Sometimes You Have to Hack the System

Hacking is often seen as an activity that is not entertaining or desirable. Hackers are usually depicted as criminals causing damage. However, there are some amazing games that use hacking as a way to subvert the powers in charge whether that's by breaking into a room by hacking a door lock, or something where hacking is how you interact with the world, These games are a chance for players to be creative about how they progress.

This list includes 26 games from the last 16 years, with 365 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to hack the system. We break them down into the following areas:

List Details

PEGI Ratings: PEGI 3 to PEGI 18
ESRB Ratings: ESRB EVERYONE to ESRB MATURE 17+
Australian Ratings: G to R 18+
Genres: Action, Adventure, Battle, Brain Game, Collecting, Communication, Creative, Fighting, Narrative, Physically Active, Platform, Point-and-Click, Puzzle, Race, Role-Play, Sequencing, Shooting, Simulation, Stealth, Strategy and Traversal
Total Likes: 365

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Glean Hacked Information

Watch Dogs Legion

Watch Dogs Legion is an adventure game, the third instalment in the Watch Dogs series. It's set in a fictionalised future dystopian London. You play hackers in the group DedSec seeking to clear their name for bombings in the city.

Operation: Tango

Operation: Tango is an espionage-themed cooperative adventure where two people play as agent or hacker. The agent explores the world while the hacker provides information and checks out the systems you encounter. You must communicate clearly to work...

Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper is a role-play game set in the ruins of interplanetary capitalism. You are an escaped worker exploring a lawless space station, making friends, and (ultimately) trying to escape your past. Each cycle you roll dice and decide how to spend...

Vessels

Vessels is a narrative adventure where you wake to find yourself quarantined inside an airlock with no memory of how you got there. You speak to the crew to work out who you are and try to convince them not to jettison you into space. If you fail you...

Midnight Protocol

Midnight Protocol is a strategy game about hacking that is controlled entirely with the keyboard. You type commands and interactions to hack into different systems and drain them of resources while trying to keep yourself hidden and safe. It's this...

The Last Worker

The Last Worker is a narrative adventure set at the end of capitalism. In an increasingly automated world, you play Kurt, who works in a distribution high-rise and discovers a secret floor of battery-farmed animals and meaningless products. The game...

The Red Strings Club

The Red Strings Club is a futuristic narrative game where you prescribe implants and drinks to people who visit your bar. You talk to patrons, prepare them drinks and coax information out of them to advance the espionage story. It's a unique game that...

Hack Doors and Machines

Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn, and the follow-up game Horizon Forbidden West, has a post-apocalyptic feel familiar from movies like Planet of the Apes. It plunges you into an overgrown landscape with now-crumbling remnants of modern life where animalistic machines...

Detroit: Become Human

Detroit: Become Human is a branching narrative game from Quantic Dream, the studio behind Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. This is the third game in the series and offers a more refined version of the filmic branching experience.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is a running, jumping and shooting game. The latest in the series, Rift Apart focuses on jumping between parallel worlds. Play is similar to other Ratchet & Clank games, retaining the dodging, gunplay, bold collection and...

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is a massive open-world action-adventure game inspired by cyberpunk themes, focused on the merging of humanity and technology. The line between human and machine is heavily blurred in every corner of its world. You have a fully...

Skylanders

Skylanders (Series)

Skylanders uses toy figures to unlock characters and save progress. It is no longer manufactured but can be found second-hand quite cheaply and is a lot of fun for young players, particularly when played in cooperative two-player mode.

Bioshock

Bioshock is a first-person shooting game set in a fantastical underwater city. A dark story unfolds about the misuse of surgery and gene therapy, and what happens when a society develops with a power mad genius in control. It's an unusual combination of...

Quadrilateral Cowboy

Quadrilateral Cowboy is an adventure in a 1990 retro-cyberpunk world where you take on covert mission to infiltrate buildings and security systems. You carefully explore each level hacking security by typing commands into your grey-market equipment.

Reprogram Things

Horizon Forbidden West

Horizon Forbidden West is a post-apocalyptic action-adventure where you explore an overgrown landscape with now-crumbling remnants of modern life. The story of Aloy continues as she sets out to investigate a plague terminating from an arcane frontier...

Spyder

Spyder is a puzzle adventure where you play as Agent 8, a small 6-legged spider-robot that was designed by a British spy agency for attempting to stop an evil organization. You explore the world and can use your sticky legs to walk over any surface or...

Dicey Dungeons

Dicey Dungeons is a video game adventure where you build a deck of cards to represent characters, attacks and weapons. Here the novelty is that these cards combine with dice rolls to determine who wins battles.

868-Hack

868-HACK is a puzzle game where you hack a computer program to collect as much data as you can. It's a unique puzzle as collecting data triggers more enemies to appear so you walk a delicate balance between collecting as much as possible, but not so...

Hacknet

Hacknet is a simulation where you play a hacker completing missions and hacking into systems just by typing. Designed to be as close to real hacking as possible, you use actual commands and hacking tools to explore servers, chat rooms, and gain access...

Beglitched

Beglitched is a puzzle game that combines Candy Crush's matching with Minesweeper's mapping challenges in missions where you foil computer hackers. Play is first traversing the computer network grid and then taking on hackers in match-three puzzles when...

Ctrl Alt Ego

Ctrl Alt Ego is a puzzle game where you a disembodied character taking control of robots and electronics to move around, interact and solve the puzzles. Using a combination of stealth and problem solving to progress the story and get to the bottom of...

Hack 'n' Slash

Hack 'n' Slash is a puzzle adventure game where you tinker with the properties of game objects to explore dungeons and fight enemies. Using your USB sword on enemies hacks them so you can change their game-code and behaviour. It combines a standard...

Hacktag

Hacktag is a fast two-player game: one player is the stealth ‘Agent’ while the other is the virtually-infiltrating ‘Hacker’. You work with the other player to carry out espionage in different settings and complete each challenge.

Citizen Sleeper 2

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector continues the role-play adventure with a new story about an escaped corporate-owned android with a price on its head. Each cycle you roll dice and decide how to spend them, on repairing your ship, on trading or on...

Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum

Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum is a puzzle adventure where you are a cybernetic corporate agent working off a debt to get your life back. You play by breaking into corporations in different ways; go in guns blazing, manipulate time or use supernatural...

Ingress Prime

Ingress Prime is an adventure game that uses your smartphone's GPS to locate you in a game world that correlates with reality. You interact with virtual "portals" located near statues, monuments, and civic and historic buildings in your real world.

Curated lists:
Game genre:
Style of Play:
Components:

How long to play:
User-generated content:	No
Accessibility features:	Yes

Controls
Gamepad:
Mouse And Keyboard:
Touchscreen:
Motion:	Motion Aiming Motion Pointing Motion Tilting Motion Gesture Motion Camera
Remap Controls:
Button Combinations:	Holding Down Buttons Optional Rapid Repeated Pressing Optional No Simultaneous Buttons
Controller Vibration:
Sensitivity:

Getting Started
Onboarding Before Play:
Assistance Getting Starting:	Tutorials Practice Area View Control Mapping Assistance With Controls Reaction-Time Not Critical Low Pressure Adjust Speed No Jump Scares
Assistance For Progressing:	Guaranteed Progress With God Mode Bank Progress With Frequent Checkpoints Assisted Progress With Boosts Assisted Progress With Hints Assisted Recall for Characters Assisted Recall for Narrative and Dialogue Save Progress Anytime

Reading
Reading Level:
Text Visibility:	Large Clear Text High Contrast Text
Subtitles:
Captions:
Voice Acted:

Navigation
Clarity:
Head-Up Display:
Menu Navigation:

Visual
Contrast:
Interactive Elements:
Visual Distractions:
Audio Cues for Visual Events:
Narration for Visual Elements:
	Motion Sickness Friendly
Colour Options:
Play Without Sight:
Violence:

Audio
	Balance Audio Levels
Audio Events:
	Play Without Hearing

Communication
Player-to-Player Online Communication:
Online Communication Assistance:

Difficulty
Difficulty Options:	Simple and Full Version No Memorisation Advantage No Hidden Information No Deceit Advantage No Colour Advantage No Mathematics Advantage No Weighing Decisions

Getting Started
Assistance Getting Started:	Clear Manual Electronic Version of Manual Electronic Version of Manual for Screen Readers Getting Started Video Digital Version Reference Aid
Assistance Progressing:	Play Order Tokens (Or play order doesn’t change) Reaction-Time Not Critical Low Pressure Low Impact Catch Up Rule

Reading
Reading Level:
Necessary Text Visibility:	Large Clear Text on Board (Or no text required) Large Clear Text on Cards (Or no text required) High Contrast Text (Or no text required) QR Code For Text (Or no text required) Primary and Secondary Text Distinguishable (Or no text required) Information Orientation Clear Icons

Physical
Pieces:	Components are Distinguishable by Touch Components are Replaceable No Non-Standard Dice (Or No Dice) No Tiny Pieces No Paper Money No Sprawl
Cards:	Large Card Size Standard Card Shape Limited Hand Management No Excessive Card Shuffling No Right-Handed Advantage
Placement:	No Unbound Placement Player Components Not Shared No Fiddly Placement Easily Verbalised Actions

Visual
Printed Visibility:	Colour Blind Friendly Design Double-Coding Colour High Contrast Colours
Component Identifiability:	Outline Key Elements No Busy Backgrounds Easily Verbalised Game State No Close Inspection Disadvantage Playable Without Sight

Audio
Communication:	Audio Cues Mirrored Visually (Or no critical audio signals) No Pressured Reveals No Pressured Communication Playable Without Hearing

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