There is a certain charm to Hackmud where, despite some of the flaws that I have been very much accustomed to over my 12,000 logged Steam hours in this game, I still continue to play this game, or at the very least have an interaction with it, daily. If I were to make a shortlist of my favourite video games of all time, would Hackmud be in this list? Compared to actual video gaming masterpieces? After a lot of deliberation, my answer is: "No at its core, but considering everything I've been through with it, yes". Hackmud stands as a testament to the sheer entertainment potential of even the smallest and roughest of games with the right kind of mechanics to allow for infinite user-generated content.

The game has a myriad of issues and there is no escaping this fact. The PvP metagame is in a poor state due to a large number of small things all coalescing together into a situation where it's not fun for either the attacker or defender to participate in it. You have nothing to gain, but everything to lose. The game is confusing and hard to follow for new players, who frequently pop out of the tutorial asking questions like "Okay, now what do I do?", to which the common response is pawning them off to a script that gets sent to them privately right as they migrate, in a haze of flashy animations, which in itself looks incredibly suspicious right after the game has gotten done telling you not to trust dodgy scripts. The economy has been severely impacted by now-outlawed methods of out-of-game PvE farming, leaving a severe wealth imbalance between the haves and have-nots.

Despite all of this, however, I keep playing this game. I spend hours interacting with its community. I plan things I want to do in-game when I'm not in-game. I spend months crafting narrative tapestries and content, pro-bono, to present to the small microcosm of a community that has formed around the game -- and I love every second of it. But why? Why dedicate so much time to a game with so many fundamental flaws?

Something about the environment and interaction mechanism of Hackmud makes it deeply satisfying to make things in it. When writing and uploading scripts, it feels like I am forming my own little portion of the multi-user domain to my liking; conquering it piece by piece, script by script. It also works interestingly well as a mechanism for delivering your own content -- everything about the game from the interface to its own game-lore is shrouded in a layer of mystique that makes discovering something new an exciting experience. There are some shortcomings for delivering content with it (primarily the requirement for all arguments passed to a script to be formatted as JSON), but personally I just see this as a challenge to overcome in creative ways.

For a more overall critique of the game; it gets very challenging towards the endgame. Its difficulty curve is punishing and it will not hold your hand. You are expected to find your own way in the MUD once you've gone through its small tablescraps of a tutorial that, in itself, still needs to spend a lot of time explaining just what you've gotten yourself into. If you are not from a coding background, this game will turn you into a coder if you stick with it. It will push you to your limits and will make you keep learning new things. If you're not in any way at all interested in coding, do not pick up this game; I cannot recommend it to someone who does not want to put effort into scripting stuff. If you are interested, however, what is here will keep you occupied for a good while. The overwhelmingly cathartic feeling of spending months working on the perfect script to crack a hard lock or do some other initally Herculean-seeming task are the most satisfying moments I've ever felt in gaming.

(N.B. the game itself will not teach you how to write JavaScript code. The community is extremely helpful and patient, however, and will tutor those with even the most barebones of knowledge and turn them into competent coders with enough time. I went into Hackmud only tangentially knowing what JavaScript even is from a high school class years ago, but the community has nurtured my coding abilities to the point where I can write most stuff I need to on my own)

At the end of the day, this game is not perfect -- far from it. It is, however, a fascinating and deeply fulfilling game to play if you can get over its hurdles; an easy recommendation for those who are able to deal with its difficulty or are willing to interact with its overall friendly community until they can become self-sufficient in Trust's harsh atmosphere.

Remember to run scripts.get_level!

There is a certain charm to Hackmud where, despite some of the flaws that I have been very much accustomed to over my 12,000 logged Steam hours in this game, I still continue to play this game, or at the very least have an interaction with it, daily. If I were to make a shortlist of my favourite video games of all time, would Hackmud be in this list? Compared to actual video gaming masterpieces? After a lot of deliberation, my answer is: "No at its core, but considering everything I've been through with it, yes". Hackmud stands as a testament to the sheer entertainment potential of even the smallest and roughest of games with the right kind of mechanics to allow for infinite user-generated content. The game has a myriad of issues and there is no escaping this fact. The PvP metagame is in a poor state due to a large number of small things all coalescing together into a situation where it's not fun for either the attacker or defender to participate in it. You have nothing to gain, but everything to lose. The game is confusing and hard to follow for new players, who frequently pop out of the tutorial asking questions like "Okay, now what do I do?", to which the common response is pawning them off to a script that gets sent to them privately right as they migrate, in a haze of flashy animations, which in itself looks incredibly suspicious right after the game has gotten done telling you not to trust dodgy scripts. The economy has been severely impacted by now-outlawed methods of out-of-game PvE farming, leaving a severe wealth imbalance between the haves and have-nots. Despite all of this, however, I keep playing this game. I spend hours interacting with its community. I plan things I want to do in-game when I'm not in-game. I spend months crafting narrative tapestries and content, pro-bono, to present to the small microcosm of a community that has formed around the game -- and I love every second of it. But why? Why dedicate so much time to a game with so many fundamental flaws? Something about the environment and interaction mechanism of Hackmud makes it deeply satisfying to make things in it. When writing and uploading scripts, it feels like I am forming my own little portion of the multi-user domain to my liking; conquering it piece by piece, script by script. It also works interestingly well as a mechanism for delivering your own content -- everything about the game from the interface to its own game-lore is shrouded in a layer of mystique that makes discovering something new an exciting experience. There are some shortcomings for delivering content with it (primarily the requirement for all arguments passed to a script to be formatted as JSON), but personally I just see this as a challenge to overcome in creative ways. For a more overall critique of the game; it gets very challenging towards the endgame. Its difficulty curve is punishing and it will not hold your hand. You are expected to find your own way in the MUD once you've gone through its small tablescraps of a tutorial that, in itself, still needs to spend a lot of time explaining just what you've gotten yourself into. If you are not from a coding background, this game will turn you into a coder if you stick with it. It will push you to your limits and will make you keep learning new things. [b]If you're not in any way at all interested in coding, do not pick up this game; I cannot recommend it to someone who does not want to put effort into scripting stuff[/b]. If you [i]are[/i] interested, however, what is here will keep you occupied for a good while. The overwhelmingly cathartic feeling of spending months working on the perfect script to crack a hard lock or do some other initally Herculean-seeming task are the most satisfying moments I've ever felt in gaming. (N.B. the game itself will [b]not[/b] teach you how to write JavaScript code. The community is extremely helpful and patient, however, and will tutor those with even the most barebones of knowledge and turn them into competent coders with enough time. I went into Hackmud only tangentially knowing what JavaScript even [i]is[/i] from a high school class years ago, but the community has nurtured my coding abilities to the point where I can write most stuff I need to on my own) At the end of the day, this game is not perfect -- far from it. It is, however, a fascinating and deeply fulfilling game to play if you can get over its hurdles; an easy recommendation for those who are able to deal with its difficulty or are willing to interact with its overall friendly community until they can become self-sufficient in Trust's harsh atmosphere. Remember to run scripts.get_level!