My playtime: 19.2h (based on steam, 100% achievement)
Grindy Achievement(s): No.
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (5 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.

Greyhat - A Digital Detective Adventure is a game where you have to find clues and solve minigames. The game has ~19 levels in total.

Pros:
- ~19 levels
- Minigames
- Hints
- Some levels have different solutions when you replay it
- Collectibles

Cons:
- You need to manually type some clues to your notes
- No pause button
- BGM is too low
- Some levels are time-limited

Yes.
If you enjoy a game where you have to search for clues from several sources to solve a problem and play some minigames, you'll enjoy this game. Don't buy this game if you hate reading a lot of texts though.

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This game doesn't look that captivating if you are looking at the screenshots; the game takes place in front of a desktop with a simplified Windows XP or MacOS interface and everything looks plain and empty. Surprisingly, I didn't mind it that much when I played it. You also don't have to learn how to use it since it works just like how you use your desktop.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2238514179

The game tells its story in the form of chats and emails. The story is linear and it keeps the mystery going by dropping clues here and there to give some room for theories while revealing everything as you progress the story. Since you need to read chats and emails (and possibly other files too), you're expected to read a lot, especially since you also need to read to finish the levels.

There are two ways to respond to chats, either with a positive or negative tone. There are no story branching no matter which tone you used, but some people will respond differently if you answer with a particular tone, which might be a good experience if you plan to replay the game more than once.

Levels
As I said before, the game has ~19 levels in total. There will be an objective written on the right side of the screen with a section that will allow you to put the solution in it. Solutions are varied, either by writing the answer in a textbox, dragging a file to a certain folder, or finishing a minigame. One of the levels (the bio weapon) is hard to understand though; I had to try several times to figure out what the game asked me to do.

Some levels must be finished within a time-limit, some require a limited number of attempts before you fail, while some have none. You'll have a "game over" screen if you fail and you can reload the level to retry. Some levels have different solutions though so you probably have to scrap most of the clues that you have written in your notes. I also found that the time-limited levels to be difficult to finish on the first try because it takes more time to figure out what you have to do.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2238514322

Clue-finding
This game is not a hacking game. You're not going to write commands in cmd or do anything fancy like that. Heck, the only time you're going to open something similar to cmd is when you type the target's IP and you'll be automatically connected to the target's PC, machine, or whatever it is that you're hacking (I'll just call it PC from now on to make it easier).

You can find clues by searching the target's folders, including the private ones that is protected by a password that you have to figure out from the hint provided. You also have to search through emails, websites, or anything that is installed in the PC to figure out either the password or any clues that are leading to your objective. The game also helps you by giving a note to write all of your findings manually.

The game will become more difficult as you progress - there might be a lot of misleading or obscured clues that require a lot of thinking to solve. There is also a hint system that can help you in case you're stuck. You'll be given 3 hints at each level and hints can be set to either give you a direct or obscured one.

Minigames
Some levels require you to finish a minigame to beat. There are minigames where you have to control traffic lights to stop a target, command airplanes to land them safely, and even control a rocket to land. Some are difficult and require several tries to beat, some are not. They are also easy to learn as long as you read the instructions right.

The game also has some optional minigames. Three of them can be played to increase your in-game hints while one of them can be used to increase your arithmetic skills. I had fun with the latter one and played 1/4 of its levels before I got bored.

Collectibles
The game also has a lot of collectibles in the form of stories, poems, and wallpapers. They are very easy to find and I enjoyed reading them.

Length
I finished the game in 17.3h while playing 25 out of 100 levels in one of its minigames. The rest of my playtime was spent in trying to solve its secrets and finishing my guide.

Problems
The game runs smoothly although my spec was slightly below the minimum recommendations. This might or might not cause the slow-loading times, which is still in the acceptable range. There aren't any major bugs although there are some minor problems like the low BGM volume, no pause button, and some texts that you had to write manually to your notes.

Intel Core i5-3317U 1.7GHz, 4GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000

It's a nice game where you have to find clues and play minigames. The game requires you to read a lot of texts and some levels have different solutions when you reload the level. There are a lot of levels and the writing is great.

This game was reviewed with a key provided by the developer for free through Curator Connect

Follow our curator page, OCG-Curations, if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

I don't really write reviews for games, but after playing this, I have to say: it was genuinely wonderful. If you're on the fence, please do give it a try. I've tried a lot of "hacking" games and this is one of the first ones that held my attention as a gripping mystery, with legit difficult detective work requiring lots of lateral thinking and just... lots of cool sh*t you get to do? AND a surprising, emotional story with lots of twists??

Honestly I'm so impressed with this game. Sure there are a few spelling errors here and there, and the "tunneling" minigame isn't fun (but you can turn it on automatic so you don't have to do it, which I did almost immediately), but the attention to detail and game making craft that went into this positively shines. I mean, I bought it today and then immediately played the whole thing through. I couldn't put it down. Highly recommend.

Don't buy it if you're deaf or hard of hearing.

There's a random combi-lock puzzle late in the game that requires you to listen to an audio recording, so a sound puzzle. No way to bypass it, and it's a 4 combo lock, with a 1 minute lockout if you put in the wrong combination. You'd be here all day unless you get lucky with it.

Accessibility should be a basic thing in a game, especially in 2023.

This game is pretty good. It's almost excellent, but it's still good. The writing feels kind of off; The dialogue feels more like it was written closer to how people talk in person over how they talk in an online text chat and it comes off a bit cheesy, and some of the decisions made by the main character don't really feel like that of one of the best hackers ever. The story is serviceable, though. There's a couple of frustrating puzzles, but alongside those are some really clever ones. It's more of a hacking themed puzzle/adventure game than a hacking game, if that makes sense. Closer to a light version of Hacknet, with the same feel of snooping around through files looking for clues, except less in-depth, so it's a bit less exciting, but still satisfying nonetheless.I'd give this game a go, but with a caveat; if you haven't played Hacknet, I'd say go play that before this, but honestly, this game is fairly short and is interesting enough where you might as well play both.

Greyhat took me by surprise, created by 1 person, it feels very well-made. It has a compelling story that keeps you progressing forward. The hacks are all thought out and fun to piece together. There are a wide range of difficulty settings, which I needed because some hacks on normal, were just too hard for me to do. For $12, this game is a steal and might just be my favorite indie game of the year thus far.

Here is the Prologue if you want to see the game in action.
https://youtu.be/nVC4yWWNV4Y

I just completed Greyhat, and I have mixed feelings about it. It has a really great plot that compels the player to keep playing to discover the whole story. And the investigation work to do in order to solve the different missions is actualy fun. But I found that the limited UI hindered somewhat the gameplay by just making things harder than they actually were, especially in the later missions minigames. I also didnt understand why the annoying background music couldnt be turned off. It was very distracting and I played most of the game with my computer sounds off. But I had to turn it on for the parts requiring to listen to audio files, with the music playing... :/
Let's note that even if you play the role of a hacker, this is not an actual hacking game, but a puzzle investigative game with mini-games.
In all, I am not sure if I can recommend the game. You will have to see for yourself. The plot is really good, but the gameplay can be quite frustrating later-game.

What an unexpected treat. I am a more-than-casual fan of escape rooms: I have done several of those "mystery in a box" games and participated in many multi-day "puzzle hunts" over the years. I also enjoy anything with good "hacker feel" to it, having completed both Uplink and HACKnet multiple times. I like a challenge that is just cryptic enough to make me think, yet doesn't leave me stuck for hours. But above all else, I appreciate good writing, and Greyhat has that in spades. I think I spotted one typo in the entire game, and every sentence was grammatically sound. The latter is especially uncommon for indie games like this, which added to pleasant surprises in store. It's not a perfect game (I'll share my suggestions for improvement in the forums), but it's readily apparent that the game was a meticulous labor of love for its sole creator and I'm very happy to have gone on the journey.

I won't belabor the points about what the game is--plenty of others have already covered that. I want to focus on the world that Mr. Lim (I'm assuming Mr. for the purpose of this review) has developed around a wide variety of puzzles that could just as easily have been stages to clear with no further embellishment. Instead, he took time to weave a plot around these puzzles. You sent someone to jail? It shows up in the paper. You interrupted a major deal? Someone might not be so happy about that. Despite the story being told entirely from a basic computer terminal, I felt immersed in something with living characters and motivations. Half the emails I read had nothing to do with the puzzle of the hour, but all of them contributed in some way to telling me who these inhabitants of Metrocity were, and they didn't need to be there. Mr. Lim didn't have to include all these nuggets of NPC development to have a complete puzzle--many authors don't bother--but the fact that he did is what pushes this game into the "something special" category. Yes it's a "hacker" game, yes it's a puzzle game, but far more prominently it's an adventure game.

Some of the puzzles are unnecessarily frustrating, but it didn't matter so much because I felt like I was playing a character in a movie and I wanted to earn the right to know what happened next, so the puzzle was merely an obstacle to that plot development. Taken as such, it was so much more enjoyable than games that had better-constructed puzzles but no cinematic feel. The music cues, the timing of messages and emails arriving, and the way the interface changed at key points all came together to create an immersive experience that few games can match.

Though it's too late to be brief, I'll summarize: if you have enough patience to review all the clues presented and work through the puzzles, if you enjoy hacker-adjacent (obviously this is a Hollywood approximation, but the feel is there) experiences, and if you appreciate good writing, then you will probably enjoy this game. I picked this up on a lark to support an independent developer, and I'm so glad that I did. For $12 you could do much, much worse than this gem.

By the way, Mr. Lim: the emotional chord that you struck at the very end was exactly what I wanted to see and what brought the game to a sense of completeness for me. Nicely done. I'm looking forward to what you do next!

I wasn't sure what to expect with this game and found that I enjoyed Greyhat a lot. I’m finding it a bit hard to describe since there are so many different aspects to the game.

Some liken the game to Orwell, but although you could say the general idea is somewhat similar, Greyhat has many more puzzles and is more challenging than Orwell. This also isn’t really a hacking game like other hacking games I’ve played, but hacking is the theme as you do jobs to further your goals in an overarching story.

To get to the hack levels, there is a reflex, typing kind of exercise with different difficulty levels. I kept it on easy for about 2/3rds of the game and then decided I had enough and set it to auto finish them for me. I really liked that as an option.

I liked the hack levels. The situations were fun and your end goals were very clear. Most of the time you had a couple chances to submit the correct solution. There were a few timed levels but not many, and for the most part you have ample time. There were only 2 that I had to repeat. The levels get more challenging as you go, but I felt all of them were fair. The clues were there and sometimes you needed to think outside the box, but by the time you get to the challenging levels, you should have a good feel of what is possible to do to get the information you need.

There are side items like story pieces and poems to collect and a completely optional mini-game where you can kill zombies with your superior math skills!

The game saves at the start of each hack level and at the end of each IM conversation on your home computer. I felt it saved often enough.

The game asks for your username and a first/last name at the start. I’m so glad I used my real ones as it was fun to chat with the characters as them “knowing” who I was. If you like puzzling through situations to get to a goal with a bit of mystery, I think you will like this game.

This game ties if not usurps The Return of the Obra Dinn as my favorite game of all time. I've played hundreds of games on Steam and PS4, nearly all of them critical darlings, of all genres and scopes. Alphabetically in my library, it sits between Gorogoa and Guacamelee, and after this, Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is next in my queue.

While not trying to spoil anything, I recommend this game to pretty much anybody without reservation, worth every penny of its asking price - but most especially those that actively seek out games of this genre like Obra Dinn and to a lesser extent like Unheard that tickle the brain a little they way a detective or point-and-click adventure game might. Hell even if you like the Ace Attorney series of games, there's something in here for you too. Far from perfect and I have my critiques, but to be honest my library is full of these faux hacker puzzle/detective games but none are as creative, polished, or fleshed-out or quite frankly as affecting as Greyhat. The "a-ha" moments here are the most rewarding and feel most earned here and for example chatting and "tunneling" elements are two examples of how the devs going out of their way to nail the feeling of being a clandestine keyboard warrior furiously typing messages or lines of code. Were I to say more I'd worry about revealing spoilers.

The devs here have put on a masterclass in intelligent and fair puzzle design with "hacking elements", in using the medium to uniquely spin a narrative (not what I came for which made it such a welcome surprise that they stuck the landing), and in quite frankly doing so much with so little compared to big-budget AAA releases. It should be mandatory reading for aspiring and veteran game devs alike. Not because it's perfect, but because of what they set out to achieve and how they were able to do so despite it coming to us as yet another pixel indie at the end of the day.

Also the music, albeit repetitive toward the end, is superb.

I crave more experiences like this. Please comment below to me if you come across any more games like this gem. But don't bother informing me if there's a sequel for Greyhat announced in the future because I'll be following this team so closely that I'll be the first to know.

The main story was unexpectedly deep and thoughtful. The puzzles were great, there were a few tricky ones but nothing impossible. (Tip: Use technology to assist when you get to the cryptograms, ie. your irl phone's camera) Do check the browser for news after every stage for a "summary report".

Mini-games:
The tunneling mini-game is boring. It is good that you can turn on Auto mode for it. The air traffic mini game is rather annoying and you will need to make at least a couple attempts however you do not need to perfect it in order to get the achievement/pass the level. The traffic grid mini-game is challenging but there is some logic in there.

It is amazing that this game is made by one guy. There are bits that could be better but the bulk of the game, the puzzles are solid. The stories woven in between the puzzles are great too. You will get a good 10hrs and some out of the game.

Lastly, for achievement hunters: you get to replay levels at the end of the game if you happen to miss a collectable.