Hack the deep web and hide from hitmen in offbeat horror game Welcome to the Game 2

Welcome to the Game 2 is a first-person horror game about hacking. You play as investigative reporter Clint Edwards, and it's on you to rescue a woman named Amalea from a group of mysterious masked hitmen. Your only clue is a clip of Amalea pleading for help, so to track her down you've got to dive headfirst into the deep web, the portion of the Internet which doesn't register in normal browsers or search engines.

Your goal is to find eight 'hidden hashes' embedded in the deep web and use them to determine Amalea's location. You work out of a modest city apartment building using a simulated computer complete with a web browser, a notepad, and access to various marketplaces fueled by 'DOScoin.'

You'll spend most of your time on the simulated computer scanning web pages, source code and surprisingly robust file libraries. Some of the hacking plays out as reflex-based minigames and puzzles, but it's mostly good old-fashioned sleuthing. You'll check pages for hidden links, cross-reference IP addresses, and probably a whole bunch of other things that may give you an inexplicable urge to push your glasses up your nose and/or crack your knuckles.

You also have to protect yourself by covering your tracks and hiding your Internet history. The mysterious masked men after Amalea can just as easily come after you, you see, and gladly will if you slip up and make yourself known. Sometimes they'll simply hack you to steal your DOScoin and undo some of your research, but other times they'll pay your apartment a visit, weapon in hand. To that end, you can earn DOScoin by besting other hackers and use it to purchase concealing gadgets and software, as well as motion sensors for when you do get caught red-handed.

You can't fight back in Welcome to the Game 2, so when the hitmen come a-knockin' all you can do is kill the lights and hope you picked a convincing hiding spot. You've got to lock your doors, watch your windows, and sometimes leave the room entirely to hide elsewhere in your apartment building—like the power room you'll need to visit if the masked hackers fiddle with the fuses. Interestingly, if you have a mic plugged in the game will tap into it and, if you make too much noise by talking or, you know, breathing, nearby hitmen will have an easier time finding you. You can disable this feature, but where's the fun in that?

Welcome to the Game 2 is now available on Steam for $10.

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.