BRUTEFORCE by TotteriLudum
Four suspects. One hacker. One terminal.
*This is BRUTEFORCE. A thrilling terminal-based mystery. *
It is 1996. Early morning. The player, a hacker, suddenly receives word of an attack on the ceasefire negotiations.
Something has got to be done. And you are the one with the skillset to do it.
A contact offers you four suspects. An investigation is necessary. Perhaps one that goes beyond that which the law can condone.
The hacker's only tool is a old computer that is suffering from heat issues.
We recommend fetching a pen and a piece of paper for this one. Strange, I know, but you might need it for the investigation.
If you love detective novels/shows, or are a fan of terminal-based hacking games, you will likely enjoy this.
Gameplay tips:
The help command is your friend.
Read the chat message in the introduction carefully!
As the computer is suffering from heat issues, you should be wary when the screen turns a warm shade. When this happens, you should 'restart' the terminal.
Game length: 20 minutes to 1 hour (or more). But feel free to check it out even if you don't have the time for a full run!
Developer's note: All characters and locations depicted are entirely fictional. Any real life similarities are coincidental. We hope you enjoy our game.
Patch notes:
V. 1.01: Minor bug fixed. Thanks @bjakubowski!
V. 1.02: Readability issue on certain devices fixed.
Feel free to follow us on Twitter! https://twitter.com/TotteriStudios
| Link | https://totteri.itch.io/bruteforce |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/bruteforce |
Ratings
| Overall | 60th | 4.188⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 226th | 3.909⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 32th | 4.234⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 870th | 3.406⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 608th | 3.758⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 768th | 3.097⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 987th | 2.54⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 192th | 3.985⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 39🗨️ |
Cool game though.
Great audio, great tone. I liked the hacking minigame, and the loop was great. Time passing strongly reminded me of the Return of the Obra Dinn. Great work. My (absolute TINIEST) of niggles was that there was a tiny jump when the background audio looped.
Great work, should be very happy. I got stuck into the reading and apparently my temp had hit 99. V good.
We will take a look at the audio, if we release a post-jam version. Not sure if new audio is allowed after the submission period is over :/
I got Uplink vibes from this, very nice! I enjoyed the writing and all the small details. The difficulty was tough and I did not succeed on first time - got jumpscared twice and ended up having to make a wrong guess due to being about to run out of time. After that I managed to get the right suspect by using information from the previous attempt, although my reasoning was quite flimsy.
My reasoning about the suspect, ROT13 encoded to avoid spoiling others:
Fretrl jnf "ryvzvangrq" ol Gvtrejbys82/Naqerl, fb nffhzrq qrnq. Ynan naq Fretrl whfg qvq abg nccrne yvxr gurl jbhyq unir n zbgvingvba gb pbzzvg na npg bs greebevfz onfrq ba gurve sevraqfcyhfarg cbfgvatf, qrfcvgr Angnyvn ohlvat synzznoyr yvdhvqf. Fb gung bayl yrnirf Fgrxri jub unq svanapvny vffhrf naq gurersber pbhyq unir orra qrfcrengr rabhtu gb cresbez na npg bs greebevfz sbe zbarl.
This did not seem like a very solid reasoning to me, so I would be interested to know if I missed some important clue which would have allowed me to come too a more solid conclusion.
V jvyy abg erirny nal rknpg qrgnvyf gb xrrc gur zlfgrel tbvat :), ohg sebz jung V pna gryy, lbh ner ebhtuyl pbeerpg va lbhe ernfbavat. Qba'g jbeel gubhtu, pubbfvat gur jebat punenpgre va gur raq vf whfg nf zhpu cneg bs gur tnzr nf pubbfvat gur evtug bar!
Thanks for your comments!
Just one thing : It would be great to be able to move the cursor with the arrow keys and also maintain backspace to delete characters.
I liked the mechanic of exploring remote systems to get information. I previously attempted that on another jam but you managed to put a lot of data to check, that makes all the difference.
Some minor SPOILERS ahead: ➡ I couldn’t get to the so called social network… I didn’t find the entry point :( . I managed to get to the three previous entry points though by bruteforcing them but then I was stuck 🤷♀️. ⬅
Anyway that was intense, I got really scared the first time the system overheated and never let that happen again ever.
From where i stopped, i found it really polished and smartly made !
That's the kind of games i'll love to know more, feel free to post some Devlogs, i'd love to read them !
Overall i liked what i was playing and will gladly go back in the future ! Congratulations !
The terminal feels good even if the commands are a bit weird.
I was happy to see that you kept command history, but sad that I couldn't edit my command with Left/Right arrow :(
The mood is so on point I felt like a true h4x00r.
I had a great time unfolding the plot and tracking down the bad guy. Also had to open a notepad on my own to keep track of the hints I uncovered along the way, which is a good sign of a well executed treasure hunt.
The only real downside for me is that I felt that the 'unstability' wasn't really incorporated in the core game. Rebooting because of CPU overheat felt gimmicky and not really needed. Maybe I shouldn't have opened a notepad on my own and use ingame /write command to keep track of the hints I gathered.
Anyway, thanks for the game, I had a really good time playing it !
In my excitement on my first playthrough, I got kind of stressed by the time (which I later realised doesn't keep going in between certain story points). Because of that I just skimmed through every text and didn't really read everything which caused me to pick the wrong suspect.
By this time I was very invested and read every file again, which led to me choosing the right person this time!
Honestly very interested in the backstory of the other characters now! Do you have ideas for those?
Really loved playing! Only thing I could think of mentioning is that the indication of the overheating could have maybe been more clear? Other than that everything was amazing!
Regarding the overheating, the screen slowly turns a stronger hue of red as the temperature rises. Although I suspect that programs such as flux or similar could interfere with the colouring.
Unfortunately I didn't manage to pass the game, because English is not my native language, and the computer always restarts while I'm translating the texts 😅 Maybe sometimes I will do it.
I bought so much into the world thanks to the CRT effects that every time I couldn't get left/right arrow/home and repeat key pressed didn't work it was a super jarring fantasy break, which means the rest of it is really immersive. That said props for putting in up arrow as a priority, I am for sure one of those people who will hit up 20 times to not retype "ls" :)