This hacking sim is like if Uplink was more of a puzzle game, and if you live for snooping through other people’s emails you’re going to be well-served

You ever wonder if shadowy international terrorist organisations have HR departments? They’ve got to, right? Surely someone in the Red Army Faction made an off-colour joke at a meeting that made everyone uncomfortable at least once?

This is what I ask myself as I tap away at Cyber Warrior, a crime-busting hacking sim from Dunke Games that puts you in the cubicle of a cybersecurity salaryman for the definitely-not-FBI. Think Uplink, but with a VNC client rather than a BBS dialler, and you’re not a million miles off.

If you’re not me—and there’s solid odds you’re not—those words might not trigger quite the same potent chemical reaction in your head as they do in mine. But for yours truly, ‘It’s a bit like Uplink,’ is all you have to say to get me absolutely ravenous for your game. Cyber Warrior wears that influence on its sleeve—right down to the music player on your virtual desktop cycling through a constant churn of electrical, hacker-fied tracks.

Where it differs from Uplink is that you are—at least at the game’s start (I’ve played for an hour or two)—on the side of the angels. You’re no hacker, but a cybercop, and your task is to rummage through the PCs of crims and suspects to uncover evidence of their wrongdoings.

Sometimes, that’s literally as simple as popping open system settings and switching ‘Show hidden files’ to Yes (which really doesn’t speak well of the skills of your cybersecurity comrades, who apparently searched the machine before you and found nothing), but it gets more complex as things go on. Later puzzles might require you to make use of a binary translator, to piece together passwords, or to bounce between multiple separate remote connections at once to assemble the evidence you need.

It also means, like I mentioned, going through emails of terrorist-hackers complaining about one another to their superiors in the same way regular human beings might moan to their line managers, which is a slightly baffling tonal clash I can’t help but enjoy.

It’s more of a puzzle game than Uplink’s wide-open hacking sandbox; you’re not going to be hacking a bank account after stumbling across someone’s details, or taking a nose around a corporate mainframe just because you’re curious about what’s in there. Cyber Warrior will keep you focused on an objective—and a puzzle—at all times. So think of it as Uplink-flavoured rather than some kind of spiritual successor. My lifelong quest for a true Uplink 2 goes on, but this will do for now.

If you’re curious about the game, you can find it over on Cyber Warrior’s Steam page, where it’s currently 10% off.