Hacknet
Moderate overall intensityWhat's in it
The player breaks into computer systems and performs simulated hacking as the core activity — stealing, deleting, and altering data, and shutting down servers on contract.
Scattered readable text files include crude, profane bash.org-style chat-log humor, and one story beat rewards typing an expletive at a rival hacker.
The framing plot has the player investigating a fellow hacker's death that is implied to be murder rather than the reported accident.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Hacknet is a single-player simulation and puzzle game that casts you as a computer hacker working through a Unix-style terminal. Following automated messages from a hacker who has died under suspicious circumstances, you connect to remote machines, run intrusion tools, and manage limited memory against a countdown to break into systems, then read files to complete tasks like deleting, altering, or copying data and defacing web pages. There is no combat, sexual content, or gore; the mature elements are the theme of an implied non-accidental death, occasional profanity and crude humor in the game's many text snippets, and the fact that all the gameplay simulates illegal hacking. It is entirely offline with no chat, purchases, or multiplayer.
How it's framed
The game presents hacking as a fictional puzzle and a stylized power fantasy rather than a how-to, with the fiction acknowledging that intrusions can have serious consequences; the central mystery treats the mentor's death as a somber hook. It does not moralize about the player's actions and lets you choose whether to retaliate against a rival hacker or de-escalate.
Details
- Developer
- Team Fractal Alligator
- Publisher
- Fellow Traveller
- Released
- Aug 12, 2015
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