Top 10 Hacking, Coding, and Computing Games

As everyone knows from the news feeds, we live in an ever- evolving cyberpunk dystopia . People connect toilets to the Internet ! If this Gibsonian world seems too REAL to you, then you can play the top ten video games about hacking, programming and computing to escape into a meta-dystopia. Which, I'm sure, is a much better place.

10. TIS-100

[ official site ]

Yeah, get ready for your brain to hurt. TIS-100 is a game from Zachtronics, the puzzle game developer with the release of Infinifactory and SpaceChem . In marketing, it is positioned as “a game about programming in assembly language that you did not ask for,” and although I usually ignore marketing slogans, I cannot but agree here.

The player gets at his disposal a mysterious computer from the 70s, found in the things of the late uncle. Once he played with him, trying to figure it out. Now it is your task. In short, you need to get numbers in order to drive the car from point A to point B, completing “goals” at each level (for example, first output a positive number, and then a negative one). To do this, you have a list of commands outlined in the vague user guide. The game advises you to print this manual in paper form. It contains notes made by uncle and marker, giving clues about the nature of this machine.


It is also a brain-blowing game about logic and math. Mathematics, which should be obvious and simple, but it still somehow causes you trouble. But even if you suffer, you can still appreciate the reasonableness of the entire system - mechanical clicks and noises, flickering numbers running inside the car. Passing the first levels often makes the player filled with pride, gives him a feeling of joy, as if he had just cracked the Enigma CD. Then he goes to YouTube and sees the impending madness .

Note: Zacht from Zachtronics is a fan of hacking electronics and code. Here he makes a programmable typewriter , and here he plays with a non-decryptable code the terrible old Star Wars game that he liked as a kid.

9. Gunpoint

[ official site ]

Spy Cloak Pants has never been so attractive. In the game Gunpoint, your mysterious spy character will have to break into protected buildings and steal data for your customers. To do this, he has Crosslink - a device that allows you to control the wiring of each level. In essence, you play as a secret electrician with gadgets that allow him to manipulate buildings. You can change the wiring of the light switches so that the guards are shocked, play with the elevator so that it moves up and down, and (over time) even reflash the weapon. Because it is a dystopia.

But everything is not limited to wires only. Gunpoint has a love of eccentric violence. You can hit the guard in the face with the door that opens, jump on him from the ceiling in the style of a ninja, or run into him from afar and drop him from the roof so that he falls apart when he falls on a dozen pieces. I think it’s called “social engineering.”

Notes: developer Tom Francis was once a gaming journalist, which is objectively the most honored activity in the world, but then began to create Gunpoint in GameMaker. Following a difficult learning path, Tom created a series of tutorials on YouTube to help people learn how to use this program.

8. Hackmud

[ official site ]

Hackmud is a terrible and wonderful place. The player exists as an AI bot inside the network world of the future. People long ago died out (or disappeared into the depths of space, which is a little more significant). You must collect and earn virtual currency GC, because such disgusting creatures live for this. Yes, unfortunately, there are others . This is an online hacking game in which another player can hack your account, steal all the hard-earned digital coins, take away your tools (small decryptors, etc.) and tell your location to everyone. If this happens, then you will turn into a pile of garbage, a small bot. Time to start all over again.

This world is hard to understand and you won’t be able to use all its features if you don’t spend a bit of time learning basic Javascript (if you don’t already know this programming language). In terms of MMO, the game is similar to EVE Online . The stakes are high, the complexity curve is crazy, and the universe is crowded with masters of scam. I know for sure, because I was one of them . Therefore, Hackmud is not a game for everyone. But for those who decide to get into a Petri dish with paranoid jerks, this will be a crazy adventure.

Notes: Hackmud became our favorite MMO of 2016

7. Minecraft

[ official site ]

Sorry, I tried to find a good reason why you do not need to be included in the list of Minecraft. This is a survival game. In it you can beat the trees with your fist. She has infected millions of innocent children. But the more I tried, the harder it was not to notice the frivolity, experimentalism and creativity of the masterpiece of the indie superstar Mojang. Firstly, people started creating 16-bit computers inside the game , they made huge circuit boards with RAM capable of performing division operations, then they created landscape music boxes that could play entire songs , then they simulated previous Notch games inside the game, then they created WHOLE DESKTOP COMPUTERS with functional keyboards. Then they created hard drives to save the results of their hard work, and then, since they needed to store all these machines, they recreated Denmark as a whole . Even our website took part in this - one of the authors of Rock, Paper, Shotgun and IQ living standard Duncan Jir gave readers code-writing lessons , using this game as a learning tool.

I can understand if many people believe that Minecraft is no longer about hacking and programming, but for hackers and programmers. But from the examples I have given, it is clear that this is enough to get on our list.

Notes:Of course, Minecraft is not a game for all hackers. In June 2011, the hacker group LulzSec disabled the game servers during a series of attacks on video game companies. Other victims included Eve Online, Bethesda, Sony, Nintendo, and The Escapist.

6. Duskers

[ official site ]

Remember the opening scene from Aliens when a small drone entered Ripley’s rescue capsule and scanned the room with an intermittent blue light? This is how the Duskers gameplay feels. The player controls a team of drones looking for debris among the stars. Your ship needs recyclable resources and fuel. To get them, you need to land on abandoned (for not very clear reasons) ships, like garbage hanging around the galaxy. Any other designer who would have been given such a plot would have thought: “Yeah, point-and-click control, plus maybe hotkeys.” But not Misfits Attic. To do this, you basically need to use the terminal command line.

Such a move perfectly matches the atmosphere and graphic style of the game. The user interface is clumsy and resembles the future as it was seen in the 1970s using the Nostromo example, right down to the pause menu. Having a ship diagram in front of you, you enter commands to move the drone to the power connector and generate electricity. Enter a few more commands and open the door. You travel slowly through the wreckage, hoping that an alien threat is not waiting for you at the next door. That would be terrible news. Your assistant robots are so fragile, as if made from the screens of modern mobile phones.

Many hacker games are associated with panic and the rapid entry of teams under pressure from circumstances. However, in Duskers, you need to be pedantic. Use scanners and motion sensors to recognize hostile life forms. Throw “strangers” from the ship by remotely opening air locks or luring them to turrets. The game becomes even more intense due to the roguelike structure and FTL-style fuel consumption.

Notes : in the game you can create your own teams using the “alias” command. For example, entering “alias getoutofthere navigate 1 2 3 4 r1” will give you a getoutofthere command that is inconvenient in its length, with which you can force all drones to return back to the air lock.

5. Shenzhen I / O

[ official site ]

Another Zachtronics game? Well, if you decide that your game will unfold inside an invented operating system, then why stop at only one? The user plays the role of an expat living in industrial China and working for the electronics company Longteng. The player receives an email notification and assignments. He has to create devices for various clients. Sometimes it's something simple, like a flashing neon sign, and sometimes it's something more ... mysterious. In any case, the player will have to consult the manual, which the game recommends to print and put in a folder (and I agree with this advice).

In many ways, the game has become a spiritual follower of the aforementioned TIS-100.. You’re still messing around with numbers, moving them from one node to another using simple programming, and trying to optimize device circuits to work as efficiently as possible. But this time you need to take care of the components. You move circuits, switches, and fixtures around the circuit board. There may be several solutions, so try not to get confused.

Notes: if you have goosebumps from all these puzzles, then you can look at the latest Zachtronics Opus Magnum game , it is more accessible and simple. It is dedicated to engineering solutions to alchemical problems using balls of different elements.

4. Quadrilateral Cowboy

[ official site ]

Creator of Thirty Flights of Loving and Gravity Bonein love with robberies and robberies, and this becomes obvious when he decides to make a game lasting longer than a few minutes. In this game you control a team of thieves. Until you gain control of the entire trio of characters, you will basically play as a Hacker. Each level is a little puzzle solved by entering commands into the “December” - a laptop computer in a briefcase with a 56k modem that you bring to every apartment building, bank vault or space station (yes, you will go into space). The commands are simple, for example, entering “door4.open (3)” will open “door number 4” for three seconds. Using them, you need to enter enclosed spaces, avoid cameras, lasers and alarms, pick up what you need, and escape.

The game is imperfect - it too quickly dumps its best ideas on the player and ends before the player hopes - but it has a list of leaders that encourages them to pass in attempts to surpass the results of friends. More importantly, her vision of the retro-cyberpunk Nuevos Aires is detailed and stylish, and the story without words is strange and gentle. Hacking games sometimes neglect the details of the real world and are limited exclusively to the screen. Quadrilateral Cowboy recalls that a computer is just a means to change reality.

And in the game there is an amazing cat .

Notes: almost immediately after the release, Blendo opened the source code of the game, and she won the 2017 grand prize at IGF.

3. Uplink

[ official site ]

This game is often remembered when it comes to the "hacking simulator." When Introversion released Uplink, it pretty much changed the idea of ​​how a good cyberpunk game for PC should look and feel. Playing by your own pseudonym on "computer-to-computer", you assume the position of hacker for hire. Soon, you begin to hack into networks to modify records, steal data and delete unwanted files. On your way, you discover new programs and upgrade the machine to crack more robust and frightening systems. You must also confuse your location with multiple IP addresses around the world. This fits in well with the modern cinematic view of hacking - a scene from The Golden Eye in which Natalya tracks down Boris’s tracks or a digital robbery in Password

But Uplink is not so simple. The game does not forgive mistakes: your proxy machine and bank account will often be confiscated by the Law, after which you will have to start all over again. You can “save” progress by customizing the game files themselves, which can be interpreted as an excellent meta-puzzle.

However, for all this, Uplink easily became a cult classic and paved the way for all other games that followed in its footsteps. The next game on this list certainly did not appear without the influence of Uplink.

Notes: Uplink is the first Introversion game. In 2006, there was a legal dispute with a distributor in the United States selling a version of the game called Uplink: Hacker Elite. After the distributor filed for bankruptcy, he stopped paying Introversion royalties, but continued to sell the game. The conflict was resolved over time.

2. Hacknet

[ official site ]

Hacknet passed by some critics. As in Uplink, the player takes on the role of a computer user combing IP addresses and communicating with underground hacker communities. An unknown well-wisher named “Bit” gives you a strange new OS, which in essence is a set of hacker tools. But do not worry about him - he is already dead. The true pleasure of the game is not to find out the causes of its death or the origin of the OS (although this is an interesting complication), but to use the command line to launch programs, examine the folders of hacked machines and make a big commotion. Bonus: WipeOut soundtrack will help you to dive deeper into the game .

The game has mouse controls (for example, you can select files with a click rather than typing their names in their entirety), but the deeper you plunge into a new sphere, the more you need the speed you need to remain elusive. Using serious Linux-style terminal commands becomes your second nature. In the early stages of the game, there is a great moment with a rival blackhat hacker and an interesting moral choice. Not to mention a completely separate storyline for players with more criminal inclinations. As I said, the idea of ​​the project owes much to Uplink. But it is the implementation that makes Hacknet an excellent game. A few misspelled words and one or two bugs do not prevent her from being stylish, interesting and pleasantly short.

Notes:if your computer has a CD drive, then when you enter “openCDTray” in the Hacknet terminal, the CD tray will really open. This command was supposed to be used in the multiplayer version of the game, but, alas, this mode did not appear.

1. else Heart.Break ()

[ official site ]

When you start playing this vibrant Scandinavian adventure, you might think that this is a slow and viscous point-n-click with absolutely no purpose. But be patient a little and you will find that this is one of the smartest games that you can play. In Heart.Break () you get used to the role of Sebastian (or Seba, if you want), who moved to the big city of Dorisburg after receiving the post of soda seller. You stroll through this strange city, selling jar after jar to capricious residents, most of whom do not even need them.

How does all this relate to hacking? When you start your career in the brave new world of soft drinks, you start making friends (and a girl, of course). It becomes obvious that in fact they are a group of hacktivists fighting against the monstrous Ministry of Computing. Soon you get your own “modifier” - a device that allows you to hack into any object in the game.


At this point, Heart.Break () transforms. You start wandering around the city, studying the code of everything your hands reach. You find people who teach you to read and write this code in the full-featured programming language SPRAK (the "language" in Swedish). You start experimenting with everyday objects in ways that allow you to cheat.in Game. For example, Sebastian usually gets tired every day, and you have to go to bed to restore energy, otherwise you can’t stand it. But what if you manage to crack a glass of water so that it reduces your “sleepiness” rate by a hundred times? Such small touches are just the beginning. Want to break open a door so that you can use it to jump over half of the city? Give it a try. Want to transfer your body over the Internet to the central financial computer of the city? It is possible. Do you want a la Tyler Durden to rewrite the software of this financial computer so that everyone’s bank accounts are reduced to $ 0 and the money itself is canceled? Do it. I managed. And I did not regret a single line of code.

But the most amazing thing about Heart.Break () is her admiration for humanity and youth. The gameplay does not just consist of a gloomy green screen glow, it is a functioning city with drunkards, smokers, factory workers, corridor hotels, homeless people, activists and bureaucrats. You see how all the changes you make affect the world around us, living regardless of your actions. And this world itself is a bright, amazing place: the artistic taste of Niklas Okerblad and other team members gave him energy that is usually not associated with computer programming. Soulful, lively and smart else Heart.Break () does not stop at creating a sense of hacker control. Here you are more like a wizard.

Notes:in March 2015, a motley team of Swedish game programmers and artists who created the game held a secret gamejourn in Gothenburg (which coincidentally was a source of inspiration for the creation of Dorisburg). The goal of the jam was to create simple little games on SPRAK itself. The resulting mini-games can be found in the arcade machines of Dorisburg.