868-HACK expansion PLAN.B jacks in

Michael Brough has launched an expansion for his fantastic and fiendish hacking roguelite 868-HACK [official site]. PLAN.B is its name, and add new mode, new progs, and new power-ups is its game. More of a good game is a good thing.

Brough explains the newness in a blog post:

"It adds a new mode which introduces 'bonus powerups' from the first game of a streak (these are difficulty modifiers that would previously only show up after winning a few games in a row), with 8 more powerups added to the 12 from the original, so there's more variety from the start. Also 9 new progs (for a total of 32).

"These changes make the score of an individual run less meaningful - because it's always affected by random powerups and because some of the new progs interact with run streaks - so high scores in this mode are only for streaks (total score across a series of consecutive plays without dying).

"The maximum number of progs held is dropped to 8 (from 10), which makes the choice of what to pick up a little tighter, and also adds a little more variety because you're less likely to be able to pick up the same combinations by the end of a game. The new mode also allows a choice of 'character class' each game, which determines starting resources (previously this was randomly assigned); this choice gives an extra chance to respond to the random initial conditions so there are less 'unfair' deaths at the start of a game."

He also details a few changes and balance tweaks to the core game to accomodate the expansion. Dedicated hackers will want to know about those.

PLAN.B is £1.99/2,99€/$2.99 on Steam. Ignore the June release date listed there - PLAN.B came out today. That Brough is a little scamp.

868-HACK is good video games. As Alec said in 2015:

"There's a parallel dimension wherein 868-HACK stars a smiling cartoon elf firing arrows at cheeky goblins in silly hats, it's called something like MAGIC DUNGEON ESCAPE QUEST, and it was a huge hit. The 868-hack we actually got, once you've cracked its faintly hostile shell, is as fearsomely absorbing as the most wildly successful roguelites or even match-3 games. I'm glad I'm not in that alternate dimension though. I like 868-HACK just as strange and creepy as it is."

Disclosure: I vaguely know Michael Brough through a former flatmate. I think he might have crashed in our lounge once? My memory's hazy on that, to be honest.