Hack This Game - Indie Game Review

Pros

• Interesting Idea
• 2 Gameplay Modes
• Menu Design

Cons

• When you're stuck, you're stuck
• When you get stuck, you will get frustrated/tired of the game very quickly
• Menus take time to appear

This game is a game which tries to simulate hacking into a simple puzzle game form.  It works, but not nearly quite as well as it could have.  The way the game does this is giving you a progressive set of puzzles which require answers of 5 letters "A, B, X, or Y", so the 4 Xbox controller buttons.  The game presents these puzzle in ways such as telling you which letters are right or wrong, or in a small game of hangman.  

The problem that arises from this, is that if you're stuck on a puzzle....well that's that.  Because the only gameplay is figuring out the puzzle, if you get stuck you can either figure it out....or quit the game.  So if you don't have a large attention span or are bad at puzzles (both of which apply to me) this game probably isn't for you.

The game does have a second mode which is hidden at the bottom of the menu (which I didn't even find until 10 minutes ago) which makes you push a sequence of buttons within the time given, it starts off slow but quickly speeds up until you're overwhelmed, it is a nice addition but doesn't save the game from its faults.  The game is running an...interesting marketing campaign which is whoever completes the game first gets their avatar on the box art.  I honestly do like the idea and think it is a good way to try and get people to complete the game.

The game does have a nice retro computer menu feel, but that's all you see, the same menu with some different text most of the time.  Though for the menu and puzzles the text loads one character at a time so at times it can get very annoying waiting for the whole menu to pop up (specifically in the instructions) and a way to skip it would have been much appreciated.  As far as audio goes, there are a few different clicks and a buzzer and correct sound, they could have atleast added some background music.

Overall it's a not so well executed concept with annoying menus and barely any gameplay, you can easily find some better puzzle games for your money, so I would advise you to skip this one.