About This Game

Start with a Script Kiddie copying code off the darknet. Finish with The Architect, who builds whole digital universes just to harvest their Data.

Hackflesh is a Cookie Clicker-style idle game in a cyberpunk world. Click the terminal to siphon Data, spend it on generators that hack for you nonstop, and stack upgrades until the counter runs past K, M, B and T into suffixes you've never heard of. The hacking is strictly cartoon: jargon jokes and fake headlines, not tutorials.

Free demo: play the whole first run with no time limit. Reboot and the Exploit constellation are in the full game.

Click, buy, let it run

Your first Script Kiddie costs 15 Data and shows up within seconds. From then on your network earns Data per second (DpS) on its own, and every unit you buy makes the next one of that generator 15% pricier. Twenty generators wait in line, from Proxy Bot and Phishing Farm to Quantum Rig, Reality Breach and The Architect.

Owned generators fill the centre of the screen as rows of little sprites, and the next one hides as a "???" silhouette until it decrypts. Production keeps going while the game is open, even in a background window. Clicking stays worth it too: every click pays a slice of your DpS, and click upgrades make that slice bigger.

Catch the Glitch Signals

Glitch Signals are Hackflesh's golden cookies. The first one shows up 2:30 into a new game, then one every 5 to 15 minutes, and each stays on screen for 13 seconds. Click it before it fades for one of 9 effects:

• Data Surge: ×7 DpS for 77 seconds
  
• Click Frenzy: clicks worth ×777 for 13 seconds
  
• Lucky Hack: instant Data, up to 15 minutes of production
  
• Data Chain and Packet Storm: 13 targets in a row, or 7 seconds of falling packets to click
  
• Overclock, Protocol Override, Neural Harvest and the late-game Synaptic Burst (clicks worth ×1111 for 10 seconds)

Active effects sit in chips with radial timers, and several can run at once. Three Signal upgrades speed things up: two halve the wait between signals, one doubles how long their effects last.

After your first Reboot, some signals turn up Corrupt, marked in red: 15% of them after one Reboot, 30% after two, half from the third on. Five of the six Corrupt outcomes hurt, like Data Leak (half DpS for 66 seconds). The sixth, Zero-Day Exploit, is ×666 DpS for 6 seconds. Ignored signals just fade, so clicking a Corrupt one is your gamble.

719 upgrades, with the numbers to plan them

Buy generators 1, 10 or 100 at a time. Hover one and a card shows what each unit makes, what the whole stack makes, its share of your DpS and how long it takes to pay itself back. The upgrade drawer has a Buy all button for when you'd rather not choose.

• 300 building upgrades, each doubling one generator's output
  
• 200 flavored upgrades like Kernel Panic and Buffer Overflow, +1% to +5% to all production
  
• 100 click upgrades, Carpal Tunnel Prevention included
  
• 66 synergies: one generator gets +5% for every unit you own of another
  
• 50 Daemon upgrades that add DpS for every achievement you've unlocked
  
• 3 Signal upgrades for your Glitch Signals

Reboot and build your constellation

Once your lifetime Data hits 1T, the Legacy button lets you Reboot. You lose this run's Data, generators and upgrades. You keep your achievements, lifetime stats, Hack Level and Exploits, and you collect Exploit Points (EP), which follow the cube root of your lifetime Data: 1T is worth 1 EP, 125T is worth 5, 1Qa is worth 10. The first Reboot typically comes after about 2.5 to 4 hours, depending on how much you click.

Spend EP on 100 permanent Exploit Upgrades across a constellation you can pan around, in 5 tiers that run from 1 EP to 100T EP. Legacy Protocol turns each Hack Level into +1% DpS. Botnet Seed starts every run with 10 free Script Kiddies. Others keep some upgrades through a Reboot, cut generator prices or make Glitch Signals stronger. Seven offline Exploits keep your network earning while the game is closed, up to 100% of base DpS for up to 2 hours away. Without them, a closed game earns nothing.

602 achievements to hunt

Hackflesh has 602 in-game achievements, 20 of them secret and Classified until you stumble into them. The achievement wall sorts them into medal ladders with a Next up target on each, and a toast pops the moment you earn one. Own some Daemon upgrades and every achievement adds DpS. Expect dozens in your first hour.

Also in Hackflesh

• 30 languages. Menus, descriptions and jokes are translated; generator, upgrade, Exploit and achievement names stay in English on purpose
  
• A news ticker with 20 fake headlines, like "New botnet variant spreads through smart coffee machines"
  
• CRT scanlines, pixel-art cyberpunk icons, floating numbers and code glyphs rising behind the terminal, plus a Reduce motion option
  
• 10 licensed tracks from Neon Vibes by Phat Phrog Studio, shuffled and crossfaded
  
• Borderless fullscreen, windowed or exclusive fullscreen (F11 or Alt+Enter), suffixes or scientific notation, three volume sliders, mute in background
  
• Autosave every minute, when you switch windows and when you quit, with a backup copy
  
• One-time purchase, no microtransactions

Hackflesh is a one-person project from NecoPlanet. Wishlist it and Steam will let you know the day it launches.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Generative AI was used to create some visual assets for the Steam store page (capsule images, promotional materials and the logo shown in the trailer). AI tools were also used during development: AI coding assistants helped write the game's code, the game and store texts in all 30 languages were translated and reviewed with AI, and a few simple UI icons were drawn with AI-assisted tools. The in-game icons come from licensed asset packs and the music is licensed. No content is generated by AI while you play.