Quadrilateral Cowboy
Review

Quadrilateral Cowboy (2016) 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.

Play is in two phases. There are Mission Impossible-style heists where you use ingenuity and cunning to solve puzzles and come away with the artefact or photograph you went in for. The other part of the play is between missions where you interact with your accomplices, chat about life, love and hopes for the future.

There's a lot that's unusual here. Most obvious is the way you type commands to hack systems. Less obvious is the tone and environments you pass through. There's a pared back simplicity to the game that lets the challenge speak for itself and interweave more directly narrative elements.

As you progress the puzzles stack up and become more complex. They culminate in situations where you must pay close attention to the architecture and geography of the level so you can plan your program to trigger a sequence of commands.

The result is a game that makes you feel smart as it gently teaches you how to enter computer commands. It's peculiar in an intriguing way, and cleverly lets you discover its narrative and world at your own pace.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Quadrilateral Cowboy 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 17 months ago.