Join The Club
A couple of years ago, I went to a PR's office to demo a battle royale game that looked like RuneScape and played like Magic: the Gathering—Inferni: Hope & Fear. I had an absolute blast, but I didn't hear anything more about the game. Now, it's been reborn. Hack '95 takes the bones of Inferni's real-time combat and drapes a Windows 95 skin over the muscle and sinew of a story about hacking an evil corporation.
Hack '95 just got its world premiere reveal trailer during the PC Gaming Show, and it really doesn't get more PC than this. In Hack '95, you take on the role of a '90s hacker who gets swept up in a huge governmental conspiracy. All you wanted to do was make a few bucks changing grades for high school kids, but after the death of one of your hacker buds, a legendary cybercriminal takes you under their wing—the writing was done by videogame journalist and novelist Keith Stuart.
The whole aesthetic harkens back to the golden age of computing, when nobody used their real name online and everyone had to endure the binary scream of dial up. All the action takes place on a computer screen, where you'll receive IM requests to gather photos or replace files after remotely taking over your targets' machines. To get in, you have to utilise the combat system first designed for Inferni.
The way it works is you draw hacks from your library of malware and send them along a datastream to your opponent's PC—the catch is that they're doing the exact same thing. In the demo I played, there were several programmes that could be drawn, ranging from ones that do pure damage to the opponent's firewall, heal damage done to yours, or counter one of their hacks and send it back to them. I'm excited to see what else is in store at later levels.
All the combat happens on these two datastreams, and I honestly didn't expect it to be so nerve-wracking watching as five hacks slowly inch their way toward bricking my computer. You can use the money you earn from your digital escapades to buy more hacks and improve your computer, giving it more health, enabling it to send hacks faster, and more.
It's the kind of game that has to be experienced, and luckily, there's a Steam demo out now you can try, so give it a go.
