Recent reviews by TwelveBaud

Steam has a great multitude of hacking games. I was drawn to this one because, visually and thematically, it's very similar to Uplink but is under active development and offers multiplayer.

Unlike Hackmud, the plot -- such that it is -- actually makes sense, the hacking is relatively free-form and realistic, and the multiplayer actually works and works well. Unlike the Hacker Evolution series, you aren't on rails and handcuffed to the plot. Hacknet comes close, but this game offers a limited form of scripting and much more dynamism.

Here's where I get stuck:

• There's a lot of yak shaving involved in hacking (just like in real life): you have to do intelligence gathering about your target, you have to scan your target for open ports, you have to trigger a vuln to get yourself a shell, you have to map the network, you may have to repeat all that several times in order to pivot around the network, and then you actually carry out the mission.
  
• The in-game scripting engine isn't a typical one like Lua or Python or JavaScript. It's its own thing. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it does mean you do have to learn it separately -- or not; you can completely ignore it if you're willing to spend in-game pocket change on pre-built exploits, and the game specifically tells you that when you try to use it.
  
• The in-game scripting engine isn't powerful enough to hide the yak shaving. While subroutines are supported, include files are not. Many in-game commands have been rewritten to use the scripting engine, but you can't reflect on them or call into their members -- you can only run them and have human eyeballs glance at the terminal output. Some tasks just aren't available to the scripting engine -- want to iterate through the hosts on a LAN, looking for one with the service you want to break into? Sorry, you have to use the LAN visualizer and hand-type IPs. And although the exploits available to you optionally come with source code, there isn't a straightforward way for you to automatically pull that source code into a larger toolkit -- there's some file and string manipulation code available to you, but I didn't see a way programmatically to turn a "pop a shell in the terminal window" tool into a "provide a shell object to a higher-level tool" subroutine.
  
• The game has a variety of vulnerabilities you can discover or purchase, offering different approaches with different limitations and a lot of flavor. Generally speaking, only one matters: "Pop a normal user shell. Remote use. No requirements." While the other actions -- sniff banking credentials or the password file or change a random password or get a list of other installed libraries -- can be useful in some situations, a non-guest shell can do all of that, and if you really need root for anything you can grab the password file and sudo to root. The only requirement that is met with any frequency is minimum number of registered users, but it's rare enough that exploits that need it aren't going to be a part of your toolbelt. If you have a remote exploit that gets you guest access, and you can pair it with a local exploit that gets you the access you need, that also works, but those typically won't be in your toolbelt either so that adds further to your workload.
  
• There are consistency issues. You can access any bank account using any bank. Domain names used for e-mail are separate from domain names used for browsing, which are separate from domain names listed in whois, and none of these exactly align with the domain names available to nslookup. Running programs and browsing the web from your victims' computers use your saved passwords, favorites, and history. All banks' sites look exactly alike, as do all shops, all hack shops, and all e-mail service providers.
  
• There are a lot of little UI polish issues, like the equivalent of Trace Tracker taking up a full-size window with no aural or visual cues, copying and pasting not always working, no one-click mission summary (though you can use the Email program) or sticky notes (though you can use the Notepad program), every site's homepage is at a slightly different zoom level than all the content pages, every remote window using a single color for its title bar, etc. This can all be fixed, but I don't feel confident the developer will have enough time to finish fleshing out the core gameplay loop, continue to add major new features like the recent LAN update, maintain multiplayer services and a reasonable community, and handle little UI issues like these by their currently-planned Q3 2021 release date.
  
• There's no mod support, even for single player, and it looks like it'll be tricky to wedge it in from the outside. For me to expect it in a multiplayer game at alpha level like this is borderline insane, but I could probably fix every issue I've mentioned in this review if the scripting engine were structured a little differently and I could get my foot in the door.

While I'm hopeful this will eventually end up being a better Uplink than Uplink itself, it definitely isn't quite there yet, and I don't see there being enough time and direction left to bring it to the point where I'd enjoy getting lost in it.