Saturday!

So Steam got me once more with their 85% off thingies. There’s a game called Hacker Evolution that I probably would never have looked at twice except they had it as part of a bundle for 85% off and, well, that came out to around 5 bucks. They found my breaking point.

It’s a minimalist game, graphics-wise, maybe a still photograph that has been shopped pretty heavily and nothing but text and vector graphics on top of that… but what they describe is going on? Wowsers. The gist is that you’re a hacker, your family was mysteriously killed, blah blah blah, you fell off the grid but now you have been hired to investigate why the stock market crashed.

And, of course, you do this by “hacking”.

Get your rig, get your scripts, and get to typing stuff like “crack server”.

Now, apart from the fact that the hacking in the game is much closer to hacking in the movies than in real life, the game is hard enough to respect the heck out of you. One of the early missions has you check a website and you are expected to notice that the website was made by someone else… and you’re expected to hack into this someone else’s stuff. Most games? They’d get out the big red arrows and scream at you “LOOK AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WEBPAGE!” but not this one. You’re expected to notice the site mentioned at the bottom of the page and then scan it.

Which is awesome.

Anyway, I’m finding the game equal parts fun and frustrating because I’ve kinda gotten used to the whole “red arrows” and “screaming” thing. But, when I feel smart, I’m having a blast.

(Oh, and Steam has the Orcs Must Die franchise on sale this weekend. I love those games and you can buy the whole kit and caboodle for $8.74. That’s Orcs Must Die! one and two! That’s, like, less than 5 bucks each! What a bargain!)

So… what are you playing?