This game teaches you how to use Linux. (I cannot get over that this was made by and for Windows >_<... But it runs well in Wine.)

Other reviews have covered the mechanics and story, which I think is great and very unique even in the unique genre of roguelikes. But there is something more special about this game to me. There are very few games which survive ten years of development (six of which was full time). And fewer even that have such a high quality blog documenting virtually every design decision. This game is a person's life's work, and that simply does not compare to most of the cash grab garbage that's churned through steam, especially from AAA companies. Reading through the blog, it's clear that the mostly sole developer has gone through *years* trying to design the best UI in a video game, in my opinion, ever.

It reminds me of when I was younger and getting into hacking, feeling inspired by games like Uplink, Hacknet, and later zachtronics games that I more just enjoyed for the challenge like TIS-100 and EXAPUNKS. Playing this game with its delicate animations and sounds, especially in keyboard-only mode, makes me feel like a hacker like when I did at first with those games many years ago - I think this is a level of immersion very few games can really invoke, of course it makes it very niche but also irreplaceable.

To be honest, I see this game's keyboard only mode having educational value teaching children how to use Linux. Of course, the keybinds are different, what is important is the mentality. I'd much rather learned with this game than all those dozens of touch typing flash games.

The only drawbacks about the UI, which seem to of been a constant source of dev struggle fighting against the terminal-based engine, are its limitations for zooming and resizing. Stuff looks too small, and this seems to be the only real long-running criticism of its reviews. But I can see a huge amount of effort has gone into trying to fix this, planning to be released at some point in 2024 along with exiting early access. It's rare enough to see a terminal-based game engine, especially a self-made one that's this performant and comes with its own ASCII editor REXPaint. I'm also surprised that they use yEd, which I've also used for years, although I'm a little sad they don't use the amazing Paint.NET with its plugin glory :)

One aspect that I find this deviates from the linux/vim/sublime text experience as a programmer myself is that the controls lack easy customisability. There are some hoops to jump through to change keybinds, and the high keyboard utilisation makes it somewhat hard to modify them without keybind conflicts. I'm thinking of the modded Minecraft keybind conflict menu which has saved me many times. In other words, while the physical screen size is very important for playing on a laptop, many laptops either don't have arrow keys or have 'half size' ones like mine does, meaning I either need to plugin a separate numpad module, use hjkl vi-like movement, or spend a while to setup my preferred ijkl movement.

Note: I don't have steam playtime because I use the DRM-free version. I'd recommend buying the game from the developer's website, as steam charges an absurd 30% revenue cut for almost all games on the platform, and you can get a steam key from the website purchase in addition to a DRM-free copy. for me at least, this would be the perfect game for playing during a long road trip or flight, plus I generally can't stand steam's bloat as an application. But I think writing a review here would just give the most visibility.

This game teaches you how to use Linux. (I cannot get over that this was made by and for Windows >_<... But it runs well in Wine.) Other reviews have covered the mechanics and story, which I think is great and very unique even in the unique genre of roguelikes. But there is something more special about this game to me. There are very few games which survive ten years of development (six of which was full time). And fewer even that have such a high quality blog documenting virtually every design decision. This game is a person's life's work, and that simply does not compare to most of the cash grab garbage that's churned through steam, especially from AAA companies. Reading through the blog, it's clear that the mostly sole developer has gone through *years* trying to design the best UI in a video game, in my opinion, ever. It reminds me of when I was younger and getting into hacking, feeling inspired by games like Uplink, Hacknet, and later zachtronics games that I more just enjoyed for the challenge like TIS-100 and EXAPUNKS. Playing this game with its delicate animations and sounds, especially in keyboard-only mode, makes me feel like a hacker like when I did at first with those games many years ago - I think this is a level of immersion very few games can really invoke, of course it makes it very niche but also irreplaceable. To be honest, I see this game's keyboard only mode having educational value teaching children how to use Linux. Of course, the keybinds are different, what is important is the mentality. I'd much rather learned with this game than all those dozens of touch typing flash games. The only drawbacks about the UI, which seem to of been a constant source of dev struggle fighting against the terminal-based engine, are its limitations for zooming and resizing. Stuff looks too small, and this seems to be the only real long-running criticism of its reviews. But I can see a huge amount of effort has gone into trying to fix this, planning to be released at some point in 2024 along with exiting early access. It's rare enough to see a terminal-based game engine, especially a self-made one that's this performant and comes with its own ASCII editor REXPaint. I'm also surprised that they use yEd, which I've also used for years, although I'm a little sad they don't use the amazing Paint.NET with its plugin glory :) One aspect that I find this deviates from the linux/vim/sublime text experience as a programmer myself is that the controls lack easy customisability. There are some hoops to jump through to change keybinds, and the high keyboard utilisation makes it somewhat hard to modify them without keybind conflicts. I'm thinking of the modded Minecraft keybind conflict menu which has saved me many times. In other words, while the physical screen size is very important for playing on a laptop, many laptops either don't have arrow keys or have 'half size' ones like mine does, meaning I either need to plugin a separate numpad module, use hjkl vi-like movement, or spend a while to setup my preferred ijkl movement. Note: I don't have steam playtime because I use the DRM-free version. I'd recommend buying the game from the developer's website, as steam charges an absurd 30% revenue cut for almost all games on the platform, and you can get a steam key from the website purchase in addition to a DRM-free copy. for me at least, this would be the perfect game for playing during a long road trip or flight, plus I generally can't stand steam's bloat as an application. But I think writing a review here would just give the most visibility.