Hack n' Slash demo

There's an article on Kotaku about the demo for a game called Hack n' Slash, in which you play as a character with a sword trying to solve puzzles and move through dungeons. The difference is that her sword is USB compatible, and objects and enemies within the game have USB ports that she can plug her sword in to and hack the variables of the game objects. I'm really excited about it, and it's scheduled to come out this summer.

I did see one thing in the video that I hope they change between now and release: the bomb item. Using a bomb on an object will let you access an object's code, which can allow you to turn a non-hackable object into a hackable one. The below clip starts with the explanation of the bombs, and then shows them in action.

The developer running the demo says "...but if we set this to true now these blocks are hackable. Now we come up here, we can use our hack sword even though these [blocks] don't have ports we modified their code so that you can bring up their hack menu." In the rest of the demo what denoted a hackable object versus a non-hackable object was the presence of a port, but the bomb creates hackable objects that don't have ports.

I think objects that get their isHackable function set to true via the bomb should have ports appear on them to give the player visual feedback that changing the isHackable function worked. If I had not watched this demo, I would not have known that the port-less rocks could now be hacked. Maybe I would have got lucky and struck one with my sword after changing the function, but it makes the game's mechanic unclear. It goes from "you can only hack objects with ports" to "well, sometimes you can hack objects that don't have ports, too" that may make future puzzles more frustrating to solve because the player is confused about the game's mechanics.

Maybe ports do not appear because the designers thought they would have to add a showPort function to objects that the player could modify, which could also create confusion by adding ports to otherwise unhackable objects. I think adding code that hides or shows an object's port based on the isHackable function, but not allowing the user to access the showPort function, would improve the usability. It may mean that not every function in the game is available for changing by the player, but it would make the game's mechanics less ambiguous and the game more fun.