Hacknet Labyrinths cracks out today

It's a good day for fans of crashing through firewalls with their password crackers blazing. Hacknet Labyrinths [official site], a big expansion for one of the top ten hacking games, has just been released. It's a new 3-4 hour storyline that takes place near the end of the main story, a sizeable chunk of new stuff for a game that wasn't very long itself. As part of an elite crew of hackers, you'll be chatting over IRC, planning and performing "data heists" with new tools and clandestine programs, and generally hacking the planet.

Here's how players of the original can find the new content, according to developers Team Fractal Alligator.

How to find the Labyrinth

Labyrinths takes place before the end of the base game. You can access it from two points within Hacknet - as a mission from Entropy after you've completed a few contracts there, or from CSEC. You can also access it from CSEC if you have a save file that's completed the game, or if up to that stage of the game already.

A more detailed description of that process can be found here.

I'm excited to go back to Hacknet. I remember staying up late at night, compulsively listening to the Wipeout soundtrack and typing away at its flashy terminal like I was racing somebody at Mavis Beacon. There were avenues of its original story that I didn't go down. For example, it's possible to fall in with a group of blackhat hackers called Entropy /el. So I'll probably whizz through being a jerk hacker this time, instead of a nice boy. Then see what Labyrinths has to offer.

It's £4.99/$6.99 on Steam and GOG but currently on sale. You can get the base game of 2015 bundled together with the new stuff for under a tenner on Steam and GOG – well worth it in my red team field manual. I'll likely be back to write up some more thoughts about it soon. But only if the G men don't get to me first.