ＲＥＴＲＯＨＡＣＫＥＲ　１９９３

by flatgub

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.04

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.80

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.92

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.12

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.80

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.60

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.05

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.18

ＲＥＴＲＯＨＡＣＫＥＲ　１９９３

"One persons quest to become the best hacker of the _pseudo-90s_"
A relatively authentic and historically (creative liberties taken, IP addresses instead of phone numbers, etc) DOS style hacking game set in the year 1993. As well as connecting to devices over your trusty old 2400 baud modem, you can interface with other devices using your computer to access the _small unique digital world_ within each as a second, deeper form of hacking. You must use the two in cooperation to "achieve hacks"

Ｉｍｐｏｒｔａｎｔ　Ｃａｖｅａｔ

This game is ENTIRELY UNFINISHED.
Due to a sleeping mistake (I set two alarms on different devices to wake me up after 2 hours, but managed to disable both _in my sleep_ and return to bed without realising, so I wasted 11 hours of the 3rd day), like 70% of the time I'd decided to dedicate to fleshing out the content on the system was lost, so although the game has a lot of expandablility under the hood (and I do plan on expanding it a lot, I had a LOT of fun working on this), this "demonstration" of its abilities is severely lacking. All it features is the tutorial section which teaches you the basics of how the game WOULD play, and a shareware demo-esque lock at the first BBS.

##### You'll know when you hit the content wall because you'll hit a special green popup.

Ｃｏｎｔｒｏｌｓ

Keyboard - Everything.
Use the in game help command to get a list of actions if you forget, or do the tutorial again.

#### THE CONSOLE IS CASE SENSITIVE!

##### The tutorial should teach you everything you need to do, but if on the off chance it doesn't start, try restarting the game and not pressing any buttons. The tutorial is quite linear due to time constraints so it'll stop following you if you don't do what it expects.
![bd539a1a5d[1].png](///raw/9f4/z/23dc.png d8426125:671x197:png:webp)

#### Ｗｈｙ　ｔｈｅ　ｊａｍｍｙｎｅｓｓ？
The only compo rule this game breaks is the time limit, I worked alone and everything contained within is entirely from scratch (excluding the IBM Code page 437 font, which is basically on every windows computer anyway).

Links

* TWITTER: https://twitter.com/flatgub
* GET THE GAME AND THE SOURCECODE: https://flatgub.itch.io/retrohacker1993
* TIMELAPSE: https://youtu.be/MFmhJYUOco8

Changelog

#### V0.1.01
* Performance improvement and fixed out of memory issue

#### v0.1.02
* Fixed the disconnection crash
* Fixed more out of memory issues
* Fixed a typo
* Made the renderer render the screen in alternating chunks to avoid further out out of memory issues.

#### v0.1.03
* Removed the FPS counter i accidentally left on
* Removed the address book entry that shouldn't be there
* Many FPS improvements.

#### v0.1.04
* Further FPS improvements
* Fixed the bug which made dialling not find the host
* Fixed the bug where the BBS wouldn't let you log back in
* Fixed the screen clearing crash _(I think)_

#### v0.1.05
* Fixed Renderer lag and screen tearing, thanks JujuAdam (https://www.reddit.com/user/JujuAdam)

Known Bugs

* Keyboard input occasionally doesn't move the player

Genres: simulation

Comments28

adamalexander25 Apr 2017, 03:45

This is great, too bad you didn't finish. I got to the modem and would love to see how the interface gameplay would work.

🎤 Flatgubauthor25 Apr 2017, 04:05

@adamalexander that feature actually does work. While connected to the modem, use $INTERFACE to connect

aidenm12525 Apr 2017, 09:38

It's a very nice game, but it seems to slow down on my computer when connect to hackernet_BBS. Could be that I'm running it off of wine on a Mac. Also, gimme more content - it felt so cool being the pseudo hacker of the 90s :)

DusteD25 Apr 2017, 10:08

That boot screen! :D I'm going to give this a shot later again, but for now, I'm stuck! :D

DusteD25 Apr 2017, 10:10

Unfortunately, I'm getting the out of memory error at the hacker bbs screen :( What I've played so far is übercool, I hope there'll be a patch ^_^

xxDOOMbox25 Apr 2017, 23:12

man i really like the aesthetic of this game and it feels really good to play. the keyboard typing sound even feels good. unfortunately, i cant get anywhere past the tutorial. when i try to connect to home_modem using the alias or directly using the address, it says connection failed, could not find host. and when i try to connect to the local test rig, there is a game crashing bug. ill post a screenshot of the error message here: http://imgur.com/wvyVnwr . i would really like to continue, especially since others in the comments seem to have made it further than i. am i missing something? or are you supposed to be able to connect to either the home modem or the local test rig?

wujood26 Apr 2017, 10:04

Do not apologize for everything. You don't have to! It is a game jam and stuff happens ;)

akusei26 Apr 2017, 20:09

Awesome! Very well done and I really enjoyed that. You should continue to work on it.

xxDOOMbox26 Apr 2017, 20:50

hey ive played again after you patched the game! thanks for updating, i was stoked to get to keep playing, because i liked it so much the first time. i made it through all of the content you were able to put in for the jam and i loved it! honestly, this game is great. i really hope that you continue to work on this. pleeeeeaaaseee continue to work on this. one note i have is that when you interface, the graphics only take up like a quarter of the screen, i think it would be better if you increased the size so that it took up more of the screen. your message in the game said that you have a tendency to drop projects once you start them, and i totally get that, but i encourage you to keep working on this one because i really enjoyed it and i want to play more!!!!! ill be checking back on here and itch.io anxiously awaiting more content!

camilo29 Apr 2017, 01:02

Best LD38 game I played so far.

I just love it.

Thank you!

wtoa1 May 2017, 04:50

Great work, love the gameplay. Reminds me a lot of Uplink in a way!

szczebel19951 May 2017, 05:03

Great entry! Really Original idea and the ascetics are very satisfying, the keyboard sounds made me feel like I type on a really old device :D

TheMonsterFromTheDeep1 May 2017, 05:23

This looks like a really solid start to a game! My main feedback is that I can't really tell what any of the tiles in the interface levels are, so I don't know if they are floors or walls or death traps, which makes it kind of hard to play.

Small unimplemented feature: commands longer than the screen don't wrap or scroll.

Finally, I have this to say: "If you're happy and you know it, illegal command if!" :)

OccultOne1 May 2017, 07:40

I played this on my livestream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srBde18ASdY

I really, really enjoyed this. I didn't get a chance to go into detail, but it's on my "Top Games of LD 38" List this run. Really well done!

redpanda1 May 2017, 20:05

Simply love it 5/5

Epicsoft1 May 2017, 22:37

I felt like a retrohacker. I love this

drestuff2 May 2017, 07:16

Loving the concept of this! I think the aesthetic is well handled and feels very nostalgic as well. I really think this game has a lot of potential if you ever plan on expanding on it! :eye: :computer:

DGSpitzer3 May 2017, 07:29

Wow! This game is amazing! Really good art style and unique feeling of DOS. The keyboard SFX rises up the juiceness a lot!

It would be better if add a "Tutorial" commend that allows the player to see the last tutorial dialogue~

palemachine3 May 2017, 16:02

Aw, man, really sad that you didn't have the time to add some more content, but then again I have to say your idea's really big for a jam and even what's there is amazing. I love games like Uplink and Hacknet and even stuff like Digital: A Love Story, so I had lots of fun with this little tutorial. Interfacing is also a neat idea which I guess would develop into a sort of dungeon crawling mini game.

So, overall, sure, there's not much here, but it looks, feels and plays amazing. Great job.

T6ito3 May 2017, 22:19

Please work more on this, it was interesting and I'd really like to give it a try if complete and tested/debugged. The setting is interesting and it's visually spot on. I'd prefer if you kept the phone numbers instead of IP addresses tho. Gluck!

🎤 Flatgubauthor3 May 2017, 23:33

@t6ito Funnily enough I had the same thought and I've actually moved the system to phone numbers in my personal build. I plan to keep IP addresses for accessing devices on the same network but use phone numbers for accessing external devices and networks.

inventroom4 May 2017, 01:03

Command line interface game? Sign me up! Here's the quick rundown of my thoughts:

PROS

- The effort to make everything feel authentic for the time period is admirable

- Very well-done tutorial

- Unique gameplay in my opinion

- Love the take on the theme

- Potential for a good amount of content, with additional 'quests' being easy to add at any time

CONS

- Gets a little quiet? Maybe some low-key music (you can justify it as it's playing in the hacker's room) to tide it over

For full criticism and breakdown of ranking, as well as candid reactions to gameplay, do check out the video~

Samusoidal4 May 2017, 23:51

Awesome concept, I look forward to seeing a finished version!

RabbitTortoise5 May 2017, 19:17

Very good concept. Unfortunately there's not too much content. It feels good to play. The tutorial is very good, we just need more content, maybe some background music too. Those keyboard sounds are amazing, there are own sound for press and release.

phaze06 May 2017, 17:26

What an amazing concept! You absolutely should continue developing this. (And add autocompete command on tab)

davikin927 May 2017, 23:13

Haha, I can HUGELY relate to your oversleeping story and well... shit happens. I would like to see how the story develops as the "hacking quest" progresses. I was ready to take one of the quests in the bounty lists :open_mouth: I thought: the school thing seems like the easiest quest, but the "Information on a certain person" one seemed more dangerous and interesting :/ I hope you continue the project and let us know how the hacker becomes the best or ends up getting caught. Nice job!

unit6848 May 2017, 12:10

Really nice game, reminds me of Hacknet. It's a shame you didn't get to implement the bounties but I really enjoyed the tutorial and would definitely play the full game if/when it is released.

A small quality of life improvement would be using the up arrow to cycle through recent commands. Otherwise, the game is pretty much spot on! Well done :)