Genre: Simulation
Developer: Team Fractal Alligator
Publisher: Surprise Attack Games

Because of the nature of the game's premise, Hacknet's "graphics" take the form of a pane-based user interface, dressed up with some Hollywood hackerish bloom effects, and dramatized text. The scheme is hardly tour-de-force territory, yet it makes playing the game, either via typing or clicking, as easy as cracking candy from a baby.

There are a handful of functional beep and click sound effects, but otherwise the game's aural package is delivered via techno beats. Unfortunately, these songs are about as generic as the average terminal session, and do little to add to the game's mood.

Hacknet is a borderline "birth of a genre" moment, in that it involves using quasi-real Unix shell commands to connect to various networked computers, navigate their file systems, and execute denial of service attacks, or leverage script kiddie utilities. It's a paradigm-shattering mode of gameplay, but becomes repetitive too quickly.

Hacknet is a compelling, novel idea for a game. Its pseudo-authenticity makes just the right compromises with reality, while still making the player feel like a high-tech, pro cracker. The game's servers are littered with humorous IRC logs, lending the game an appreciable sense of humor. Unfortunately, and like most indie games, the title's notion just isn't fleshed out enough; perhaps this new hacking genre would be better as just one part of a larger game experience within some other type of game?