Initial scrolling of the Steam Summer Sale seems pretty lackluster, but digging through the comments sections in other threads, a few gems have stood out, and it doesn't appear we have a thread dedicated to this yet, so post what you think are the best deals here!

Not mandatory ofc, but it'd be helpful if...

One game per top level post, so comments stemming from it are focused on on just it.
Hyperlink the game title to its Store Page
Include both the normal and sale price / %off
Include a short blurb about the game - if it's one you've played before, what did you like about it? If you're diving in blind, what grabbed your attention?

Good hunt'n!

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[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

hackmud ~~$19.99~~ $14.99 (25% off)

If you're into scripting or hacking you should check this game out. It's an interesting twist on the Multi-User Dungeon genre. The game presents mostly as a command-line interface where your goal is to seek out targets to pwn for money/points. NPC targets will have vulnerabilities you need to find and exploit in order to expose a hackable part. Once found you engage hackermode where you'll have a timelimit to break the target's security (mostly through bruteforce cracking). The game allows you to write short scripts in JavaScript to automate searching for vulnerabilities and cracking security.

Being Multi-User, there are other users online doing what you're doing and you're free to chat with them and exchange scripts. You're also free to write malicious scripts that will steal money/points from others who don't check scripts before running them!

The part I found cool was that the game mirrors IRL hacking much closer than other hacking games. You'll often need to submit incorrect data to NPC targets to get an error message that will contain hints about where to go next. Ex. A webpage has "News" and "About Us" sections. You can request a section that doesn't exist to get an error message that shows all acceptable sections: "News", "About Us", or "Employees". You've found a hidden section! Using scripts to send a bunch of mal-formed data at a target and then analyzing which ones generate an exploitable error is part of real-life security testing.

[–] pathief@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I really enjoyed hacknet, is this similar? :O

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

Only the theme really.

In hacknet, when you try to hack a target you'll see it has SSH and FTP services running. You run fake programs like SSHcrack.exe and FTPbounce.exe to exploit those services and the you're in.

In hackmud, when you try to hack a target you'll see it has an "ez_35" lock and a "c001" lock. The ez_35 lock requires an unlock word, something like "open", "unlock", "release" and a digit between 0 and 9. The c001 lock requires a color like "red" "purple" "lime". You need to enter the right inputs within the time limit to hack the target. You can do it manually, but most targets have too many locks with too many options to manually guess all of them in time. You'll need to write your own real life script in JavaScript that can detect locks and automatically guess every option for those locks. If you've ever done programming challenges then you shouldn't have too much difficulty writing these scripts. If you're new to programming it's not the easiest tutorial. The game provides very little direct help.