Darknet Interview and Preview

Zack and I managed to get hands on with Darknet, an indie game being made by E McNeill from the ground up for Oculus Rift.As an Oculus game, it’s very difficult to explain in so many words, but it serves as a “hacking game,” and E described it as taking on elements from rogue-likes as well.

The feel of the game, with Oculus, is that you are stationary in the world, which E described to me as what he imagines “the inside of a computer” looks like. You are faced with a wall of nodes that you can send your virus into to try and spread and take control of that area of the computer. It works automatically, but there is a strategy of sending your exploits out into different parts of the node so they can divide and conquer.

The game puts you center stage and lifts up and creates a world around you. You feel as though your standing in a room where all you need to interact with the world is your eyes. I did use a controller for the game, but only basic functions like A or Y to send out my exploits or reset the attempt respectively. It was honestly mind-blowing and reminded me a lot of the holodeck.  The world lifted up and surrounded me, and even though I was stationary, I felt completely immersed in the world.

Below is my section of our audio interview with E McNeill, which may start a bit odd because we lost a segment where Zack was talking to him, but it should be fine. You can also download it here.