games for investigations

Epic games currently, as i write this, has as their free game the operator. It's short, and it's very good. I played through it in one night, no complaints other than i hated the ending in the way one hates things one loves. (it was great, the end was great, but my god. I hate it.)

As i played through it i realized this is another game in a shortish chain of similar games that really have left quite the impression on me. I figured i should lay them out somewhere, for history sake i guess?

I think the first game i played that i would consider of this variety was uplink. That one still has a large place in my heart, and every now and again i pop back to play again. The gameplay was great, the story was good, and the hacking puzzles were fun.

It's strange really. There's no graphics to speak of, the game is barebones in effects, but the challenge was great, the story felt natural. At no point did i feel like anything less than a cool ass hacker.

I think the next one I played of a similar ilk (I think this is mostly vibes rather than gameplay. your opinion of if these are the same sort of game may vary!) was orwell this was more in the way of government corruption directly i guess? it's all about the investigation, figuring out the details, spying. it's damn good and i enjoyed it a lot. Again, good story, fun puzzles. It had a sequel I never got round to playing. I guess i'll add it to the list!

Those two sorta interested me in the whole feel of these games, and for a bit i searched for similar things but couldn't really get into any. i think the next one that grabbed me was hacknet which again, fun puzzles, great story, hacking minigames. I think you get the idea. The fun thing here is I was obviously already a linux user, and a lot of the hacking games just use linux terminal commands to do what you do, so it felt pretty dang natural.

These games all have the sort of hacker/government agent aesthetic, which i really enjoy. I have also played the black watchmen which was great, but for some reason the competing with others aspect meant i was less pulled in. Or maybe it was just harder. I can't promise i'm not just a sucker for fun puzzles over hard ones.

In that same vein ahnayro which is set in the black watchmen world, only it's fully just single player. Thus I finished it completely, and again really enjoyed the story, and the puzzles.

Related to those two things, I played through the secret world both in it's form as the secret world, and as secret world legends. These were full on MMO's, nothing like the rest of the games on the list other than the whole government conspiracy and things hidden beneath the surface vibes. Still, worth mentioning since the last two games on the list are made by people who helped work on arg's for this game before starting on the watchmen games. The worlds feel similar and i think that may be why.

This is about all I can think of in this particular "genre", although i don't really think it's a genre, more a vibe, like i said. Honestly, if y'all look at this list, and your brain says "I know a game like that!" let me know, these things have gripped me for years!