled over in the wake of a large hack and left me with piles of worthless stocks. It seems the larger the community grows, the more opportunities for non-script-centric progression are available. A handful have logged thousands of hours - many many more have logged hundreds. But even those who log fewer than 5 hours a week, or who tend to take large breaks always have something to work on or explore. It's your sandbox - play it how you want.
• 

  Commando950

  Sep 13, 2017

  [b]Before exploding in the comments section please read the review.[/b] I have good things and bad things to say about this game. As you can tell hackmud is very vague what it is about from the video previews on steam. You REALLY need to read this before purchasing. For example the "tutorial" or "singleplayer" portion of the game takes more than 2 hours usually. So the actual gameplay is not yet revealed by the time your refund opportunity is over. What I am saying is to think carefuly before buying. So lets discuss what is good and bad. [h1]Graphics[/h1] Normally I would not mention this first but I'll talk about the good first. For a game that is only typing commands it is actually beautiful to look at. You have a bloom, screen distortion, and screen bend effect command to change your graphic settings. It's really cool and does not cause any lag for me from what I could tell.(I mean it should not anyway but hey... in case your worried) To initiate a hack you type kernel.hardline and it even makes the screen red and text different colors. Seems like a lame trick to make it intense but it is actually very effective and looks cool too. Text ascii scripts are made by community and game alike which look pretty nice. [h1]Sounds[/h1] While there is not much sounds it's a big part of your experience actually. Every command you type has that little sound to let you know you are doing a command and it is not finished. It just does not get old to me. The game soundtrack is pretty great. There is no denying this. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] This is where the problems arise. While playing hackmud you go through the hardly debatable difficult tutorial. You may be like me and forgot several parts of it as soon as you got out of it. When completed you are dropped on the multiplayer portion of the game. Everyone who gets to this portion of the game is completely confused and directionless. Lets discuss why that is. During very little of the tutorial are you told what it is like outside the tutorial. You get some really short and sweet access to upgrades and cash. What the player does not realize is they will be dumped into a playground of scams and cash grinding. All the npcs are hard to find without community help due to the player made scripts and game scripts being in the SAME PLACE. Type scripts.fullsec and you'll see player/npc scripts all in the same place. This is absolutely horrible as a decision and is obviously abused for the scamming portion of the game. T2 npcs ticked me off pretty badly. They require a QR code reader to even get your npc locs. Admitedly someone made a script for this and you can get a QR reader for your phone but that is still absolutely crazy. A game [b]in my opinion[/b] should not require such interaction from a user. Oh and best part is these codes are in text form. FUN!!! Hacking in the game is not that bad but gets repetitive fast. You will hack the same kind of locks at T1 NPCS over and over again with minimum reward. To buy your first upgrade which actually makes you able to be attacked.(oh geez thanks) T1 manual hacking is not based on how smart you are for the most part and instead is based on how lucky you are. Pick a random prime number, pick a random digit, or even pick a random color. You make think this would be fast but however it takes a couple of seconds to complete a command. Kernel.hardline(How you start a hack) ends in about 100-120 some seconds or something like that and once it is over you actually just run it again and keep going like it never ended. Which brings me to another thing. RISK. This game even says "In Risk We Trust" but there is no Risks. There is nothing to worry about in T1 at least. You can end hardline without completely hacking a target with no penalty. The reward for wasting your time can be 50,000 out of the 1,000,000 you need for your first upgrade. So that makes the only thing in T1 just grinding. The best part is [spoiler]you are not human and are an AI(I believe)[/spoiler] so how can you even be punished? The only true risk in the game is other players can make scripts. You can even automate T1 grinding to be way faster. You might ask why I am complaining if this can be done. Well the problem is scripts have to be small and well thought out. Early game you only get 500 characters(I think it counts by characters) for your script. Other player's scripts can be scams and pretend to be a legitimate service. These scripts can steal your money or your loc(which allows them to hack you). So you won't be able to just use a script whenever you like. You can luckily type scripts.get_level {name:"someguy.hisscript"} and it will give you a rating. If it is fullsec it is completely safe but the scammer can still give you a safe script that tells you to type an unsafe script so caution is absolutely a must. [h1]The Community[/h1] While I know little to nothing about the dev I did join one of their discords. I was greeted pretty much instantly and everyone seemed nice to be playing such a game. Seemed like a pretty good group of people and some of them was developing completely safe scripts that just do random things sometimes. In the game I had much worse mix of people. The chat was advertised full of scam scripts with many being nullsec(least safe). A few people in chat still seemed ok and there was a few new players too. [h1]Quests[/h1] I wanted to make this a special little section due to how I feel about it. The quests in hackmud are not what you would expect. When you played the game Uplink for example you got missions telling you exactly what to do or get a message from someone telling you to do something. HACKMUD DOES NOT do this in any shape or form. There is in fact quests but they don't even save progress and are just a script by themselves. Matter of fact if you do a previous step in the script you realize if you have a friend who has already done the "quest" he can give you the same command and you will have "completed" it instantly. This makes them pretty horrificly pointless which could have made the game way more fun otherwise. The only good thing about quests is a tad bit of backstory and some occassional easter eggs. [h1]Summary[/h1] (+)Looks good. (+)Great music! (+)Community could be far worse. Nice people for the most part other than scam script spam in game chat. (?)Everything is script based? I guess it's the idea of the game but eh.... (?)QR Code reader required to get into T2 npcs. (Who the hell thought this was a good idea?) (-)Community scripts are mixed with official game scripts?(New players will have trouble finding stuff) (-)Quests are just scripts and very undynamic. (-)You can't disable running another player's scripts temporarily(WHY IS THIS NOT A FEATURE) (-)Repetitive nature. (-)T1 locks are just pure random luck. (-)If you don't have scripts you won't be breaking anything fast. If you really like hacking games this might be worth it but I'd highly recommend Uplink if you have not already played that.
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  whitedoor

  Oct 17, 2017

  I really enjoyed this game. Got really into it, even wrote some neat scripts. I then took a break because of life, When got back dev had wiped my whole account because of inactivity? Seems really unfair, a change like this deserved more notice.
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  Cake Eater Games

  Oct 22, 2017

  The trailer is missleading, so I will tell you what this game is about. This is a console-like game where you type commands to solve puzzles. In the first part of the game(offline) you are trapped in some sort of Network and can't acsess the internet outside of it. so you are learning how to write commands, call functions and solve puzzles(No programming skills requiered). Fun little hacking tutorial part. But then things start to get more interesting. You are released in to the main game server with all the other players. This part is very confusing at first becouse there are just so much stuff out there. Hundreds of player writen scripts are everywhere and just wating to be used. Most of them are safe, but some of them will destroy you and steal everything you have. This part of the game will be more exciting if you are a programmer. You can write JS code to make automatic hacking tools to break defences and get some money, or you can write some fun stuff that is not very usefull but cool. If you aren't a programmer... well... there is not much to do. I mean you can still play the game but all you gonna do is use other people's scripts and complete boring NPC quests. (Also the soundtrack is EPIC) That's the game. The main problem of the game is that it is EMPTY right now. No players. MMO with no players :( Result: Very cool if you are a programmer Not so cool if you don't know how to code
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  skidhenzo

  Feb 8, 2018

  858.7 hours ++ i learned Javascript, MongoDB, npm by playing this game. Definitely recommend!
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  cone

  Mar 6, 2018

  I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm having fun
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  Ser Pbone

  Mar 25, 2018

  Fantastic game. First off, if you are planning on getting this pop into the community Discord, everyone is in there. [b]Gameplay[/b]: very barebones "hacking" simulator. You are at a Javascript prompt, and are able to run commands. At that point it's up to you to macro or script useful interfaces to make your life easier. If you aren't into programming then this game may not be for you, since I've spent 80% of my game hours in a text editor. [b]Music[/b]: There are only a few tracks, but they're all pretty good. They haven't gotten on my nerves ~50 hours in. [b]Linux compatibility[/b]: Outside of a few Unity quirks, it runs great for me on Debian Sid. The game starts with a 2~4 hour tutorial where you are inside of a vLAN helping some NPCs. That will teach you the basics of gameplay. Once you get out of the vLAN you're kind of on your own. I'd recommend asking the Discord for help, they can point you in the right direction. There are some easy low tier quests to do that will help you make money, and you'll quickly find yourself scripting mundane or annoying tasks that are required of you. Keep in mind scams are totally legal, which doesn't bother me as I love Eve Online. But for some people it may be a bit much. Just stay smart and run [i]scripts.get_level{name:"script.name"}[/i] on any scripts you're worried about. I highly recommend this game to anyone interested in coding, or who wants an MMO that is not just a WoW clone.
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  Blitzkraken

  Aug 30, 2018

  First thing I want to clear up: This is a great game. The whole idea behind it is awesome, and playing through the tutorial got me a bit hype for the actual MMO part. But once I finished it, I feel like that's where it kinda fell flat. So I'll list off some things I found wrong with the game that made me leave a negative review. [h1]The tutorial is 2 hours long, and you learn nothing[/h1] If you want to try the game, just realize you probably won't be able to get a refund if you complete the tutorial. Once you make it to the online part, nothing you've learned will be useful. You'll have to join the discord advertised in the in-game chat to learn anything. You'll start off trying to figure out how to find NPC's through fullsec and the chat system, and then trying to figure out the little puzzles to get the accounts to hack. [h1]No players in-game, all chat channels are dead[/h1] The MMO aspect of the game is dead. The only players you'll find are in a discord group outside the game. Nobdoy is using the in-game chat at all, which effectively makes the game feel dead. The only thing you'll really find is bots spamming fake scripts and the discord channel in 0000, which is effectively the social hub for new players. [h1]Microtransactions + limitations[/h1] I understand and support games that find ways to support their own servers, but the amount of users you can create are limited to 2 unless you pay for more. I only mention this as nowhere on the store page does, and it was a bummer to find out. The hardline is limited to a certain amount of uses, then you get a cooldown until you can use it again (server overload protection probably). Kind of annoying when you're first starting out. [h1]Hacking is tedious[/h1] Hacking is just solving a bunch of small puzzles, by using clunky commands. It feels like JSON or something, but everything you write is a Javascript object with a key and value. {key:"value", key2:"value2", etc:"..."} The most effective way to approach this, is to design a script to do everything for you, but then it's less about hacking and more about calling your script whenever you want something done. [h1]Scripting is locked behind joining discord[/h1] From what I can tell, the only place you'll find the API information needed to access functions and callbacks are only found in the discord. A group of players gathered a bunch of useful information in a GoogleDocs file, but it's semi-hidden in one of the discord's channels, and you're not likely to find it unless you ask someone about it. It would have been better to include something like this in-game somehow. [h1]TLDR[/h1] Expect to join a discord group if you want to play, but keep in mind it's essentially a single player game with online limitations. The multiplayer aspect is opening discord. That's it. For the price, I'd suggest avoiding it. $20 bucks for an online-only singleplayer puzzle game isn't worth it.
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  hackler6

  Sep 18, 2018

  The community is steeply in denial about the problems that the game has when it comes to steam reviews, and the game has changed significantly for the negative since many of these reviews were written 1. Getting resources has been majorly nerfed, but without any mechanism to remove those resources from the older players. As a new player you can now *never* accumulate the wealth or items that the older players have. It literally is not possible 2. The source code to various puzzles has been leaked repeatedly, but because its not allowed to be publically shared, certain people within the community have a massive advantage. This is particularly frustrating because source code was often leaked due to developer mishaps, and beta players in particular have access to large portions of the source code that they made off with (with the developers permission, which is doubly baffling) 3. The game fundamentally lacks an economy. Once you accumulate a certain amount of wealth, you are essentially infinitely rich as there is little to spend your cash on (binmat doesn't count as nobody PVPs). Due to the new resource generation nerf though, it is difficult for new players to reach this point 4. The game has strong p2w elements. Buying a second copy of the game, or more users (microtransactions) gives you an extremely strong leg up compared to the other players. Some players have literally 100 users which they have paid real cash for, whereas you only will start with 2, for a game that isn't exactly cheap. Paying for more users gives you the ability to defend yourself better, not rely on other players (in a game which is all about trust, theoretically), and even allows you to do things that other players literally can't (keeping track of sectors, channel watching) 5. The game strongly operates on a good faith principle, in a game about hacking. One of the power users in particular has claimed that they would simply crash the game if they were to get hacked. Unfortunately, this means that as a do-gooder people simply abuse this behind closed doors (custom clients for example, for full client automation) which allows them to get a leg up over you 6. PVP does not exist anymore. With a small playerbase, and the introduction of a card game which is additional to current PVP, nobody really does any pvp anymore as its now extremely frustrating. As a power user, you can set up defences that cannot be reasonably breached, though as a new player, the power users can simply infinitely breach you and steal all your things forever 7. The game has been near abandoned by the developer, and there are strong concerns within the community that the servers may go down in the future. New content is now extremely infrequent - it took 8 months for the PVP update to be developed and released, which also released in an extremely buggy state. Many of these bugs are still unfixed, months after its release With no PVP, no economy, no ability to get resources compared to what the existing players have, a shrinking playerbase, strong p2w elements, and a mostly absent developer, I wouldn't recommend this unfortunately
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  t.tv/c_railyn

  Oct 31, 2018

  I loved this game when it first released. I'm no coder. Never have been, but I was willing to learn for this game, because what it absolutely excelled at was creating an environment where I wanted to learn. The setting of the game was intriguing, and when I first completed the tutorial and got released into the wider world, I completely fell for the illusion it had set up. Booting up Hackmud on release felt like I was genuinely taking on the role that the game had assigned to me, and I was excited to keep playing that role, even if it meant learning new and difficult skills. Then, the Discord server started gaining traction. All of a sudden, 0000 went from bustling and entertaining to completely dead and a waste of time. The way to engage with the community was suddenly moved to a separate program I'd have to tab over to instead of keeping the game fullscreen like I preferred. The illusion was shattered, and I knew that nobody would ever bother to put it back together. It's a damn shame. I was really looking forward to playing that role I'd started to construct for myself, and now it's never going to happen the way I'd hoped.
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  Flowspinner

  Jul 2, 2020

  Hackmud started off well with an interesting story for the tutorial. But, once you exit the tutorial you're thrown into a world of hell. The story of the tutorial is now non-existent and most of the things you learned in the tutorial don't apply to the main game. Without a walk through or someone to hold your hand you'll most likely never find any t1 npcs let alone t2 npcs. Most "Locks" in the game require you to guess the answers and some even require outside knowledge that you'll need to google and then combine that data with a good guess. ====The Community==== The community isn't dead but it's very small and new players usually leave just as quickly as they join since the community fails to provide real answers to some real questions. Instead the community provides more riddles and "hints" to new players making for a very frustrating experience. ====The UI==== This is a CLI (Command Line Interface) game. Meaning the text UI should be clutch and perfect to use however, the game fails to do that as well. Copying and Pasting text is hard since you can't hold down shift and use the arrows keys to copy text. Instead you need to use the good old click and drag with the mouse. The issue? The copy box bounces around making it almost impossible to grab text quickly and if you copy some white space the command, once pasted into your terminal, will execute immediately. You also have a scratch pad that's used for note taking. The issue? once you past text into it, in about 1 hour if you past more text it'll overlap with the original text. This can really screw you up if you have valuable information in there since you need to delete both to clear it. ====The Coding==== Let's move to the JavaScript coding part that everyone brags about. First off, there is no documentation on how to use JS with the game effectively. Basic commands from JS don't work in this game and the syntax is slightly different from what we use today. I believe the game uses ES6 although I could be wrong on that one. If you think you can use this game to learn JS then you're in for a surprise. Learning JS with this game is like learning CSS using bootstrap (It doesn't work). Since the game has no documentation or the documentation it has is outdated, this essentially ruins the coding part of the game unless you're willing to spend the next 4 weeks experimenting and asking around on discord. If you're looking for a game that can teach you programming this isn't it and I recommend you spend your money on an actual course. ====Game Flow & Progression==== Finding your first t1 npc in the main game is impossible without help from either: a player made script, A game walk-through or, a player willing to help and not bs you around and then steal your "lock" later on which makes your entire account essentially dead. As you increase your level it takes longer to kernel hardline. (kernel hardline is used to hack accounts). No hardline, no money. No money, no game play. This will force you to make a script with the horrible documentation and if you can't then you're out of luck. In order to find a t2 npc [spoiler] you literally have to luck upon a secret member access portal for employees of a corporation and you need to be smart enough to realize that the names of the employees are listed in the .public area of the corporation (which is filled with about 50-80 columns of text that fill your entire screen). Once you have the member access then you need to find. Guess what.... a QR code that requires the colors to be Inverted and the background color as well. So you'll need some external screenshot software. external image editing software. and a QR Code reader or write a script to do all of that (good luck). [/spoiler] ====Conclusion==== Too many bugs. Community isn't helpful enough to compensate for the horrible tutorial that teaches you almost nothing. Game flow is impossible without the help of google or the community (or maybe if you have 160 IQ) No documentation for code interfacing into the game. Not worth 22 dollars. If you're looking for a hacking simulator that's challenging with better documentation take a look at grey hack. It still has lots of flaws and not much content but in terms of a hacking simulator it's better (still in beta). Personally if you're trying to learn programming you should just avoid most of these "Hacking Games" and buy a programming course along side an IT course that interests you. I really tried to give this game a good shot but in the end I've become fed up with the horrible non-existent code documentation. I have quite a bit of JS coding experience and still couldn't figure it out. Sadly I wouldn't recommend this game to any one.