“One more game. OK, no. Last round. Damnit. OK… that one didn’t count.”
That’s what I sound like playing 868-HACK, a hacking roguelike that came out Friday for iOS from designer Michael Brough. Originally called 86856527 and it was created as part of the Seven-Day Roguelike competition.
It’s an incredibly addictive game, one that’s fairly simple to learn, yet hard to master. The gameplay is centered around data syphons, items you use to harvest resources from adjacent cells. Siphoning from nodes will yield new abilities, but at the same time will spawn programs to attack you. The game is a very finely tuned balance of risk and reward, and a poorly planned move can yield a fast, stupid death.
Also, it stars a Evil-Otto-from-Berzerk style smiley face. How can you hate on that? It’s available for download for $6.49 on the App Store.
Comments
5 responses to “I Can’t Stop Playing This Hacking iPhone Game”
I’ve been hearing good things, but I balk at paying $6.49 for a phone app. I mean, I paid ten bucks for Papers, Please on PC 2 weeks ago and have no regrets, but if if had been on iOS for $5 I’d probably have passed it over. It’s just how I am when it comes to mobile gaming of any kind.
Anyone know if it’s worth it?
Yeh.. I know what you mean. I did just grab KotR for $10.49.. but that’s an established, ported game that I know is a good game and has lots of content, plus at least 1 full replay (play as dark side and play as light side).. worth it.. but new games with no history.. I also balk at it… if this had been Introversion’s Uplink for iOS, then I wouldn’t mind the $6.49 price tag…. but it’s not.
Man, when I was at uni I used to play the hell out of a really dodgy little crappy freeware/shareware game that was a lot like Uplink Lite for Windows 95 or something. Doing hacking jobs to upgrade your deck, your firmware, software, etc… Can’t for the life of me remember what it was called. But for the value I got out of that as a poverty-stricken student, I would cheerfully drop $7 gratuity to grind away at it on my phone, now.
(Edit: It’s so hard to google for hacking games, because all the search results are of people freaking the fuck out about actual hackers.)
Got curious, myself. Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW__xM6XYro – 20min’ish of gameplay, I think. (Going through it now.)
I watched a couple minutes of it earlier and I still can’t quite figure out what’s going on.
Try this Touch Arcade thread for details on how it plays: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?threadid=202065
It’s a PC game that has had 5 months of development and rebalancing as a part of the porting process and which happens to be the best iOS game this year. You can play the original 7DRL version on Windows for free at http://mightyvision.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/7drl-success-86856527.html?m=1 although it lacks the tutorial the iOS version has. A new Windows version is coming.