Night Hacking

Lots of pressure in being the first and only review so far. I'm gonna try to be honest, but before that I just have to say, please at least try the demo. It did pleasantly surprise me at one point, enough to buy the game. Seeing an indie game be completely neglected is really unfortunate. - It's weird to play a game where I'm a hacker and I never have to use the keyboard. And overall just not a very convincing fake OS. (I don't think that was ever a goal of this game, but it did hurt my immersion) Can't move around windows, files aren't stored anywhere. - The Slay the Spire-ish minigame is fine, and I like the animations, but I feel like the appeal of that type of gameplay is the deckbuilding, so getting preset decks and upgrades when the story warrants it is just much less interesting than I think it could have been. Fights were never complex enough to the point where I felt like my choices influenced the outcome of a battle. - A few typos, but nothing that ruined my understanding of a conversation. Also, I realize that emoticons probably have different connotations for different people, but when I'd respond with a ":/" to somebodies sad backstory, it did feel a bit tone deaf. - The game asks a lot of interesting political and moral questions of you, but it always felt a bit hollow to me? None of the characters really pushed back against my beliefs, or lead to any different outcomes, I was never worried about ruining a friendship by having an opinion they disagreed with. (Perhaps I just picked the most expected path, I don't know) - [Spoiler] Disappointing that the characters didn't interact all that much. I was looking forward to all the subplots to eventually converging and they just didn't. On the other hand, it's also kind of wholesome that the main character just has normal, non-hacker friends, and that they don't really get roped into the larger conspiracy. [/Spoiler] All that said, this game has some pretty neat world building. The plot is a bit corny, but it's pretty cute. The ending did make me feel things.