Hacking is Probably Not Like This by sayumeki
Hacking is Probably Not Like This is a game that is (supposedly) about hacking.
And how do we hack? Puzzle games!

In the futuristic year of 20XX, you take on the role of a talented hacker, falsely accused of a laundry list of crimes by the state, and set to be imprisoned in 30 days.

An unknown benefactor reaches out to you and offers you a deal - help them hack the secrets out of the world's biggest and most infamous corporations, and they'll help get you your freedom.

But you have to stay sharp - keeping the machine you use running alive takes lots of energy (electro-juice, natch), earned from successful hacks. Fail too many times and, well, it's lights out.

Hacking is Probably Not Like This contains at least 11 puzzle games (and less than 13) for you to enjoy, and lets you live out the dream of enacting 10 kinds of justice to a randomly generated list of over a hundred corporations.
It is playable both on the web (in HTML5) and Windows, and you can find the links at the bottom of this page.

Hacking was developed solely by myself in Godot over 48 hours for the Ludum Dare 46 Compo (Keep it Alive).
It is controlled with the arrow keys to move, and the Z key to select (with P to pause), and features autosave capability. It also features background imagery taken from my room, my desk full of anime stuff, and a nearby river which normally looks real nice, but currently is kind of brown.
There is no sound (sorry!), but feel free to put on your best lo-fi beats to hack/cyberpunk to. The font used for the game is Inconsolata.
Hacking is my second release under the label 300g curry lab, a sub-label of my indie game circle 300g curry rice. We make all sorts of indie games celebrating mixes of anime homage and nostalgic game remake, and I'd be plenty pleased to have you either follow my circle or myself (invelica - previously sayumeki) on Twitter.
Thanks for your time! Happy hacking!
Ratings
| Overall | 138th | 3.879⭐ | 134🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 205th | 3.707⭐ | 135🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 178th | 3.771⭐ | 135🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1011th | 2.758⭐ | 134🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 510th | 3.47⭐ | 135🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 334th | 3.15⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 326th | 3.469⭐ | 129🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 111🗳️ | 133🗨️ |
So much flavour is in there. Will return to the game later, once I've slept :)
Nice game, although some modules can be cheesed if you mash buttons. It'd also be helpful to get a summary of the rules before the actual hacking starts.
Update: Finished the game. Game proceeded to call me a jumble of numbers. Was not impressed.
One thing I would say is make the menu a bit more clear. Perhaps instead of naming corps. to hack have just a giant HACK button. I thought the corp. names were more settings or something at first.
Also could work as just a wario-ware type game to make less options for the player to get confused by.
I did really like though and am very impressed with the transitions and puzzles! Very cool!
Also... hello friend.
Well done! :raised_hands:
I wasn't quite a fan of the puzzles per-se as they didn't quite seem like puzzles :(.
I haven't add the time to go through all the level, but I'll definitively play again.
At first reading the text for the game made me lost a lot of time. Having a separate splash screen, (or during the connexion screen) would make it better. As the game progress and you connexion speed increase that screen would become less and less visible.
Some sound would have gone a long way in making it slightly more responsive.
However, even without sound, as is, it is a pretty impressive game.
Even if the other aspects of the game were lacking, this is the most fun game I've played this LD.
Okay, let's get the bad out of the way first:
- Trying out all 12 different games before starting my first hack was definitely necessary considering the time given per hack - and it felt a bit overwhelming, like a super long tutorial.
- Am I misunderstanding this, or can I do ladder and clear really fast by just spamming Z?
- On the other hand, art was something a little bit too hard because it's so sparse and has no clear starting clues. (But maybe it's just that I'm too used in games like that to be able to mostly solve it with logic instead of having to guess all the way through.)
- God, I hate the slide puzzle.
- No music is fine - I can just play the Hacknet OST in the background - but a little sfx would've gone a long way with comparably little effort. Just keypresses, success, failure and maybe "popup opens" would've been fantastic in making the game feel even better.
- 30 days seems way too much. The content and games get a bit samey. I felt like the game should probably scale up faster and end sooner, maybe at day 20 instead?
- I never got an upgrade for my shinies :'(
Phew. And now, with that out of the way, on to the good. And there's a TON of good:
- 7 different components that all* have a relevant effects
- And on top of that you programmed 12 mini games?
- And on top of THAT you added an insane amount of visual polish??
- And the game has a ton of UI and console animations??? I seriously don't know where you got all the time for all of from.
- The writing is fun!
- ...as is the whole game!
- You definitely got the hacking game feel right. While the mechanics aren't much "hacking game"ish, the aesthetics are super on point.
So far, this is one of my favourite games of this LD, and with well over an hour definitely the one that I played the longest. Excellent stuff. Thanks!
PS: Followed you on Twitter!
PPS: If I ever get to be part of the real-world law system, I will always sign of my letters with "Let the hammer of justice smite those why defy it".
\*) yes, *especially* the shinies
I can't believe so much content was made in such a short amount of time!
A hall of fame would be nice :) Then there is motivation to keep replaying.
The game is cool and very well done! Nice job :)
I found the games a bit too easy (always played them on the hardest mode) but I understand that you weren't having enough time to program all the mini games, the core game/ui and fix the difficulty in only 48h!
Also, i LOVED the various minigames, so that's a plus!!! =D
As an interesting note, I actually imagined Hacking first as a multiplayer game, where two players fight over control of a computer by seeing who can solve the series of minigames (the same set as in this one) first. However, I felt a single-player game fit LD more, so I ended up wrapping the minigames in a narrative and building a simple progression system.
In a post-LD project, I'd like to implement a game like this with netplay - having it be purely PvP also removes my worry about time issues, as it's no longer "how long does it take someone to play minesweeper" but just "do minesweeper faster than your opponent".
I've tried to reply to everyone at least a little below, but first, to mention some common things:
* Where I live, Ludum Dare is 10 AM Saturday - 10 AM Monday, so I spent Saturday coding minigames, Sunday adding UI polish and building the progression, and Monday writing up the submission. And I slept 6 hours a night!
* Playing other people's entries, I found a lot of people use their voice for SFX and honestly it works kind of great. In here it might not be as fitting, but I felt that bfxr wouldn't fit this game either. I'd probably record my voice or study how old terminals synthesized SFX next time.
* Apologies for everyone who wanted more time to learn the games before getting thrown into it. Originally I figured "getting tossed into things" would give the proper microgame feel but it is admittedly player-unfriendly. I might want to implement a sort of pregame tutorial that can be turned off when the player is ready.
* 30 days does drag on a bit (though you can imagine the narrative appeal of exactly one month), I agree. Looking back on it, I'd probably shorten it to 14 or 21 days, or, if I had tons of time, add more storyline popups throughout the month, or other ways to introduce gameplay mixups.
* Everyone who learned you can mash through ladder is a true hacker. Congratulations! (I noticed this also - in a production game, I would add lockouts to prevent mashing.)
* You cannot actually get shinies. :( Sorry. They are an easter egg replacing a module I did not have time to implement.
* I love my "terminal opening/closing" animation so much. I am glad you all do too.
Thank you so much!! Comments follow in the next... well, comment.
These replies are in alphabetical order, so you can find yourself easier.
(I think this is part 1 of 3?)
@bart-wach It is pretty simple, but that was the effect I was going for. Thanks for playing!
@courtmac Thank you!
@daanvanyperen Thanks!
@david-bohan I like them too, that's why I made this ^^ Thank you!
@deinfreund Yeah, I underestimated this point for sure - having a "first-time" prompt or practice or something in the main game flow I think would have helped. The time alloted for puzzles can be kinda unfair for the harder ones also.
@dhim Thanks! That is a common feedback I received, and I agree that I should have given a little more warning or tutorial. I was going for a microgame feel where you have to learn fast, but I think it's a little mean to the player.
@eldar Light puzzles I figured out you can kind of "chase" the dots around, but slide puzzles I never quite figured out reliably. I feel like there HAS to be an algorithm for solving them online though... Shinies actually are not implemented at all, I renamed an unimplemented upgrade to make it more generic. Given that it does nothing, I should have handed some out for free... :P Thanks for playing the whole way through!
@evolving Thanks!
@flomino Unfortunately that is the whole loop - I started with the idea "hacking with simple minigames" and built up around there. I think some more variety would have been good if I had time. Thanks for checking it out!
@freya-c I'd be a lot better at hacking if this was the case... thanks! I'm glad it runs well on your machine, I did not pay too much attention to efficiency but it's really just a few text nodes and one or two images, so maybe that helped. I feel like my render loops are actually really inefficient lol.
@gimblll The feeling of tension was really what I was going for. Thanks!
@hastro The animations really knocked me over also, it makes such a difference for a relatively simple effect (that I re-use repeatedly lol). Thanks!
@hypermania Oh dang, thanks for the feedback on that. I was torn on whether to self-host or upload to itch.io personally, this is my first web game so I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!
@incd021 Thanks! I'm glad I was able to sleep 6 hours a night too. If I had a mechanical keyboard I would have definitely recorded that (though the SFX might get repetitive).
@ironygames Thanks! I can totally imagine the kind of sounds you mention - if I had a few more hours, I think I could figure out how to generate the waveforms... I'll keep that in mind!
@jabdownsmash Thank you, and well thought out with your strategy. Minesweeper and nonograms are my bane here, they're easily the most complex. I'd like to balance them more if I had more time.
@jetthesimon Thanks, and I appreciate the feedback (and agree on the hacking list being sorta overloaded - I wanted to use multiple windows but ran out of space and UI effort). Wario Ware But Puzzles was my point of reference for this, well spotted!
@johnjoemcbob Much appreciated!
@jonahsenzel Same here with CS class. :P Modules you get automatically when completing hacks. Thanks!
@kjscott Much appreciated! I think the storyline did end up a bit long especially with no variety, but a full month felt right storywise when developing. Probably if I had more full testing time I'd shorten it.
@kr4sh3 (Looks at your avatar trying to figure out what it is) Thank you! I should have just recorded even with my own voice or something lol.
@kszaku That's EXACTLY what I was going for with that delay on the final hack, so I'm glad you got the experience I was looking for. Thank you!
@kubs Thanks! I'm glad everything came together so well.
@kunonooni Thank you! I'm so bad at minesweeper.
@listonos Thank you!
These replies are in alphabetical order, so you can find yourself easier.
(part 2 of 3)
@lker Thank you! You're exactly right that a lot of these are programmer challenges :P Slide is one of the ones that is either easy or impossible for me depending on RNG. It's really important to upgrade your Database and hope you get simple puzzles TBH lol.
@marcusnystrand I don't know much more about hacking, but am maybe glad it's not this easy. Thanks for playing!
@marxy-37 It's a weak connection, the original idea was "keep your computer alive" but that got a little lost... thanks for playing!
@mathurin It's as you say - everything sorta just barely came together, but I'm glad you are more talented at these puzzles than I am (there are a lot I struggle with still)! Thanks for playing!
@mhykah Thanks! I'm happy I was able to do so much with the minimal style.
@minrato2 Hahaha, you should be able to spam a little slower and be safe, but glad you enjoyed the game! Thanks!
@misterkeefe Thank you! You can cancel out of practice games the same way you can normal hacks, by hitting pause (P). But it's easy to forget.
@mp-raxxius Thanks for playing the whole way through! Definitely some games like maze and clear are really hard to read IMO, and I think using some lo-fi graphics or even just colored text / symbols would have helped a lot, but unfortunately I ran out of time.
@mudlee Thanks!
@murrzipan Thanks! I went deep with the story lol.
@ndrw Thank you!
@notajumbleofnumbers I sure did - a netbook isn't quite the retrofuturistic hack machine I was hoping for, but it'll do... Mashing is definitely a strategy I noticed but opted not to fix in time. I had to laugh at your final comment (sorry about the misnaming :P).
@oqlqo If anything, I wanted to include more command prompt manipulation (rather than auto progress bars), but didn't have time to. Much appreciated!
@owl-skip I didn't feel like bfxr sfx would have fit, and I wish I had found another generator in time. Next time. Thanks!
@paul-merkamp I feel like I oversold the story in this game for anything, I thought it was funny how it's like SAVE THE WORLD by playing the tower of hanoi. Thank you!
@peteywoufes Much appreciated!
@polarcube I agree, I can think of some ways I can make appropriate beats now that the compo is over lol. Thanks!
@psychic-ash Thanks! I'm happy how immersive it ended up feeling - I think the terminal transition is my favorite. The game did end up a little longer than it should be.
@pusheeneiro Me too! Uplink is a favorite of mine.
@redsponge Thank you!
@rjerez192 A lot of these puzzles are nostalgic for me as well. I had to look up the exact color they used on Windows 95 haha. Thanks!
@seagull Thanks! I'm glad how well it came together. I hope you are better at sleeping than I am (6 hours a night).
@snowl Thank you! A little polish goes a looong way.
@ssstormy Thank you, and heh, they are very simple. They're not puzzles in the sense that they are handcrafted, but they are little logic things that take some thinking. It was the most appropriate to implement given the timeframe!
(part 3 of 3)
@steve-dragon I'm glad you liked the finish! I feel the ending cutscenes were kinda simple but I definitely wanted to have something impactful there. I agree on sound, I learned a lot of games self-recorded audio and that's a wonderful idea. Thanks for seeing it through!
@teto Thanks for your feedback and for playing to the end! You're exactly right, I kept the look simple to focus on developing content and the gameplay loop (though I only barely got to throw something in for the ending as you say). I'm glad the theme of the game became cohesive, but definitely I wished I had time for simple sound, some evolution to gameplay as the days progressed, and for adding some colors to the terminal or something. Thank you!
@thedashdude Glad you had an intense experience! The puzzles definitely aren't balanced in terms of time taken, though I do try to give you the appropriate time for each puzzle. Nonograms in particular can be really random, since I don't guarantee the nonogram is logically solvable (due to time).
@thedeadlybutter Much appreciated! Maze is hard to read for sure, I need to think of ways to improve that. I want to improve the clear game by adding color but I don't think that will work for maze.
@thedestoryer Definitely agreed - I saw a lot of games just use the dev's voice for sound and even that might have been nice lol. I didn't think about that.
@tobiasw Thank you for the lengthy feedback, and for playing it through! I'm building my replies in a spreadsheet so apologies for this being one line but... 1) Not having time to ramp up on games except for in practice is a common comment I received, and I should have considered this more. Part of me is like "that's part of the challenge" but I think being more player-considerate could have helped". 2) Yes you can mash some games! I noticed this but did not add lockouts or anything to prevent it. Probably in a full game I would. 3) Nonogram/art does not guarantee logically solvable puzzles due to time limitations unfortunately, I tried to make them small enough that I would RNG into logically solvable lines but it didn't work out too well! Definitely it's a hard one. 4) YEAH SAME I keep thinking "there has to be a consistent algorithm for solving it" but I haven't come upon it yet. 5) Agreed on SFX, post-compo I can think of how to reproduce SFX a bit more (or just use my voice) and I'll have to think of that for next time. 5) Yeah, I think putting it to two weeks might be juuuust about right, or if I could have more story popups/gameplay evolutions in that month. 6) Shinies are a dummied-out module that used to be something else. As such, I never gave them out, but I really should have. Anyway, thanks for enjoying the game and providing such a fun response to read! Thanks for the follow too!
@torn Thanks for playing through it! I'm glad the puzzles scratched your itch.
@ubershmekel I noticed you can spam a few games also. It's a little secret for now! (Though in a full version I'd probably include lockouts and penalties).
@venitherich I might have underestimated how fast people will max out the important components, I think I'd shorten the campaign in the future. Thanks!
@willypa Thanks!
@xaynia Thank you for playing through it and providing feedback! I think I did not pay enough attention to accessibility for sure - having time to remember the rules for the game is a common concern I want to address, and readability in general is low due to being fully text based (with numbers too, and no Unicode). That's something I wanted to improve but ran out of time unfortunately.
@zzox Much appreciated! I tried to keep the minigames restricted to "easy to implement" ones, which helped me do a lot of them.
My roommate and I had a great time. Might very well be the best game we played all week.
You managed to do a lot in just two days. And you also added a practice mode, which is really helpful!
The story is very well written, too.
I had a great time with your game. Congratulations!!
Pretty cool concept! Hacking games in general always seemed really cool to me. The interface & text really make the vibe. The puzzles were a bit hit or miss though. Some of them are trivially easy (hanoi if you know it, clicking away groups of numbers you could just mash through), some of them are pretty hard to do in the time limit if you don't have experience (slide, lights), etc. Maze was pretty hard to read because of how the # looked, and I also had a slide once that was pre-solved so that was kinda funny. The ladder one was also pretty weird, seemed like you just had to straight down towards the number most of the time. I did enjoy the picross & sequence ones though.
The RPG elements are cool but I'm not sure if the "numbers going up" mechanic had much of any real influence on the gameplay or if it was just flair. (generally I wasn't at risk of running out of juice) I ended up giving up after getting stuck on a slide, since I'm terrible at block pushing puzzles. Still a cool experience, nice work!
Some sound effects and a background music would make the game even better.
It is a really impressive achievement for a solo job in just 48 hours! Well done!
Also, additional points for using Godot :)