Terminal ESC

it's been 22 minutes and I already want to throw this fictionnal pc out the window - very realistic experience also known as: - "arch linux simulator" - "rm -rf / --no-preserve-root sim" - "npm i failed" - "WHY IS THERE NO DOCS FFS" the list goes on

The negative reviews I've seen so far are from people who don't really get this kind of game. This is a puzzle game, but of the type where there is almost no hand-holding to help you through it. If you like hacking away at a black-box piece of tech until it reveals its secrets to you, you'll probably enjoy this. If you are hoping this will help your terminal-fu, it won't. This isn't a Linux terminal, nor is it a Windows system.exe or such either. Familiarity with those, though, is almost a prerequisite. If you don't know what terminals/shells are at all, this game will be opaque to you and likely no fun at all. It's also possible you won't enjoy this if you work an IT job that has episodes of fighting with undocumented tech. If so this will lkely trigger you in a bad way. Even so, the price is right for what it is (maybe underpriced a little for the effort since things like this are deceptively hard to make).

This is an [i]exceptional[/i] puzzle game that feels more like a CTF task/HackTheBox machine than a videogame. Primary scenario has a very reasonable and logical progression, oftentimes with multiple viable solutions for each step. Everything in the game reacts to your actions just like you would expect in real life, your terminal included. I would have said more about the puzzles, but I don't want to spoil the fun for you — and there's a lot of fun. It is also [b]extremely immersive[/b], with all the sounds and visuals being [i]just right[/i]. You can get an idea from the trailer and screenshots, but it is much more satisfying when you play. Run a command, and you'll hear the static of the CPU data lines interfering with the sound output or see the display artifacts as the system processes your command. Read a file from an external media, and you'll hear the drive spinning. Combined, these little details and simple things create a pleasant vibe that, yet again, you would expect from real life systems the game takes inspiration from. Reminds me of the time I dipped my toes with IBM's z/OS, the feeling was the same with all the muted colors and TUIs. You also should know that as of today (2024-08-24), there are still issues you may encounter from time to time. Most of the ones that I'm aware of in the current version are not game-breaking, though. It is going to sound weird, but some of them, like particular command parameters not acting as documented, add more realism to the game ("ah, ok, this is broken, I'll have to work around that" — literally every engineer once in a while). As for the game-breaking bugs that occurred to me and other folks who reported them via Steam's forums, the developer was very responsive so far, pushing the fixes mere hours after the problem was reported. But yet again, as of today, [b]the game is perfectly playable[/b] (at least on Windows) with no major issues breaking the playthrough in my experience. [i]9.5/10 dropped Factorio (of all things) to finish this[/i]

Linux troubleshooting simulator - 10/10 Edit: Just voted it for innovative goty

As others have said, it's a fantastic game. Finishing it is truly difficult. I think it's the best retro terminal thing I've ever played. I'm surprised there is that one negative review - presumably people who buy this game are like me, and actually really enjoy the experience and aesthetic of an old style terminal and of figuring out this kind of puzzle. The game is so well done, and really opens up more than you'd expect. It's really a perfect simulated environment for scratching that hacking itch, with all of the components you might come up with to make a game like that cool. Also, other "hacking" games are sometimes just figuring out how to run a command properly or how to find some arbitrary password, but this game actually forces you to be creative with the tools it has taught you and to use them in out-of-the-box ways. The problems are very difficult and incredibly satisfying to solve - they are typically very well defined, even if not explicitly, and at any given point you may have discovered a couple of files or modules that give you new capabilities, but you can still narrow the solution space down to something that seems absolutely impossible to solve at first until finally you come up with an idea that might just work. As another person has said, this game is sadly underpriced for what it is, but that is understandable given how niche it is and how little you can discern from the trailer. I have so much respect for the developer for showcasing only the barest parts of the game in the screenshots so that one is completely unspoiled when discovering the game for themselves. I will give a couple of tips for players without spoiling anything - you can restore your progress by exporting terminal commands and running them back through automatically, and there is also another very useful way to save the game state that one can fairly easily figure out if you can figure out the game itself :)

Terminal ESC is an exciting narrative driven first person shooter/action adventure where you take on the role of Rock Hardchuck, special ops veteran, and blast your way out of a terrorist infested airport termin... oh wait it's not. It's another desktop simulator, this one is an ASCII one. Sigh. The goal is to "escape" the terminal but the terminal has problems, so you need to negotiate computer themed text puzzle prompts to work out what commands to type to finally puzzle your way out of this. So the game could be solved by someone posting a list of text commands in the Guides section, if they really cared to. One important note is that even though this is an amateur project, it does seem to be sincerely and genuinely made. I couldn't find any flipped assets, plagiarism or any other kind of insincere actions from the developer, but unfortunately genuine intentions alone are not enough to produce a brilliant PC gaming experience. In fact I'll go so far as to say the puzzle design is clever and works well, but that's somewhat besides the point. In my rather jokey opening to this review, my intention was not to point out that this game isn't great because it's not a generic chic action shooter, but because it is a desktop simulator and the ASCII text nature of it means this whole thing could have been done in HTML. This barely counts as a PC game. If you're a PC gaming enthusiast, this won't take advantage of any of that hardware you spent thousands of dollars on. Oregon Trail has more going for it visually than this text game, and Oregon Trail was made in 1971, for crying out loud. This is the best that gaming in 2024 has to offer? Worse than what was available in 1971? Come on. Gaming is a visual medium and the developers failed to grasp that when they made this puzzle game. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the text. What's the point? The developers even take time out to insult gamers by telling them that 4K resolution "isn't recommended". My rear end it isn't. Everyone should be gaming in 4K if they can, it's a superior experience. Why insult gamers when it's the developers fault if the game doesn't run properly on all kinds of PCs? I've already mentioned how this being text based is a major defect, and it's going to turn gamers away, and likely already has, looking at the player counts. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 8 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Terminal ESC is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product. Unfortunately Steam reviewers aren't presented with a "Maybe" option... if they did, that's what I'd choose. This isn't a completely bad game, but it's also not one of the best. As always, if you read my review and you can overlook the negatives I've called out, or they just aren't important to you, then by all means go ahead and buy this. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]

Definitely gave me flashbacks to my first Linux install on a junk laptop I had laying around.

average monday

Start "Cannot start, no module found" Load module "Module not initialized" Init module "Module not found" Find *module* "Module found in d:/modules" Load d:/modules/module "Module is corrupted" Repair d:/modules/module "Repairing the module will withdraw some of its functionalities, continue? Y/N" Y "Module repaired" Load d:/modules/module "Module not found" 10/10 average unix experience simulator.

I really, really like this game. In the most unlikely manner, it's the _sound design_ of this hacking puzzle game that I admire the most. It really adds to the atmosphere that is also spot on. The dev is very responsive and has added numerous QOL patches (well, as much as they make sense for a game like this...) and bugfixes. Also in my view astonishingly great value for the price. I have so far failed at the last puzzle although I think I do know the solution, and I look forward to diving in again. Definitely more fun than wrestling package managers.