Hacknet Gets 3-4 Hour Expansion In December

Spiritual successor to Uplink and 2nd best hacking game ever Hacknet [official site] is getting a 3-4 hour expansion pack at the end of the year. Hacknet Labyrinths injects a new gang of cyberpunks into the game, led by a fella called Kaguya who wants some favours from you. Considering it only takes about 7 or 8 hours to complete the base game, that’s a chunky bit of extra stuff.

If you missed Hacknet, it’s a hacking sim that has you type commands into a terminal to break into tons of corporate and private computers, all in an attempt to figure out who killed a notorious hacker called ‘Bit’. You bounce around servers, gaining illicit entry against the clock, and become acquainted with mysterious groups who give you tasks to prove your cyber-cred, for example, defacing the website of a global chain of fried chicken restaurants.

In Labyrinths you’ll be joining a group of elite hackers as they plan and execute a series of “data heists” across the net. There are some new tools, such as the Memory Analyzer, but don’t ask me what that does. And you’ll use an IRC style chat system to talk to your new criminal buddies, whereas before it was all email. Meanwhile, the original stuff has more secrets and tidbits added as well.

I’m a big fan of the genre, so I’ll probably be heading back for a replay myself. My clearest memory of the original story is infiltrating a company’s emails only to discover that the CEO was creepily obsessed with seeing himself and could not stop ordering and installing mirrors in the company’s offices. I hope there’s more of that. Labyrinths comes out in December for $4.99.