hack_me

Hack_me is a hacking simulator where you break into big companies' servers. It's lightly inspired by Mr. Robot and makes you feel like "that hacker guy" from the movies. Or, at least, it's supposed to.

My first steps with hack_me were already rocky: my main gaming platform is Linux, and the game does not support it. That's upsetting, but hey, it's a small indie game. Let's just try Windows.

I enjoyed the music and the general atmosphere. It's classic "I'm in!" stereotypical hacker aesthetic, and I'm eating that up.

The game's UI looks nice, although the tutorial windows felt a little jarring and made in a hurry. The UX, though. Oh, the UX. It's absolutely ruined by the player's inability to move the windows. There's also a big problem with layers, as some windows will open behind others by default. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a poor design choice, but it makes the gameplay really tedious and frustrating.

Another major design flaw is the lack of reminders about info given in tutorials (especially the first IP, ugh!) or at least a basic notepad. It makes the tutorial almost impossible to complete, as you have to memorize long strings of characters, and you're only given one chance to do so!

Finally, after getting through the extremely frustrating tutorial, we get to... a bug that freezes one of the windows and locks the rest of the game for you. No matter what I tried, I could not get past it.

Honestly, I would have enjoyed a cheesy hacker game, but this one is completely broken. Were it on itch.io, I would have moved past it, but it's on Steam, paid, and completely unplayable! So I give hack_me the honor of being the first game on this blog to get this verdict: do not buy it.

I'm out.