I’ve been playing a really cool hacking sim called Hacknet that released a few days ago. It’s the first game in that vein that has grabbed me. Previous entries in the genre were more frustrating to me because you were expected to fight timers that left me panicked searching for the program or command that would protect the system. Hacknet doesn’t punish you for wanting to take your time hacking systems and uses a more gradual increase in difficulty as the game goes along.
Another neat thing is that the majority of the game utilizes a Unix command line. It has a bit of X dashed in, but it’s unnecessary if you want to keep it at the line. It’s really fun and has a lot of twists that challenged me to think on my toes to fix problems.
For example, in retaliation of a hack at one point, a user hacked my system and deleted my x-config so I no longer had access to my GUI. I won’t go into detail about how I fixed it, but it’s a good example of the depth the makers go towards making hacking seem more real and challenging.
It’s on Steam right now and it’s at the intro price of $8. I streamed playing it for about 6 hours total and had to force myself to stop at one point. It’s a really good one and I hope they continue updating it with new stuff.
rm * - leave no trace 
