Saturday, February 17, 2018

Hack 'n' Slash - 5 hours (5/20 hours total)

Confession - I cheated just a little bit. I know, cheating at a game about hacking, how could I? But it was only a little, and only towards the end. The hacking puzzles were getting more and more complicated until they reached a point where I had to go into a library where all of the books represented files associated with various objects in the game. I had to find the right book and then read it to alter different aspects of the final dungeon's puzzles. Most of the time, I was able to figure out what I needed on my own, but on about three separate occasions, I was so confused that I needed to look at a walkthrough to see if I was on the right track. It was usually pretty obvious in retrospect, but I hate being thwarted, so I regret nothing.

The perhaps overly technical ending aside, I had a lot of fun with this game. A lot of puzzle games, even if they're of different genres, have similar types of puzzles. Move a block to a pressure sensitive platform. Raise or lower water levels to access new areas. Unscramble a mixed-up password. Hack 'n' Slash had some of these, but it also had challenges that were genuinely unique. At one point, I had to move a platform that was programmed to undo any attempt to move it, so I had to go into the platform's logic and change a loop command from +1 to +0.

And that's not even getting into the late-game weirdness where my wrong solutions were as likely to break the game as leave me stranded. For example, there's this one chamber where you've got a countdown timer and if it reaches 0, the game crashes. I thought I was being really clever by disabling the timer, but it turned out that I just eliminated the timer's display. It still counted down at the same speed, but I could no longer see it. Ha!

The plot of the game is that a guy claiming to be a wizard is using his knowledge of hacking to hold the kingdom in thrall, and you have to solve various hacking puzzles to stop him. The game makes a special point of reminding you that he's not really a wizard, but the funny thing is that I've never played a game where your character's special abilities have felt more like magic. Most of the tweaks you can make are pretty simple and likely anticipated by the game's designers, but even at the beginning, when your options are limited, they feel open-ended in ways that other magic systems do not. Towards the end, when you start to get the most powerful tools, it's almost scary how much power you have.

The main flaw with Hack 'n' Slash is that it's not quite educational enough for how educational it is. This is largely a critique of the last hour or so, where you're given a dizzying amount of information that a layman like myself is ill-equipped to make use of. I think if the game held your hand more with these complex sections, it would be a fun way to learn about programming. As it is, I didn't learn much by following a guide and would likely have not learned much more through trial and error (at least not before I gave up in frustration). Still, I can imagine that this game might be a useful tool for an experienced person to introduce a novice to some basic programming concepts.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase here. I think, hypothetically, I could have spent 20 hours trying to find new things to break, but it would not have been a productive use of my time. It was a very interesting twist on the puzzle/adventure genre and I'd definitely be interested in a sequel, but for now I'm content that a single playthrough has shown me the bulk of what Hack 'n' Slash has to offer.

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