Pleasingly simple gameplay that slowly ramps up in complexity. Does play better with a controller than keyboard though.

I just want to address something in the less positive reviews: this game is repetitive in the same way a game like Spelunky is repetitive. It's a roguelite, whether that appeals to you or doesn't. The gameplay loop is satisfying, the small puzzles that give your brain a little reset are fun to get better at, the action game's worth of resource management that sometimes feels like swapping through weapons in Doom Eternal is engaging, the decently robust upgrade tree that you don't have quite enough time to fill before the end of your first complete playthrough that makes your build really matter, it's all geared towards being a fun real time strategy/puzzle/action roguelite.

The variance comes in the pattern and order of challenges and puzzles to complete, the procedurally generated levels with their procedurally generated objectives that change the layout and goal every time, the different specific combinations of enemies that interact to give you breathing room and make you wait or put the pressure on you to focus on speed. It all works really well.

If you're on the fence, try the demo. It's about an hour and the section of the full game it covers is shorter and different enough that you won't feel like you're slogging through content you've already completed. For ten dollars, even getting 2 really enjoyable hours out of this game would make it worth it to me but so far I've had 8 and I'll have plenty more.

A review copy was provided by the developer.

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Maybe it's partly due to how technology is becoming more advanced and involved with my daily life, but there's something appealing to the idea of hacking games. The internet is vast, packed with immense amounts of knowledge, and could be incredibly valuable to the right people. I don't relish the tedium of building code, or risking everything by breaking the law. However, a game like DROP – System Breach (SB) can provide a little rush if it's fun, so I thought I'd check it out.


With movies showing hacking as being rapid-paced typing, how does SB go about the process? It places a similar emphasis on speed, as you'll make your way through various data ports, hubs, and obstacles connected by a network. Although each item connects to the next by a cardinal direction, the branches can split off and expand more than you might expect. In essence, your goal is to access and traverse through each network, finding your objectives and completing them before time runs out.

At times that means finding a specific user account, downloading or deleting a couple of files, turning off key cameras, or downloading all the data available to sell off. With enough funds you can buy supporting programs that will automate processes for you, and although they'll help, you'll still need to do most of the work yourself. They make for excellent multitaskers, as they can explore a route you've not even looked at.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3052249896
The developers recommend playing SB with a controller, which surprised me because the store page says it only has partial controller support. Once I better understood all of the features that the different hubs and programs have, it became second nature to travel through networks and deal with various obstacles. For the most part. Sometimes, it wasn't clear when you were looking for a specific objective, such as a remote or wireless port to ping or trace.


You're thrust into matters without any preamble explaining your background, motivation, relationships to anyone else, or what the world around you is like. It's too direct, as a small introduction would have helped ground events and my place in them. Seemingly, I'm a hacker of enough reputation to be worth given some replacement gear by Professor Ziggy, and start being approached for jobs by diverse groups. Taking jobs from so many unknowns might be risky, but so is hacking, and they pay well, which is what matters most.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3052249344
Considering that the goal of a hacking game is for it to be fun, I don't see an issue with how simplistic the networks and computer systems are. They're definitely far messier than a few branching lines and hub points, but it's just enough visualization to engage players. Some clever choices make it so that only a few shapes and colors convey all the information that's needed to make snappy decisions as well. My issues stem more from the visuals not pertaining to the gameplay.

NPCs are only represented by names, while the group they're part of only gets a symbol and title. It's hard to get any sense for who they are or the cause they back by only reading some text on screen. I knew different people and groups were talking to me, but I had a hard time keeping track or knowing if it mattered that much taking a job from one group over another. Considering how some of these interactions would take place in person, having more to look at and connect these names with would help. Of course, so would having a player avatar.


I wouldn't say the music in SB is catchy, but it does suit the theme well, as it's largely made up of synthetic sounding beeps and boops. The music varies a bit, as the tunes don't feel like one song remixed multiple times, but without having a playlist to listen to, it's hard to know how many songs were composed for the game. Some of the tracks are louder and have more impact for it. However, the sound effects that you make are so frequent, it tends to stand out more.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3052249596
🌟 As long as you're not limiting yourself with a challenge run for achievements, the game is pretty easy.
🌟 Depending on what tasks you struggle with, there's a program that can do them for you.


❌ Even though there's regular tutorials throughout the game, it's not always clear exactly what they mean. For instance, for some time I didn't realize I could add more health back to my firewall.
❌ Occasionally a new mechanic or threat is introduced, but it's hard to get a sense for your progression while playing through SB. There's no chapters or milestones to track.
❌ It'd be nice if more cues were given when you achieved or failed optional objectives or changed status. You have to check yourself to really know.


🔍 Preventing the alertness from increasing and stopping hostile programs like RAM won't prevent all damage. Your firewall will slowly accumulate damage no matter what, but it doesn't mean you've done anything wrong or messed up.
🔍 You'll want to spread out your upgrades across a few areas, since you'll otherwise have no benefit in that ability. This would be a very hard game to tackle if you could only juggle two threads at a time.
🔍 Be aware of when a virus attack is detrimental or just a distraction. Sometimes it's not worth stopping what you're doing, while other times you have no choice.


Usually, my complaints about a game have something to do with the gameplay, and although I wouldn't say it's without flaws, my larger problems with SB come from presentation. The gameplay starts feeling stale when every mission looks exactly the same. Plus, although your objectives will vary, how you go about them doesn't change significantly. Stealing data is close enough to turning off security or planting bugs that it begins blending together. More changes could have been made to the situations or what you needed to accomplish. Have someone request assistance bailing out a botched job, alter the time limit, emphasize a factor more than pure speed such as making no mistakes, etc.

Storytelling suffers from much the same problem, as it only takes place through mission requests and short IMs reacting to your leet skills. A lack of cutscenes or any variety leads to a playthrough that starts wearing out its welcome. Although difficulty may be a factor, I believe its a sense of staleness that leads to only 14% of players finishing the campaign more than anything else. It doesn't help when you're starting to get into more serious matters, but it keeps getting stalled with side gigs. Unfortunately, I think this game falls a bit short, so I wouldn't recommend it. Not when so few people even finish it.

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Hungarian text below/Magyar leírás az angol alatt

ENG---------------------------------------------------------------

There are games where the hacking is displayed as a fun and enjoyable mini-game. In the Drop, such a mini-game incarnates in to a full game.

Fun fact: Drop also has mini-games. To neutralize the hacked systems protective programs (or I.C.E.) you have to solve eachs uniqe short logic puzzle wich are based on pattern recognition such as a captcha on a website. This fits well with the flow of the gameplay, which tests our speed and observation skills (therefore, it can be quite addictive 😃, although it was a good practice for me to control it, and set limits to the playtime).

During the long enough campaign, you have to complete simple objectives in a maze of increasingly larger and more complex systems. You will be paid according to your performance. With this money, we can develop our own hardware: we can install a stronger firewall to protect ourselves against the attakcs of the defensive programss, or get programs that allow us to automate certain processes or equips us with extra skills. For example, a program can spot for us the location of important servers, which can save us time to complete tasks.

And we always feel the grisp of the time, because we will only have 5 minutes to complete our task. And there are plenty of defensive programs and viruses to deal with. The are just anoying ones (with a well-builded rig and tactics, you don't have to pay attention to them most of the time), but the more vicious ones can even freeze our system for a while, so we lose precious seconds.

With all of the graphics, music and sound effects the developers created a fine atmosphere.

At the beginning of the game, the creators note that it is practical to play with a controller, but for me, tapping on the keyboard gave me the experience of writing code quickly while hacking :D.

HUN------------------------------------------------------------

Van amikor egy játékban kifejezetten élvezetes minijátékként sikerül megjeleníteni a hekkelést. Lényegében a Drop képében egy ilyen minijáték testesült meg, teljes értékű játékként.

Fun fact: A Drop-ban is vannak (persze csak hozzá mérten) minijátékok. A feltörni szándékozott rendszereket védő programok és tűzfalak (illetve JEGek), semlegesítésének külön-külön meg van a sajátos és rövid, leginkább mintafelismerő logikai játéka. Kvázi egy absztrakt Captcha megoldásával érnek fel. Ez jól illik a játékmenet flow-jába, ami a gyorsaságunkat és megfigyelőkészségünket teszi próbára (ezért ha nagyon éljük az ilyen helyzeteket, elég addiktív is lehet 😃, bár nekem jó gyakorlás volt ennek konktrollálására is).

A kellemes hosszúságú kampány során egyre nagyobb és/vagy komplexebb rendszerek útvesztőjében kell megbízásokat teljesíteni, amikért a teljesítményünk szerint pénzt kapunk. Ebből a pénzből fejleszthetjük a saját vasunkat: erősebb tűzfalat telepíthetünk, hogy viszonylagos védelmünk legyen a minket érő támadások ellen, de izgalmasabbak azok a programok, amikkel automatizálhatunk egyes folyamatokat vagy extra, úgymond képességekkel vérteznek fel minket. Például egy program előre spottolhatja nekünk a megbízáshoz fontos szerverek helyét, amivel időt nyerhetünk.

Az idő pedig mindig hajtani fog minket, mert mindössze 5 percünk lesz a behatolástól számítva a feladatunk teljesítésére. A dolgunkat pedig rendesen meg fogják nehezíteni a védelmi programok és ránk küldött vírusok. Az egyszerűbbek csak az erőforrásainkat szívják le (egy jól összeállított géppel és taktikával még ellensúlyozhatók annyira, hogy ne kelljen rájuk feltétlen figyelni), a gonoszabbak le is fagyaszthatják egy időre a rendszerünket, így értékes másodperceket veszítünk.

Mindehhez sikerült egy jó atmoszférát teremteni a grafikával, zenével és a hanghatásokkal.

A játék elején a készítők megjegyzik, hogy praktikus kontrolerrel játszani, de nekem a billentyúzeten kopogással, még inkább hozta azt az élményt, mintha sebesen írnám a kódot hackelés közben :D.

#EDIT: I went for a hard uninstall. This gets unplayable.

Fun at first, NASTY difficulty spike later.

The game is repetitive and simple as is: You do the very same stuff all over, with the occasional "new mechanic" thrown in.

Lategame, you get completely overwhelmed. They throw too much stuff at you, simultaneously. When you have 5(!!!) hostile programs running against you, simultaneously, you switch hops like a madman. Even pressing page down doesn't really help if the programs spawn faster than you deactivate them.

This game looks like a seizure, I'm not kidding.

There's no finesse lategame. They just throw a metric ton of the same basic 💩 at you that you played in the tutorial.

There's no epic fight, you'll simply die by a hundred needles.

Very frustrating.

It would be a fun game if it were balanced. But I can't recommend it now, as you most likely get really frustrated playing it.

DROP - System Breach is an interesting game about hacking into networked hubs and do whatever the ♥♥♥♥ you need to before getting out quickly.

Basically, you have 5 minutes to juggle between nodes and scan them to reveal the network while trying to find a few specific ones you need to interact with to complete your missions + scraping data to make a little more money, meanwhile, there are a few defense systems you need to mitigate so you won't be discovered before getting out. It can get a little hectic with many little things to keep track of while keeping a mental map of the hub to know where to explore quickly, but there's a good sound design that won't let you forget something crucial for too long.

Admittedly, the game gets pretty repetitive but it often presents you some new defense systems to keep the gameplay fresh. That said, there wasn't so much sense of progression, there wasn't much different upgrades you could buy and you don't really make more money from later contract than earlier ones, I felt a little more variety there would have done wonder.

The story is pretty uninteresting.

As it is DROP is a pretty satisfying game to play, and it can kind of place you in a flow state while playing it, it felt pretty easy overall tho and apart from a few contracts at the very end, I didn't really ever felt threatened, of course your experience can vary in that matter.

After finishing it and doing half of the campaign again in hardcore mode, I felt I had enough. Still a game I would recommend overall for its very satisfying gameplay and killer presentation.

Excellent hacking game, really sells the feel while still being manageable to keep track of everything the majority of the time. I played with a controller and was blasting through levels very quickly by the end of my playthrough as inputs became muscle memory.

Did become very tense by the end though, cause of the stringent time limit and increasing difficulty of the security measures. I wish that there weren't systems that you're unable to deactivate. I hated shock drive and rebooter and avoided levels with them as much as possible cause you simply can't do anything to turn them off.

I did a quick video review for those preferring: https://youtu.be/Lz9iHDIEs4s

Here goes the Text Review:

Overview:
Drop is a nice and well paced strategy/puzzle game. It has a 5 minute time frame for each mission, making it meaningful to be efficient while not hogging too much of your time in one session. There's lots of optional side stuff (siphon off that money) to do in each mission to keep you occupied in each run.
The game has procedural levels and handmade levels, so across the story you will also face handcrafted challenges. There's a lot of defensive systems to play against, mixed with simple mini-games you need to solve to get through the "hacking procedure". None of these mini-games are particularly hard, but with the time stress it's just the right amount of complexity.
The game also features an upgrade system which allows you to spend your hard earned money into upgrades you like to choose.

The game is not endlessly long, the upgrade paths not branching or overly complex. But the gameplay is a very solid loop which held me captivated for the first six hours straight and I enjoyed myself a lot.

Personal Opinion:

For the overall pricetag Drop is really a nice game if you are into fast paced puzzle like hacking sims. The story is nice and well implemented. Although I had no groundbreaking revelations or plot twists along my playtime, it really kept me playing for the sake of wanting to know what's going on.

The gameplay is fluid and dulled only down after zerging through like 5 hours straight. Which is totally my own mistake. In short: It's a real good game for quick sessions, it can get a bit samey if you plan to rush it in one go.

All in all a full recommendation, it has a good price for what it offers. Support the dev with your own quick review, I feel like this game is way better then the attention it gets.

The game that got hacking right!

It is a little bit slow at first (and somewhat overwhelms you with initial tutorials). But after about an hour, you get used to the gameplay and start to feel like an "actual hacker" who quickly runs through the net nodes and security systems, getting data from the former and cracking the latter.

The gameplay is fast-paced and satisfying. The fixed 5-minute mission timer is a reasonable time limit because you develop your skills and upgrade your tools at the same pace as the game introduces new mechanics and challenges. And the mentioned limit adds much-needed tension to the hacking game formula.

After a couple of hours without new mechanics, the novelty of the gameplay might wear off, but the core loop is so engaging, so I don't think that's an issue.

The art is good, and its style nicely fits the game.

Want to feel yourself a master of the bits and data streams? Get the game!

Like

• Comfortable difficulty ramp
  
• Music
  
• SFX Feel nice
  
• Story is interesting
  
• Not too much reading
  
• Feels good to win
  
• Controls are simple
  
• UI is wonderful

Don't Like

• Money for missions completed feels small in comparison to shop items
  
• Feels like there should be a rep tracker for the factions
  
• No "just for fun" achievements for things like turning off their AC
  
• Story could be a bit more reactive
  
• All but one mini-games is the same but styled differently

To Potential Players
Really fun game that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys puzzles and strategy. Better on controller.


To Etherfield Studio
I really like this game but diversify the mini-games. Lots of other games out there like Deep Rock Galactic have fun mini-games that are unique. The same "click to turn them all green" gets boring. Another good example would be Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes with their wires modules.