Hack 'n' Slash

 PC
Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 14 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 14
  3. Negative: 0 out of 14
  1. IGN Spain
    Feb 10, 2015
    70
    Hack'n Slash is a true homage to classic RPG, but in a very special way, letting us to play with the game not with the sword, but with our hacking skills. An original idea hampered by a poor technical side.
  2. Everyeye.it
    Sep 23, 2014
    65
    Hack'n'Slash comes from a great idea, but in the end to re-program a game is not as entertaining as playing one.
  3. GameSpot
    Oct 14, 2014
    60
    A game made by game developers, for game developers, featuring humour that only game developers are likely to fully appreciate.
  5. Eurogamer Germany
    Sep 23, 2014
    60
    After an absolutely splendid first half, Hack 'n' Slash suddenly starts to get pretty much impenetrable by Act 4, if you don't know your way around the logic of an algorithm. Right there, in the middle, the game just skips a few steps of badly needed explaining and – at times – just drains all the fun from the proceedings. It's a fascinating peek behind the workings of a game, for sure. It has heart, wits and a good sense of humor, but it will still lose a good amount of its players long before it's over.
  6. PC Gamer
    Sep 19, 2014
    60
    Hack 'n' Slash starts as a clever game about game design, but ends up feeling like homework.
  7. GameWatcher
    Sep 29, 2014
    55
    A wonderful idea, with lovely dialogue, a clever coding system, and some cute puzzles, but unfortunately it clearly couldn't be given as much time as the idea deserved.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
5.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 40 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 40
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 40
  3. Negative: 17 out of 40
  1. thepalatinepoet
    Oct 29, 2014
    1
    Do not buy this game. This is not the programming game you want to buy. It is not worth the money, and it is not currently, by my standards, aDo not buy this game. This is not the programming game you want to buy. It is not worth the money, and it is not currently, by my standards, a finished puzzle game, much less one that teaches any reasonable amount of programming.

    It is a a beautiful idea for a game, and a very clever title for the idea. But it is not the game the idea would suggest exists. If you must buy it, wait for the game that purports to teach programming to at least be itself adequately programmed. That is not the game that is available right now.

    Hack 'n' Slash is a game in which you swing your USB sword to, instead of slaying things, set their hit points to 0. I can offer no higher praise for the integration of the "hacking" in the game for the first few minutes of gameplay. Instead of attacking the turtle, you hack its allegiance so it becomes your ally. Instead of finding the right order of blocks to push for a block pushing puzzle, you simply hack the number of remaining pushes allowed for one block. Reprogramming the movement of the guards was hilarious.

    Then, just as quickly as the fun begins, the clever puzzle design disintegrates.

    The coding is still painfully inaccessible and unserviceable—if you're a programmer, it's boring and tedious for no apparent reason, and if you're not a programmer, there's no chance you'll really even understand the puzzle as it's presented. As an experienced programmer, putting together the clues using detailed understanding of how programming generally works got me through the "programming puzzles", but left me painfully frustrated by how obtuse they were guaranteed to be for someone who didn't automatically know that "HackBlock 1" is probably the same in-game object as "blocks[1]". I see no reason to relate a red letter 'a' directly to a red diamond symbol other than educated guesswork. A game which requires trial and error is fine, but a game that requires too much backtracking between trials and crashes when you don't know what you're doing is not a game that encourages learning.

    The most frustrating thing for me was when I immediately saw the solution the programmers intended, but also that there were far more obvious and trivial solutions. If, instead of entering the prescribed passwords into locked gates, you decided to simply change the assign value from "false" to true, for instance, you bypass the intended lesson entirely. Not only are the puzzles poorly thought out, they don't even enforce the intended lesson. I can't imagine anything other than inexperienced players blundering their way through the "puzzles."

    The game crashes when the built-in LUA interpreter falls apart, because instead of being a sandboxed interpreter, the game runs code you throw at it natively, and I wouldn't surprised if the game wasn't a legitimate security vulnerability for getting admin access to the local machine. What's worse, the programming conventions used are distracting, if not outright confusing. The variables that are useful to hack aren't even always next to the lines of code they relate to, requiring mundane back calculation or walking around to find the right variable.

    And now we get to the rest of the game. As far as adventure games go, this game isn't even half-baked: shoddy collision detection make movement a confusing dance, total lack of information on what can and can't be done makes even thinking about solutions total guesswork, and there is quite honestly no way to know what the next step is for any part of the game. Aimless roaming is practically a necessity, and the "infinite woods" which don't even tell you you're running in circles are certainly not making it any easier. Even after you solve the puzzle of the infinite woods, there's no guide to tell you where to go when you leave them. Nothing is named in a useful fashion, nothing is provided. There's invariably way too much information available as "clues," and the player has no idea what's useful and what's just there because the programmers thought it would be cool. I spend so much time wading through unnecessary details for reasons I don't understand to solve puzzles that aren't even intellectually challenging so much as they are a series of inside jokes. The final puzzles aren't so much arcane wizardry as they are exercises in variable tweaking, and there's not even any guide to explain which variables should really be tweaked to start with. Behaviors not explained before or after a particular puzzle are used and so players shouldn't even know to try the things the developers expect us to know.

    As someone who actually studied computer science, incidentally, I take offense at what the game so loosely refers to as algorithms. None of the implementations are meaningfully quantifiable algorithms.

    This is not a programming game. This is not a well-programmed game. And what's worse, this is not even a good game. I'd save your money if I were you.    … Full Review »
  2. Dozey
    Sep 23, 2014
    7
    Personally I greatly enjoyed the game. It has puzzles that will provide a reasonable enough challenge for anyone remotely familiar with codePersonally I greatly enjoyed the game. It has puzzles that will provide a reasonable enough challenge for anyone remotely familiar with code vulnerability exploitation or who is reasonably competent at coding. It's excellent at teaching the things required in it's own unique way. Learning these skills could be very difficult for someone who either has trouble thinking in a critical way about circumventing the rules or for people who have no experience with computer languages.

    Basically if the knowledge gap, either the one in act 4 or the one in act 5 are not too severe it will likely be one of the more fun games you've played. If it's too severe it will be a nightmare and more like homework or copying other's solutions to the problems.    … Full Review »
  3. Zulgot
    Sep 15, 2014
    9
    One of the best puzzle games I have ever played. The game has unique concept and gameplay elements, very nice artwork and awesome music.One of the best puzzle games I have ever played. The game has unique concept and gameplay elements, very nice artwork and awesome music. Puzzles requires some basic coding abilities, but even if you are complete newbie in coding, game will teach you everything in entertaining way. In the end of the game, you will be able to change the core code of the game! In many situations, you are limited only by your imagination :)… Full Review »
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