Hey! Thanks so much to everyone who’s already backed 868-BACK, and we’ve already met the minimum target so this game is definitely getting finished. (Of course I have to mention - any more would help, so if you’re on the fence there’s still time to support the project.)
I’m going to go into a little bit of detail about how the server map works. It’s not going to be a lot, but if you’re one of the people who really like to keep everything under wraps until you’re actually playing, feel free to stop reading here.
. . .
If you’ve played 868-HACK, you’ll remember there was never any choice about who or what you were hacking. You’d just start the game and straight away you’re hacking something, and then if you succeeded then you’re hacking something else after that, with more and more countermeasures opposing you, escalating until you inevitably crash and burn.
In contrast, as soon as you start a game of 868-BACK, you’re faced with a choice: which server am I going to hack?
Here’s a typical opening: a choice between two relatively undefended servers on opposite sides of the map. The main reason to choose at this point is that each one offers a different device. There’s also some other information: starting programs and other resources, their connectivity in the network, which corporations have influence over them.. but for a start there’s devices.
Devices are your long-term build - if you’ve played Cinco Paus they fill a comparable role to the magic artifacts (being an inventory that you build up over multiple rounds), but how they operate is completely different. In the screen above you can see the tooltip for /exorcism, one of the devices I’m choosing between: it makes Daemon enemies explode when killed, damaging other enemies next to them. Again if you’ve played 868-HACK you’ll recognise this is related to the .D-BOM prog: lots of effects from the original show up in a new and different form.
I played through that round and got 34 points.. you see that server’s three neighbours are now accessible. These will be more difficult rounds: each of them has a powerup protecting it, and one even has two. And of course each of them has a different device - we’re starting to build up our inventory.
In 868-HACK, as you reached increasingly difficult servers, of course it became more difficult to score so you would shift to focusing on survival. Your score adds up across rounds, and the majority of your points would be scored in the easier rounds with just a few here and there in the harder rounds. In coming back to it I felt there’s something a little strange in how that means your final score doesn’t exactly reflect the most difficult challenges you faced! And as I was developing the server selection map, I needed answers for why you would ever pick a riskier server: the first answer is more highly protected data is more valuable. Servers now have a score multiplier based on how many powerups they have, deepening 868’s risk/reward gameplay by tempting you to connect to the most dangerous servers you can find.
I hope this helps you to see the direction I’m taking things!
