Hacktag

requires a connection to servers to be played. but sometimes you can't connect to those servers. don't pay for this game.

Really fun gameplay but I'm confused by the game design? There doesn't appear to be a purpose to creating a new character apart from having a different race but it also resets your levels when you do that.
There's basically zero charm in the game to keep me invested in it. So I can't recommend it beyond the main gameplay being interesting.

If you're trying to play with a friend, good luck. There are two spots where it loads that can just fail to load/connect and you are left on a loading screen forever and have to close the game and try again. And it's not like 10% of the time either, it's about 75% of the time it will just fail to connect to the other player.

With how old this game is, I'd expect the basic multiplayer connection bugs to have been ironed out by now, but nope

A nice and charming experience, an appealing art style, the coop part is the highlight of course. I couldn't manage to play online tho.. But if you have a friend to play with it's definitely a game you should try !

In single-player, Hacktag is too hectic to really be playable; you're trying to do too much at once. But it has one of the best two-player co-op modes of all time. You know how in any cyberpunk heist, there is an agent on the ground doing the dirty work and another agent back in the van hacking the system? In Hacktag, each player is one of those agents. It's a simple formula, but it is executed very well.

The game also has a quirky sense of humor that doesn't always land, but it does give it a lot of personality. The story missions are generally better than the procedurally-generated ones, but even the latter can still be quite enjoyable.

It's a great game to play with two people for relatively short stints, playing a mission or two and then setting it down to come back to another time.

The core gameplay loop is pretty fun, but it doesn't vary.
Once you have played for two hours, you will experience that for the rest of your time.
There are some emergent moments with guards and the antivirus, but other than that, it's cut and dry.
It would be more enjoyable if it didn't require and EGREGIOUS amount of missions to unlock simple cosmetics.
If you want a specific skin, that is dozens and dozens of hours of grinding.
Not a bad game by any means, just better suited for a mobile time-waster rather than a full PC game.

Hacktag is one of those hidden gems that do not appear on the front page. I found the game through exploring the games Steam had to offer and this one got my interest with the game being about hacking and co-operation. Little did I know I would have a lot of fun with this game.

Hacktag is all about hacking like the name suggests. The basic objective is to hack 999 GB of data. There are currently 2 other objective types as well, which are finding out the password of boss computer and hacking 3 mainframes. Whatever your objective is the gameplay is similar in each one.

Hacktag’s gameplay is always in co-op, even if you are playing solo. You either play as stealth agent inside the building or as a hacker finding your way through the network or both if you’re playing single player mode. As a stealth agent you’re in the building opening firewalls so the hacker can advance in the network and open doors for the agent while both of you are hacking away all the computers in sight to gather precious data. Simple, right?

Well, simple doesn’t always mean easy. As a stealth agent you need to avoid guards and cameras and a few occasional… surprises. As a hacker you will encounter scanners and antiviruses which are eager to catch you… and a few occasional surprises as well. In order to pass by you will need to work together. Stealth agent can disable scanners and antiviruses for a moment and the hacker can disable cameras and distract guards by tactical phone calls or making coffee. Yes, you read correctly, guards will investigate if a coffee machine suddenly starts making coffee. But most importantly, you need to work together for some doors and the main computers need both characters to access and when that silent alarm is about to go off, both of you need to be disabling it. I recommend completing tutorial first so you get the idea how to play but once you get the hang of it, you’re in for quite the adventures!

Hacktag offers adventures through story modes. Each character you create has a story of their own and it’s always generated the moment you create one so even if you create the exact same character again, the story can be different. You’ll encounter quite many references to media, TV shows, other games and people which increases Hacktag’s charm. As you play you will unlock skills to help you on your journey and loot safes, which I’ll get to later.

Hacktag offers different skills for your character. They can be easier minigames, faster hacking and a one-time-used skill per mission, one of them being a smoke bomb to vanish from guards and make your escape if caught. Test them all to find out what suits you!

Remember the loot safes? The game offers you a loot safe every time when you complete a mission. But no worries, the game has absolutely no micro-transactions, loot keys and whatsoever. Once you get a safe, it’s instantly ready to open. The safes contain skins, clothes, accessories and more for your characters but they are not needed to advance the actual gameplay. The cosmetics are actually so stylish it’s fun to collect them. Big thank you to developers for keeping the game this way. When I purchased the game, I got the full game! It’s also only 1 GB which is also welcome in the world of 50+ GB being a standard for a game.

The developers deserve their own part in the review. They are wonderful people! The game has its own Discord channel where you can find players to play with you and talk to developers, talk about the game, suggest new things to the game and mention if you encounter a bug. The devs notice your messages and react to them. Not only that but sometimes you may be lucky to even play with a developer! I got to play with a developer one day and that high score still keeps its’ place. One day I’ll make it even higher but even though I get those sweet S ranks in single player as well, it isn’t easy to beat... until today, at the time of this edit there is a new high score! The game is getting new languages over time and is quite often on sale. It also has special missions during specific times of the year.

Once you get the hang of it, Hacktag is easy to pick up and play and that’s why I like it so much. You don’t need too much time to play a game or two and maybe even more than that if you feel like it. I tend to play more than I thought and that’s what a good game does. Well worth the price!

Now please excuse me. There’s hacking to be done.

This is a polished, full-fledged game with a lot of dialogue, missions, unlockable skills, customization options, and much more. Unfortunately, the tutorial alone bored both me and my friend out of our damn minds, and the first mission was no better either. We couldn't care to continue. I also hated the isometric controls (even on the Agent) and several introduced minigames.

Interesting game with a nice concept. While its not the first to come up with asymmetrical stealth gameplay its still not something you usually see around. Not to be played solo since its too hard, the developers said they are looking into making a better SP mode.

The game is quite simple and works well due to it. One player infiltrates a building and the other assists him remotely, both have to open passages to each other, make distractions and if the teammate is captured, rescue them. Its an enjoyable experience overall, failures and successes alike, and a nice change of pace to other coop games where everyone do the same role. Theres 3 different types of game modes, although they are quite similar since it always involving hacking computers, but with a different priority in mind.

The missions arent randomly generated so eventually you will get some repeats here and there, until you have done enough of them to unlock your next quest mission. Theres different stories and you will need to try new characters to experience them. The game has plenty of animal puns and silly humor for those who enjoy it.

Sadly Hacktag has some technical issues, from performance problems and lack of graphic options to lag/desynchronization on multiplayer. I had issues playing with a friend but with 9000km and 180ms between us, I think its forgivable to have problems with such high ping. The developers have acknowledged the bugs and are looking into fixing them. They are quite active on discord and will do their best to help the user, which is a plus.

If you have a friend to play with, and some patience to some minor setbacks, I think this game is quite worth your time.

Note: unlike what some people are writing, the lootboxes on this game are totally free. You earn and immediately can open them to get cosmetics without paying anything.

There are many game breaking bugs while playing online, I asked Steam for a refund. This could have been a nice game if it didn't have so many problems. I also think the character customization and choosing dialogue lines without any effect are both useless. I would have preferred two well thought-out characters.

Good for a few hours of fun, but the game is awfully simplistic. After you get a couple unlocked skills (which why are they unlocks in the first place?), many of which are tiny boosts which amount to filler, the game just stops progressing and stops being interesting. Both the hacker and the thief have an extremely limited number of actions they can do, so most of the time you are just moving from place to place, waiting for your buddy to do something, then they sit around while you do something. I like the hacking bits, which have DDR arrow combinations you have to do in a limited time, or matching letter and number combinations with your partner. But that gets real boring since that's pretty much all the variety there is. Perhaps if you care a lot about best times and trying to beat the best records you'll get more mileage out of this, but I'm more interested in game mechanics and coop puzzles than score attacks.

DO NOT BUY Unplayable (Online Desync Issues): The game desyncs so much I can't play online with my friends. The final straw was in a mission my friend hacked a firewall, on their end they hacked it, on mine it's not hacked. Therefore I can't progress, and they can't hack it again for me causing a complete soft-lock of the level.
Also encountered the following bugs:
-Lobby one friend gets to the screen where you select mission, the other remains trapped on the 'connecting...' screen
-While game is loading, one player gets in the game, the other is trapped at the 'press any key to start' but pressing keys doesn't do anything.
-While chatting with the client, I can press Q to get the options of what to say, but can't click any of the options nor the 1/2/3 keys causing another soft-lock
-During mini-games like when both players need to find the matching combinations my friend's combo displayed on my screen isn't the same as what they see on their own screen. Similar problems with other minigames of constant desyncs.
-Opening doors sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. I can try 8 times to open a door before it actually opens.

The game looks fun, but it's completely unplayable online until the netcode of this game gets a serious overhaul.

Good concept, fun to play.
Enjoy it in the first few hours with my friend.
But after that, it is just repeated content. Same maps, same path.

The game itself seems simple but the co-op element is amazing. It is definitively one of those games I would play with a buddy all afternoon. Except that I can never play that much, or at all, since the game crashes and disconnects either of us constantly.

And guess what, if either player drops for any reason - game over. No matter how late or early you are into the mission. Sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 20 or even 30 minutes if you are having a hard time. It's just a flat out boot to both of your faces. "Play Online" and "Play Local" are extremely confusing (specially when playing with a bud instead of matchmaking).

Also, party invites seems buggy as hell, since sometimes your buddy is invited then disconnects/crashes and then comes back but is not at your party and you can't remove it - means both of you have to close and re-open the game. To get in a. freaking. party.

If we could finish the 2nd mission without 2 hours attempts due to crash/disconnect and weird bugs, I would definitively recommend it, but be warned that the game still has some problems and quirks to get sorted. If you are patient enough to get through those you are probably gonna love the game.

Also, their support is very good and reliable. The things the game might have been lacking in compatibility and stability are certainly compensated by their support team.

8/10

I've been excited to try Hacktag ever since I saw it mentioned on Co-Optimus prior to release. Clandestine was one of my favorite games of 2015, and Hacktag promised to add more polish to an already solid formula. Both games are asymmetrical co-op games, in which one player is an agent, sneaking around inside the building, and the other a handler or hacker, helping from outside the physical location. In Hacktag, you infiltrate office spaces that are patrolled by guards and monitored by cameras, that also typically have some alarms to deactivate and laser grids to dodge. Your objective is data - it can be housed on certain computers or servers, and sometimes you'll just collect everything and let it be sorted out later.

If there's one thing that Hacktag nails, it's the gameplay. On that front, Hacktag was everything that I wanted. For instance, here's a play-by-play: The hacker makes a phone ring across the room to distract a guard so the agent can physically hack a terminal to bypass a firewall, granting the hacker access to cameras in the next hallway. The hacker then hacks the cameras to disable them so the agent can pass by unnoticed. The levels are tense, and there are many ways for the hacker to support the agent and vice versa. The game plays well, is clear about player noise and enemy sightlines, and has a neat graphical style. Contrary to Clandestine, the tension is equal for both the hacker and the agent. Antivirus is constantly patrolling the network, and can capture the hacker and isolate him into a single terminal.

As you complete levels, you also unlock skills to take into missions with you. My favorites were a skill that allowed me to download data more quickly, one that made hacking minigames easier, and one that allowed either the agent or the hacker to go invisible for 15 seconds. The most hilarious skill was one entitled "Stubborn," that made the agent resist arrest when captured by a guard. This usually allowed the hacker time to get in position and close a door on the guard, securing the agent's escape. One irritation here is that you seem to unlock skills randomly through mission completion. I never unlocked the "Stubborn" skill although my partner did, and there were skills I had acquired that he hadn't unlocked as well. A better system would be to tie skill unlocks to player level, which although in the game, has no current function as far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, everything else about the game outside of the gameplay is just a little...off. First of all, the English translations can be a little rough, and sometimes text will require a second reading to entirely comprehend. One skill, that allows the hacker or agent to download data from multiple computers at once, reads something like "the agent or hacker can download data from many PC in the room in which he is," which is some tremendously clumsy phrasing. It might've helped if developer Piece of Cake would've hired a native speaker.

Additionally, the game bafflingly includes loot boxes that you unlock after successful runs. The boxes can contain clothes for your character, money (for buying other cosmetic items), and player icons. This aspect of the game didn't necessarily take anything away from the experience, but it does seem sort of inconsistent with how I imagine most people will play the game. If I'm not mistaken, I'd imagine that most players will bring a friend and complete the story of the game, not play random missions with random partners to show off their icon and slick threads.

Speaking of the story, I couldn't really find it comprehensible. I know that one company that we infiltrated was a media company, one company was a social media company, another company created some novel complex algorithm, and there was some sort of animal fighting ring going on. That's about all I got from the story, so perhaps some work can be done there.

Lastly, there are a ton of broken achievements in the game. For instance, I know for a fact that I have received S-ranks as both the hacker and the agent, I've set my partner free, I've slammed a door on a guard 20 times to save my partner, I've completed a mission without getting caught, I've played online with a partner, and I've hacked a boss computer, yet I have none of the achievements that correspond to those tasks. I'm not really an achievement hunter typically, so this isn't a big deal. But still, it would be nice for these to work as intended.

If you're a fan of co-op gameplay, I feel confident in saying you'll have a good time with Hacktag. It plays well and is well-designed, and requires coordination and communication with your partner. Unfortunately, there are a lot of rough edges, including odd English translations, the bizarre inclusion of loot boxes, an incomprehensible story that is told mostly in strange IM chats, and achievements that don't unlock. However, Piece of Cake nails the gameplay, and that's the most important thing.

It's unfortunate that such a neat concept is implemented so terribly.

The game is a buggy mess. Do not buy it. It's the first game I've ever had to refund. I literally cannot complete the tutorial; the door-hacking minigame got confused which side I was on and my key presses were altering the wrong set of numbers. I quit out to try again and now any time I try to start the tutorial the game just gets stuck on the loading screen forever. This was after it completely ignored my changes to window resolution until I toggled fullscreen on and then back off.

I feel deceived because this game isn't technically in Early Access, yet feels like it is with the sheer number of bugs and the pace of active development. Maybe it'll be worth it in another half-year or so. Until then, don't touch it.

When I first purchased this game, there were bugs galore. In the few moths since, Piece of Cake Studios has fixed many of these bugs and has been nothing but helpful AF in squashing any other bugs. I am use to AAA game devs that do not seem to give a crap about what gamers think but the folks at POCS seem to LISTEN to their customers and take into account what we want. The game still has a few bugs here and there but I have to say I will continue to support this developer just for their customer service alone if nothing else. Game companies like this NEED to know that we will support them as long as they continue to support US. 10/10

Getting into a multyplayer game is a slow and buggy process. The game itself is very simple. 90% of the jobs inside the game can be done by either the hacker or the field agent. The only thing they need each other for is bailing each other out of jail and opening doors (or firewalls as they are called for the hacker.)

Play a few levels and you've seen everything there is to see. Game gets boring and repetative fast. Not enough content. Looks more like an alpha access game.

This is honestly a pretty great game. It's fun, fast paced, the co-op elements are brilliant and the gameplay is simple yet challenging. That said, I wish all of the challenge came from the design, but sadly most of it comes from the unpredictable controls. Activating certain objects requires really precide positioning, making disabling certain traps way more challenging than it should be. And from playing as the hacker, the movement between nodes is unpredictable. I found my self in a situation where I was just holding one direction only to see my self shoot left or right and getting captured. For a game this reliant on swift movement, this is enough to make it unplayable.

*VERSION FRANÇAISE EN DESSOUS*

Hacktag is what I would call an "old-school" asymmetric cooperation game. You have one hacker and one infiltrated agent.

Here, you do not need an ally to pull that lever at the same time, push that box or simply help you defeat a boss. An AI can do that. No, you NEED your ally to progress in the level by distracting the right guard while you pass behind him, disabling a scanner so you can infiltrate the network in a sneaky way, opening the right door or slamming said door in the face of the guard who caught you.

Pros

• I really had fun while playing Hacktag, either online or in split-screen with friends. It should be noted that the most violent thing you can do is slamming a door on a guard. No fighting. No weapon.
  
  
• The characters are very well designed and quite customizable. Maybe foxes soon *-*
  
  
• The graphics are colourful and enjoyable. Each corporation has its own visual theme.
  
  
• Lots of events with themed unlockables.
  
  
• The devs are easily reachable (via Discord) and are working very hard to fix any bug we report to them. (I have discovered one during the Paris Games Week, and it was fixed in the next patch.)
  

Cons

• Few players available via matchmaking. This is still early-access. The matchmaking suffers from 2 factors: many people bought the game to specifically play with a friend and the game is lacking visibility. Easy-fix: Spread the word!
  
  
• Bugs. You WILL encounter bugs, mostly in online modes (at least at the time of writing). The devs are aware of that and working hard to solve them. (For instance, when I bought the game, you could not do the tutorial (infinite loading). It was fixed the same day this bug was introduced.)
  
  
• The gameplay can feel repetitive when you start mastering a given difficulty level. However more minigames were recently added (I have not yet tested them) and mastering hard difficulty is still, well, hard.
  

Pros

• J'ai passé de très bons moments sur Hacktag, que ce soit en ligne ou en écran splitté avec des amis (oui le jeu se joue en bon vieux écran splitté). Il faut cependant noter que l'action la plus violente sera de claquer une porte au nez des gardes. Pas de combat. Pas d'arme.
  
  
• Les personnages sont très bien faits et assez personnalisables. Les renards seront peut-être là bientôt *-*
  
  
• L'univers graphique est très coloré et appréciable. Chaque entreprise a son propre thème visuel reconnaissable.
  
  
• Beaucoup d'événements avec des objets thématisés à débloquer.
  
  
• Les développeurs sont très facilement accessibles (via Discord) et travaillent d'arrache-pied pour corriger chaque bug que les joueurs rapportent. (J'en ai découvert un durant la Paris Games Week, et il a été corrigé dans le patch suivant.)
  

Cons

• Peu de joueurs disponible sur le matchmaking en ligne. Le jeu est encore en accès anticipé. Le matchmaking est affecté pour deux raisons : pas mal de monde a acheté le jeu pour jouer avec un partenaire précis en tête et le jeu souffre d'un manque de visibilité pour le moment. La solution : Faites passer le mot !
  
  
• Bugs. Vous ALLEZ rencontrer des bugs, principalement en mode en ligne (à l'heure où j'écris ces lignes). Les développeurs sont au courant et font tout leur possible pour les corriger. (Par exemple, lorsque j'ai acheté le jeu, il n'était plus possible de faire le tutoriel (chargement infini). Ce bug a été corrigé dans la journée où il a été introduit.)
  
  
[*] Le gameplay peut sembler répétitif lorsque vous maîtrisez un certain niveau de difficulté. Cependant, de nouveaux minijeux ont été ajoutés (je ne les ai pas encore testés) et maîtriser les cartes difficiles reste encore difficile.

Purchased this for my wife and I - we had fun working as a team.
I would recommend using a gamepad over keyboard/mouse as it plays much better.
This game has great graphics and fun co-op gameplay (from point of view of in the same room with someone you know - can't comment on playing with randoms).

I recommend checking this game out, especially if you've got someone to play it with.