Bitburner

Bitburner is an idle game where cyberpunk realities are combined with real programming inspired by Deus Ex, Hacknet and Else Heart.Break(). It took Fulcrum Games and Hydroflame 5 years to develop the game and it was finally released for free on Steam, where it was warmly welcomed by users.

Plot

The action of Bitburner takes place in a dark cyberpunk world. We take on the role of an anonymous protagonist, who one day receives a message from a mysterious hacker. Guided by him, we try to discover the secrets of the world, which apparently is not what it seems.

Game mechanics

The gameplay in Bitburner is all about hacking: you hack into servers to gain information and money to continue your activities, find new targets or allies among the numerous factions fighting for influence. We spend cash on cybernetic upgrades, which increase the hero's stats and strengthen his hacker network through special, sometimes secret skills. We can also try playing the stock market, using the knowledge we gain to make a lot of money.

However, all this does not play out as an action or arcade game. In fact, we practically don't see any of the locations with our own eyes. Whole game is a classic text-based game, with the difference that we can use the real Java programming language. This does not mean that the production requires at least basic knowledge about it. Yes, it makes it easier to start, but Bitburner presents the puzzles in such a way that even complete novices should have no problem with learning new skills.

Interestingly, programming can also be used to automate gameplay. Players can write scripts to make the game perform some or even all of the actions on its own, following the convention of idle games.

Technical aspects

As a text-based game, Birburner does not offer 3D environments or even 2D images. The whole graphics is a bit like a tweaked version of MS-DOS, with additional options like travel, tutorials, etc. There is also no soundtrack.