This is the hAcKeR collective {{Synonymous Bosch}}. We have taken control of this aRt1cLe. Three years ago it was written by the untalented and scurrilous journalist Brendan Caldwell, a man lacking in both knowledge and substance. But we have gained access in order to correct his egregious errors. It s a hack of a hack! Ha ha ha. We had our best joke cell work on that for three nights. Please laugh. Our detractors may say Mr Caldwell got it mostly right, and that may be the case, yes. But the order is aLL Wr0nG. And he has neglected to update it with a recent hit. We cannot let this stand. Here is an updated list which, actually, looking at it now, is still mostly Mr Caldwell s words and I guess they re okay. Sorry we said those nasty things. We are {{Synonymous Bosch}}. We sometimes forgive. We often forget.

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As anyone who watches their feeds knows, we live in a constantly evolving cyberpunk dystopia. They’re connecting toilets to the internet, for heavens sake. If this Gibsonist world is just too REAL for you, we have put together the ten best videogames about hacking, programming and computing so you can escape into meta-dystopia. Which I’m sure is a much better place.

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Introversion Software’s seminal hacking sim Uplink may be fifteen years old but it’s still one of the finest hacks ’em ups, Brendan will tell you. It’s now looking super-fresh too, thanks to the amazing makeover mod UplinkOS [official site]. Along with a new look, UplinkOS brings fab features like support for opening multiple windows at once, now draggable and with tabs. Fancy! We’ve mentioned UplinkOS before but now, after several months of beta, a final release has arrived. Here, look at this swish style: … [visit site to read more]

Introversion Software’s 2001 hackathon Uplink [official site] is one of the most enjoyable depictions of real-world hacking in the realm of gaming. If you love Mr. Robot as much as I do, you probably remember playing through this relic back when it came out. It also happens to be one of our best ten hacking, coding and computer games.

… [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Once the most-discussed game in the then-small indie world, Introversion’s offbeat RTS feels like a lifetime ago now. It’s a game about ushering scores of AI life around a half-retro, half-futuristic landscape, seeking to escape a digital apocalypse, and I suspect it was ahead of its time, at least in terms of audience appetite. … [visit site to read more]

They say you should always be prepared to kill your darlings. Darwinia creators Introversion have taken it one step forward, creating nothing short of a Darwinian snuff movie to mark their transition from little computer people to… prison architects. Yeah, that’s still a little weird. But never mind. Help them celebrate this glorious new age of Not Darwinia by enjoying 2:36 minutes of burning, shooting and stabbing that really puts the ‘aaaaargh!’ into ‘carthasis’.

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I was worried that people haven’t had an opportunity to complain that we write too much about Minecraft for a bit. So here’s two Minecraft things at once. First up, yesterday developer Notch released a screenshot of the Hell dimension that’s appearing in the Halloween update. You can speculate for yourself what the various block types in here might be – there’s five new ones being added overall. Click on that pic above to see it all biggerised. And below, there’s something special. A video of the biggest Darwinian you’ve ever seen.

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When Introversion do one of their sporadic candid posts, it’s normally worth reading. Mark Morris’ latest one is no different, talking about their last six months. They knew within an hour Darwinia+ hadn’t done well enough, and eventually they realised they couldn’t go on. Instead, they ended up selling the office, going back down to 3 staff, selling tables and chairs and working from their bedrooms again. However – and for me, the key thing in the story – they still needed some operating funds. Defcon had Steam achievements added, in hope that Valve would let a promotion go ahead. And they did…

This was the game-changer. When we started Introversion we’d had a string of successes and believed we were undefeatable, but it was a long time since we’d had a victory and we really needed one. Right on cue, Valve delivered. The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year’s operating capital in the bank.

In other words, on with Subversion. And Chris is continuing his development diaries here. It’s the second time Steam saved Introversion, of course, with Darwinia’s original launch there changing the course of a game which seemed to be not finding an audience.

Lewie, when marching into the purely-conceptual RPS office to deliver his beautiful Bargain Bucket also brings news that Introversion have made their source code for Darwinia and Multiwinia available. For thirty quid at the Introversion store you gain access to the full source code to nose at and mod to your heart’s delight, the ability to add your own branches to share, access to the dev-forum. Also, there’s going to be a meta-server for Multiwinia. I have no idea what that means. I hope it means there’s a superpowered server. That’d be amazing. Anyway – good news, I think. Those interested can buy here.