I'm really not into gaming much but every now and then I find something that appeals to me.

Bitburner is a cyberpunk-themed incremental RPG where you, the player, take the role of an unknown hacker in a dark, dystopian world. When a mysterious hacker called jump3R messages you, he/she confirms your suspicions that there is something wrong with the world around you. Now, aided by jump3R, you embark on a quest to gain money and power by any means necessary, in the hopes that this will lead to to uncover the secrets that you’ve been searching for.

I may be a little late to the party and I'm not even sure if Bitburner is under active development anymore but I'm fairly hooked on this game. It reminds me a little of Dekrim without the multiplayer aspect.

The main goal of the game is to manipulate computers and this can to a large extent be automated using Netscript (a subset of JavaScript). I think it's a fantastic idea to incorporate actual programming into the game. Maybe I'll end up learning JavaScript after all.

Installing augmentations (activating multipliers for your stats) requires a soft reset meaning you loose most of your progress so far but this allows you to explore all angles of the game. You can be a hardened gangster one run and a corporate grey suit the next.

Bitburner is very much a waiting game but I can appreciate this. You spend a little time trying to write some smart scripts, spin up your scripts, set your character to work for some company or faction and go off and endure your day in meatspace. Then come back to the game 8 or 20 hours later to check in on your progress and do some manual stuff. Repeat. This way of playing suits me very well.

Some random thoughts:

• It would be really cool if it was possible to telnet/ssh into the server and play Bitburner from within a terminal emulator. Maybe something similar can be achieved with a modern cli browser?
• I miss some way of interacting with other players.
• Hacking mechanics is a bit too static and manual.
• CTF missions would be cool.

I haven't finished the game yet but I've gotten many hours of enjoyment out of it so far. The most interesting and fun part about it is without a doubt to write scripts and try to pwn the world. It is not very realistic but a lot of fun!

While writing this I just got an invitation to join one of the endgame factions.

Hack The Planet!

UPDATE Mon 14 Dec 2020 05:19:24 PM CET

When I started playing Bitrunner I tried my best to avoid reading any spoilers and now after destroying BitNode-1 and unlocking quite a lot of new features and game mechanics I feel the above text might be somewhat unfair. Bitrunner is a much more richer experience than I had atticipated.