How To Hack In? Reviews

Note: I'm a cybersecurity professional and do ethical hacking as part of my job, so I'm always interested to try new hacking sims, but you should know my review will probably be colored a bit by my job. My main takes from the couple hours I've spent in this game so far: [list] [*] Has the potential to be awesome; I've been looking for a semi-realistic hacking simulator that didn't hold your hand all the time and that was more freeform/open-ended. This seems to be the first one I've ever found that accomplishes that or has that as a goal. [*] Is actually pretty hard, there's not a lot of guidance (this was a plus for me but I could see that being a negative for others). I got pretty excited when I started the game and was presented with a desktop interface...and no tutorial. :chef-kiss: this was exactly what I wanted, and I had to figure out how to use the tools in the game. [*] The game is actually decently realistic; most of the tools are based on real tools, and they didn't change the command syntax to the point of being obnoxious if you've used the real tools (looking at you, Anonymous Hacker Simulator). Some things are simplified (obviously) but in a way that didn't make me roll my eyes. Nice job, devs. [*] This game is ridiculously buggy, but IMO that's okay for v0.26 or whatever it's on currently. But know going in that you will hit bugs. Most of them are very minor, and the only really game breaking one I've hit is that sometimes the CLI suddenly stops taking commands and just prints the command I input over and over again (yes, I checked the syntax). This usually happens after loading a save. I haven't found a way to fix it without restarting. Restarting here meaning wiping my save and starting over again. Tbh I don't care that much because the game is fun and I'm sure this and other bugs will get fixed, but you should be aware. [/list] In the unlikely event that the devs actually see this review and pay attention to it, here's a wishlist of things I'd love to see: [list] [*] Snapping windows - This was my biggest complaint about the interface; on Linux, Windows, [i]and[/i] Mac this is built in or easily configurable. Basically, when I drag a window to the side of the screen I want it to auto maximize to just that half of the screen. Please. I beg you. Manually resizing the windows is so annoying lol [*] Give us an alt+tab replacement to cycle between windows - obviously it probably can't be actually alt-tab but it'd be nice to have a similar keyboard shortcut [*] Allow us to take on multiple jobs at one time; not sure if the fact that only a single job can be accepted at once is related to how the procgen works but it is really a bummer. It also leads to situations where I'm interested in a mission but end up realizing I don't have enough money to buy a tool I need, and then having no option but to cancel the mission in order to take on other missions so I can earn money to buy the tool. But at that point the original mission is gone forever which sucks. [/list] TL;DR Fun but buggy game that will be really awesome someday if the devs stick it out. If dealing with some Early Access bugs don't bother you, this is definitely worth the asking price. If they do, maybe wait a bit for the bugs to get ironed out. But buy it because I want the devs to have enough funding to finish it lol