A Virus In The Terminal

It’s a fun idea that requires careful execution to make it fun.

AUDIO: The game was limited in its audio, as the entire game is played in a pseudo-terminal. I quickly muted the game after a few seconds however because the loud music made it difficult to focus and learn what I needed to do. Yes, just like the meme of turning off the car radio to read the fast food signs better, I had to turn off the music just to read the font better and focus on the game. 

ART: The art for the terminal was great and kept it simple and minimalistic. 

GAMEPLAY LOOP: The developers for this game really pigeon-holed themselves in a losing battle. Although the idea is fun and an interesting spin on the theme (a rogue sentient virus is causing havoc on your computer and using some basic terminal commands you have to find a way to destroy it) such a game requires really careful planning and unique ideas to make it fun, otherwise, it easily begins to feel like a typing puzzle game that has you battling with autocorrect more than the actual enemy.

Written Review

The player downloads a new game for their computer, only to find out the “game” is actually a rogue sentient AI virus hellbent on destroying your computer. It’s your job to try to delete the virus and get your computer back to working order. On the surface, the idea for this game sounds like it’ll really lend itself for interesting and unique interpretations of “hacking”. I went in expecting to see hilarious “hacking” animations, like you’d see in old 80’s-90’s text movies. Or to encounter funny pieces of dialogue or events in the game: maybe the Virus deletes personal family photos, other files on my computer, with fun and interesting dialogue to match. 

 But instead, the game quickly became me trying to read what the different commands were, and struggling to type out exactly what I was seeing. Pressing “>” to see a list of commands wasn’t very helpful since the list disappears only after a few seconds. The inability to maximize the screen (as it plays in a small window) or for the game to take on larger resolution made the stylized font difficult to read. I struggled more with the UI than with the puzzle aspects of the game.

Ways To Improve This Game

Instead of forcing the player to download the game to play it, just have it in the browser. Points are definitely lost when I have to download and run an exe with “Virus” in the name. Allow the player to easily enter or select commands to input, not a fan of having to type out commands for every attempt and repeatedly doing commands because I was unsure if anything worked. 

Let the list of commands stay up for longer than just a few seconds, and only disappear after I’ve input a command.