Who among us hasn't wished to be a cool hacker from the movies, like Hugh Jackman in Swordfish (a classic)? In real life hacking things is apparently quite dangerous and hard, but in video games we can crack the system and mutter "I'm in" under our breath as often as we want. Naturally, there have been some fabulous hacking games on PC over the years, and we've collected what we think are the cream of the crop of the best hacking games to play on PC right now.
]]>Right, disclaimers up front for this one. I've known Tom Francis, developer of Gunpoint, for at least fifteen years. I remember when he was hired as Disc Editor ("What's a 'disc', grandpa?") for PC Gamer, I've eaten homemade pizza round his house, and felt cool because I already knew him when he was all super-famous at GDC in 2014. I can in no sensible way be expected to be objective about his creations. Fortunately I've never tried to be objective about anything in my life, and Tom's now so successful he probably can't even perceive the atoms I'm made of [exemplified in the further disclaimer that he used to write a column for us - ed.]. So I thought I'd have another play of Gunpoint.
It's awful, isn't it?
]]>The biggest names in platforming used to live only on console, but it's on PC now that the genre is thriving. Indies have taken the simple ingredients and spun them off in umpteen directions (but still normally from left to right). Below you'll find a collection of the very best platform games on PC - including puzzle platformers, physics platformers, platformers with roguelike elements, and platformers about absolutely nothing but pixel-perfect jumping.
]]>Reading, England. A town that's big enough to be a city, but somehow is not. It was where Gunpoint entered my life. Of all the hard drives in the world, it had to be installed on mine.
]]>Tactical Breach Wizards has come a long way since its early days as an in-joke turned prototype from Gunpoint dev Tom Francis and pals. Now it looks like a clever little tactical puzzler in the vein of Into The Breach, only instead of giant robots pushing aliens into volcanoes, it's modern-day wizards pushing criminals out windows. There's still a lot of work to be done on the game, with some great early art direction hiding many development sins, but today's eleven minutes of new footage are absolutely worth a look. Check out how a Witch Cop upholds Witch Law in the video below.
]]>You might know Tom Francis as the designer of noir rewire-'em-up Gunpoint and the stealthy spaceship invasion of Heat Signature. You might know him as the writer of the What Works And Why column around these parts. At this year's EGX Rezzed you can know him by hearing him talk on stage with Adam about the challenges of building a procedural galaxy, his design philosophy, and the plans for his next game.
]]>Sometimes an in-joke is too good to not share. Tom Francis (of Gunpoint and Heat Signature fame) is playing around with some new concepts for his next game. One of them, Tactical Breach Wizards, is a running joke from his days as PC Gamer turned real.
Four modern-day mages with kevlar-lined robes and scoped tactical wands, fighting urban crime one room at a time in XCOM inspired turn-based combat. What's not to like?
]]>What Works And Why is a new monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game and analyses what makes it good.
I love Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and Dishonored 2, and the name for these games is dumb: they're 'immersive sims'. If you asked me what I liked about them, my answer would be a phrase almost as dumb: 'emergent gameplay!'
I always used to think of these as virtually the same thing, but of course they're not. Immersive sims usually have a whole list of traits, things like:
]]>I'm not sure if Heat Signature [official site] will be labelled as a comedy game when it goes on sale, but I haven'y played a funnier game in recent years. Your role in each brief life that you lead is to earn money by completing missions that involve kidnapping, assassination and theft, so that you can use the money to buy information regarding an end-game mission that is personal to your character. Get that job done and your character can retire happy. Fail and you're most likely a popsicle drifting through the void.
Here's how it all works, and how my most recent character died.
]]>That's not the coder-designer of Gunpoint [official site] and Heat Signature's real name, of course. We don't honour him with his real name anymore, not since that thing with the dishwasher tablets in 2013. It is our professional duty, however, to notify you that his latest game, 'puzzle-strategy' title Morphblade [official site], is now out.
It's partially inspired by all-time mobile great Hoplite, but it's very much its own cunning thing. Take a look below.
]]>It has been many moons since we last looked at the sneaky, top-down spaceship invading of Heat Signature [official site] but work has not ceased. A new trailer shows some new looks for the different factions you’ll be encountering, as well as explaining how a few of your hero’s teleporter skills work. In the process, creator Tom Francis fails to sneak through a high-difficulty level, proving that the game will fit neatly into the genre of Stealth But Things Go Badly Wrong.
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>The latest series of The Great British Bake Off has come to an end, causing those of us hooked by its cream-filled buns, end-of-the-pier puns, and oddly sincere celebration of the human spirit, to feel as empty inside as an incompletely prepared batch of jam donuts. After a few days spent facing a future free from sugar, gluten, and the strange tension between Paul Hollywood and hosts Mel & Sue, I decided to do something about it. I emailed some game designers and asked them a question: if you were charged with making a computer game of The Great British Bake Off, how would you do it?
The answers are below.
]]>Heat Signature [official site] is an action/stealth game in which you can go inside the spaceships, from the team behind Gunpoint. I played a recent build last week and spoke to its lead designer Tom Francis about how how it's grown into a game of factional war, if it can ever be finished, comedy wrench KOs and the awkwardness of journalists covering ex-journalists' games. By which I mean: disclaimer - I used to work at the same magazine company as Tom, and we socialised on occasion.
Heat Signature's pratfalls-in-space concepts were a giggle already, but the scope has expanded dramatically since the first time I saw it, less than a year ago. It's becoming Galactic Civilizations as well as this sort of high-speed, outer space heist game. Gunpoint's use of physics as both freeform puzzle and source of Three Stooges comedy ethos is very clearly in there, as is a shared determination to ensure the player is doing their own thing in any given second of the game, but as well as stealing procedurally-generated spaceships you now get to play galactic factions against each other in a persistent universe. This wasn't the original plan.
]]>The turn-based sneaking, leaping, climbing, stabbing, swinging, and sword-flinging of Ronin caught our eye last August with a free prototype, and my it's come a long way since then! A new trailer shows slick sequences of its cyberninja scaling buildings, smashing through windows, dodging bullets, and stabbing the heck out of cybermen. Tomasz Waclawek's game caught the keen eye of publishers Devolver Digital too, as they've announced they're helping bring Ronin to release later this year, fleshed-out and fancied-up. Really, come see how cool this murder looks:
]]>Do YOU want to be the next indie millionaire? Well, you can't. There are far too many of the blighters already and not a lot of room for more. You could make a game though: that's pretty cool. I suspect many people reading these have thought about doing so, if they haven't already, but the question is where to start? Well, with an engine, and if you're a raw beginner that's either going to be Gamemaker or Unity. The former's the best bet if you're making something 2D, which is the best bet if you're working solo. And then: where to start? Well, how about a new video series from affable Gunpoint creator Tom Francis?
]]>Judging by the new trailer for Heat Signature, two things are essential in a Tom Francis game - manipulation of interconnected systems and comical physics. Gunpoint's infiltration often involved tapping into electrical systems and adopting a smart tactical overview, but usually ended with trouser-propulsion and instinctive defenestration. Heat Signature's procedural spaceships provide similarly fertile ground for both forward planning and farce. The video shows two missions in full but really comes into its own when Tom decides to hijack a ship for no good reason, plotting a route to the cockpit and isolating the crew by sealing doors. Once he has the helm, explosions occur.
]]>Important proviso - all screens and video in this piece show placeholder art. The finished Heat Signature will apparently look very different - there are some hints to its possible final appearance here, however.
"I think the subtitle of the game should be 'You Can Go Inside The Spaceships'," jokes Heat Signature dev Tom Francis as he shows me his follow-up to break-out hit Gunpoint at EGX last week. "I can already tell it's going to have the Gunpoint problem where I say 'I made a game called Gunpoint' and they say 'I don't think I've heard of that', then I explain what the game is and they're "oh yeah, I've heard of that, but I just didn't remember the name because it has nothing to do with what you do in it." A pause. "This does have heat in it, at least."
]]>You can learn a lot about someone from the games they make, I'm told. Tom Francis's first game, Gunpoint, was about breaking into places, punching people out, bodging their wiring, stealing stuff, then leaving through a window. But look, his second game was a free game about gaily swinging on a grappling hook. That made the score 1-1 in Evil vs. Lovely. To settle the tie, today he released a new video showing a prototype for his third game, Heat Signature. It's about, ah, sneaking up on spaceships, boarding them, sneaking around, punching men out, then stealing their stuff. Oh Tom.
]]>In a lot of ways, I feel like Gunpoint is what Watch_Dogs should've been. A game not about violence, but about getting around it using a bag of tricky tech tools, being fluid and improvisational like some kind of cyberpunk Bruce Lee. Your character is just a flimsy, doughy detective who goes flying out windows all the time. You have to be smart, not brutal. (Also the writing is actually good, so there.) If you still haven't played it, there's no better time than the present, seeing as it just got a spiffy new game engine and Steam Workshop support. See the full list of changes below.
]]>The GDC War Train of Impossible Enrichment trundles on, and RPS is on the scene with gusto, aplomb, and a stuffed lion. Each day this week, I'll be gathering impromptu panels of colossal brains inside frail (but very handsome) human bodies to dissect the show piece-by-piece. Yesterday, John, Cara, Hayden, and I did so by crawling into bed and talking about our socks. Also games. But day two was different. John fell to exhaustion, and Cara was carried away by a throng of adoring fans, presumably to be worshipped and then made into soup. Fortunately I was able to drag Gunpoint creator Tom Francis, writer and camera whisperer Nika Harper, and Incredipede creator Colin Northway over forests, woods, hills, and plains to fill their not-shoes.
]]>I should be very pleased for now ex-PC Gamer writer and fine fellow Tom Francis, whose lovely debut Gunpoint, made in his spare time over the last three years, has proven wildly successful enough for him to "quit jobs, as a concept" and grant him total creative freedom for whatever he wants to do next and for the foreseeable future. Instead, I feel physically ill with envy and crippled by self-loathing at my own failure to work on a game as yet, all compounded by worry that feeling that way is a sign that I am a bad person. I am attempting to purge all these unpleasant emotions by posting about Tom's amazing news.
]]>Gunpoint is an action-puzzle game about speed-hacking electrical systems and leaping over (or through) tall buildings in a single bound. This high-tech detective saga-ette comes primarily from Tom Francis, best known for his long stint on cheery RPS tribute magazine PC Gamer, and it's his first game. Has he successfully crossed the Rubicon? Let's find out.
]]>Gunpoint is a game being made by PC Gamer's Tom Francis. He's a terrible human being, of course, prone to evil like no one else in history, but the game is quite good, in that side-on hacking, stealthing, gadgeting way that Tom has made his own. But you don't have to take my word for it because there's completely a demo. You can pre-order it for a mere $9. The game is out on Monday.
I've posted one of the more recent videos of Mr Francis explaining his creation, below.
]]>Gadgets are clearly the best things there are. And it is they that Tom Francis highlights in the latest trailer for Gunpoint, accompanying the news that the game is going to be available on Steam. When? He still isn't saying, the scamp. But he will tell you all about the gadgets.
]]>Disclaimer! I worked with Tom Francis for seven years on PC Gamer, though we rarely made physical contact. There, now that's out the way I feel better. But even if I hadn't worked with him, I'd be keen to point out his latest update on Gunpoint to you. Disclaimer! Tom sat beside me for five of those years, sipping his own brewed coffee and saying: "Ahhh, coffee: thriller of tastebuds, lover of tonsils, warmer of tummies. Get in me.". Gunpoint is Tom's first game, a 2D world-hacking detective 'em up. I don't know when it'll be finished. I don't know how much it'll cost. I do know that it'll have a level editor, as Tom has released a video showing it off. Disclaimer! it's below.
]]>I should probably disclose that I've known the developer of Gunpoint, PC Gamer's Tom Francis, for a few years now, having worked with him on that magazine in the dark times before RPS. And that means playing Gunpoint has a peculiar flavour to it, for me. I'm aware of the kinds of games that have had a significant influence on Francis – such as the platformer N, Deus Ex, Hitman, Splinter Cell, and so on – and I can see these sorts of influences displayed right on the surface of Gunpoint. We are each of us our interests, of course, and I am sure this kind of thing is true of all indie developers, but seeing how someone's brain remixes and recompiles the stuff they love has never been quite so clear to me as when playing the post-IGF build of this intricate platformer.
]]>Next in our series of chats with this year's impressive roster of Independent Games Festival finalists is Tom Francis, lead brain behind future-noir stealth game Gunpoint, which is up for the Excellence In Design gong. Here, he's quizzed about what, why, when, who and the most important question of all.
Important conflict of interest disclosure: I used to play badminton with Tom.
]]>Gunpoint looks very good indeed, good enough to be nominated in the best design category at the IGF in fact. Its clever infiltration and security rewiring combine wonderfully with slapstick violence and trouser-propelled window-diving. Yes, it looks good, but how will it sound? Designer/wordsmith Tom Francis sent out a call for musical submissions and two new videos are here to pleasure your ears with the choices that have been made. Best listened to while in a dark bar with a haze of smoke around the ceiling and a shot of bourbon in your hand. If I were you, I'd probably think about the one that got away the whole while as well.
]]>Update: I'd missed a delay announcement. Gunpoint won't be home by Christmas.
Games journalist and professional Francois Truffaut imitator Tom Francis is making the bold leap from critic to creator with Gunpoint, a heist game without procedurally generated cities but with projectile trousers and rewired security systems that cause light switches to activate doors which then clobber people in the face. The video below is the first to show the new visuals in action and it's also an in-depth guide to how the game will play. In the video, Tom also asks whether people would consider parting with cash for the game, to which I respond by drawing your attention to the existence of a mission called Defenestrator.
]]>Remember Gunpoint, the stealth/hacking/rewiring game from friend/co-arch-nemesis of RPS Tom Francis? In between murdering trees and optimising for search engines, Tom's drafted in some artists to dramatically overhaul the game's look, which results in the rather eye-catching, Flashback-y aesthetic you'll see above (and indeed below). There's much more imagery and information on how it works and what's going on in the new shot over at the shiny (i.e. dark) new website, but I've embedded the old video below in case you missed it first time. Don't squeal about the graphics in it. They've changed now, remember? Tcch, you kids and your attention spans. TOO MUCH MTV.
]]>Fellow PC gaming journalist and friend of RPS Tom Francis is working on an indie video game. It's about breaking into people's houses, something Tom is extremely qualified to write about. Er, because he got robbed a couple of years back, not because he's a housebreaker. To the best of my knowledge, at least.
To be specific, Gunpoint is about infiltration, and the achievement thereof primarily via rewiring of electronics such as cameras, doors and lights. If Agent 47 was a rogue electrician rather than a genetically-engineered assassin, it might go a little something like this...
]]>
.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")
