Hackmud is a game of the hacking genre released by ComCODE (or at the time Drizzly Bear) in 2016
This is hackmuds steam pageNow hackmud has a really interesting concept. Learn Javascript to make cool scripts to hack other online player.
The scripting itself is a sandboxed javascript environment with an api for hackmuds subscript system and mongodb system.
The hackmud client itself is a command line interface with some other fancy things like a chat window and a scratch pad (that is REALLY underrated)
Now I started playing little old hackmud in about june or july of 2025.
Hackmud had only just come out of some massive controversy in april that year that caused a heap of "veterans" to leave the game
I didn't know it at the time since I had only just joined, but the already small community was just a tad smaller than it used to be
I still dont know really what happened, something about some feature that was said to be added and a bug that was said to be fixed but wasnt?
Basically a heap of members and the developers got into some argument that eventually led into the public channels
I've read a few of the messages from back then. Seems kinda stupid if you ask me. From both parties
BUT DONT QUOTE ME ON ANY OF THIS BECAUSE I DONT KNOW
Anyways yeah i started playing hackmud when my brother noticed me making some shitty little python script to launch executables
He suggested hackmud to me. I initially said no because I thought it looked incredibly boring
Oh I should have trusted myself
anyways i think we got into some deal where if i got one game he'd get me the other
i cant actually remember what the other game was but it was hackmud and either dwarf fortress or dont starve together
But yeah he gifted me hackmud and I thought I would give it a try
he walked me through the intro, the "marks system" and showed me how to find t1 locs and hack them
it was good. life was good.
But there was an issue.
Hackmuds progression involves programming.
I didn't know javascript
I joined the hackmud discord about two or three days after i first started playing to look for some help
some stupid chatter later... i asked for some help with the Dreaded Javascript
One of the other members in the server reccomended me some freecodecamp course
Was great! Had lots of fun.
Infact it was better then that. It led to a "holy shit this is fucking awesome moment"
This was the start of something bad. A 731 hour journey DOWNWARDS
Eventually I needed a t1 loc cracker to basically progress the game.
Being new to both Javascript and the games api kinks, I was having some issues
I asked for some help and ended up spending almost three hours in a voice channel with someone from the discord trying to code a t1 cracker
Eventually got it done. Thanks unnamed user.
Thats uhh... pretty much as far as i remember from the start of my days.
Yknow I made a casino, made a bank.
But eventually I became well known for one thing in the mud.
Scamming.
As much as I would like to say I was good at it, weaving around and conning everyone around me, I wasnt
I was actually quite bad at it.
Pretty frustrating, actually
Funnily enough I dont scam people all that much anymore. Im now mostly better known for being a troll.
Which is great! I spice things up a little. Really keep people on their toes
Some of those other guys are just a bit too boring.
That, or they take the game WAY too seriously.
Yknow other than that though most of those guys are great! I have truly made a lot of friends, and a lot of enemies.
Okay but to get a bit more ontopic...
Hackmud has a steep learning curve
Most of the puzzles either need you to be like super smart, know some cringe reference from 30 years ago or genuinely just be insane
Like, the end-game content is literally based off the supercomputer from Hackers (1995)
And I did end up watching that movie, about three times.
I do really like the movie, but man is it some of the dodgiest shit I think I've ever watched
Most of the game is just a sequence of puzzles.
Worry not! You are never alone!
With the poorly implemented corps feature you can organise you and your buddies to solve some puzzles together!
I don't really like the way corps exist in the current state of the game because all it is is basically a list of members, some are admin, some aren't, a custom channel and the ability to trade qubits
And on the topic of qubits,
Hackmud has an ingame currency called "bits". Unlike GC, these bits are account scoped and cannot be stolen (well, not via normal means atleast)
Bits are used for buying things like user slots to expand how many users you have, retirement slots to expand how many users you dont have (its fucking useless i hate it)
uhhh... you can buy cool ascii art images to display on your profile that is only showed in like one fucking script and nowhere else in the game!
So yeah, bits cost real money. Give hackmud its microtransactionyness because every good game has that
Fucking seriously though, I (or my brother) payed almost 30 fucking dollars for this game just to only get like two user slots (which isnt very much!), and i have to spend more money to get more?
Thats genuinely bullshit.
Now, I get it. ComCODE is a not for profit company, where hackmud is pretty much funded straight out of the developers pocket (well, and his families pockets but i wont question his ethics (well, i will (thats right i just put parentheses in parentheses three fucking times)))
Even then though, ComCODE has a supporters program, all that stuff yada yada. Whats with the fucking microtransactions?
Yknow if I was the struggling developer who couldnt afford to pay for the games servers without borrowing money from my family, I'd probably just cut the game
Like yknow fuck everyone else I'm the one who pays the bills.
Is keeping a niche game active and really worth all that sacrifice? Nope!
Though I grew up in a very different financial situation.
Yknow I was taught borrowing money from my family to fund my interests is kind of a dick move
And yknow, I also uhh... didn't grow up in america.
Maybe people are taught a little differently over there
But anyways, open source the game, if anyone wants it, there it fucking is!
Where was I going with this? Oh, right!
All that stuff i said in the few lines above, scratch it all out. (well not all of it, but most of it)
Qubits are a currency that can be gained by doing other secret marks. These qubits can be exchanged to actual bits via corp trading
Its actually a great idea. Removes half of the pay to win aspect of the game.
And trust me, that pay to win feeling is there
Im sorry I dont work 169 hours a week getting payed $400 every hour and cant afford to buy 170 user slots for my botnet
Hardest part is coming up with usernames.
Uhh... what do I call my next user? dotunderscore? Ummm... dus? oh shit.... maybe dot_?
Another annoying part about hackmud is the chat system.
Its barely fucking used other than for advertising someones back-of-the-balls scam script or transferring some weird cryptic data through the chat api
Most of the games conversation is held in Discord.
And yknow i was lucky I happened to be on Discord because if it was anywhere else, yep, gut fucked thats the end of it
Well, the ingame chat is kinda ass. You have a general channel, general channel with less bots (and humans), general channel with more newbs.
And I cant really shit on it too much, because it isnt really "bad" (i mean it isnt good either), just underused.
Like if it was actually used a bit more it would be so much better
And while we're on the topic about this lets talk about the scratchpad.
Its great. Fucking awesome. Only thing that would make it better would be if you could use it to edit script code.
People love to say that scratchpad is bad. Man, those people could talk next to someone taking a shit and you wouldnt be able to hear the difference.
I think the main problem with the scratchpad isnt even the scratchpad, its the way the client itself is built.
Any character not supported by the font fucking throws everything. It fucks up the cursor, glitches out the ui, its awful.
Other than that though, the scratchpad is great for taking notes and all that other shit.
And yknow admittedly the game client as a whole has improved a LOT even since I joined
Admittedlty, its still a little jank. Perhaps a bit unoptomized but thats what you get when 20 crazy people have access to the game client
If only we were allowed to make our own clients.
As much as I dont want to make suggestions in my little shitpost here, hackmuds interaction with the server should really be less with a client and more with an api.
It would allow a sandboxed way to interact with the game through our own clients.
So uhh, take a rough look at that, commiecode
Anyways I'm not gonna keep talking all night.
I'll probably update this article eventually, but just for now lets finish it off.
Hackmud is an interesting idea held back by a poor implementation.
It has aspects that I like and think are good, but overall I don't think its a really good game.
But yknow, I would still absolutely recommend this game to people who are interested in this kinda thing.
I mean, it introduced me to programming and made me want to learn other, new things.
I've spoken to some great people, had some good experiences.
And yknow, regardless of everything I've said here I really just can't keep myself away from this stupid game
Well, I think thats it.
I want to make a few notes here.
Someone just might stumble across my little shitpost here and perhaps feel a little offended or upset.
I just want to make clear that a lot of this article was written with satire, and while I do genuinely believe some parts to be true, it isnt meant to be taken with much seriousness
Nobody has intentionally been insulted, and I do not mean any disrespect towards any of the communities members, or their staff and volunteers.