Hacknet - Labyrinths

I already had a great time with the base game Hacknet, so naturally I was interested in what the DLC had to offer. And I must say I was pleasantly surprised - Labyrinths may come in the shape of just one new mission that you can accept almost whenever you feel like it in the base game, but it basically adds another 3-4 hours of gameplay, unlike your usual missions! And while it does in large stay true to what the base game plays like, it adds a few new things which still make it stand out and break the slightly monotonous gameplay at least somewhat. As soon as you start the mission that leads to the Labyrinths content called "The Kaguya Trials", you get completely pulled away from whatever you were doing up until that point and get thrown into a brand new network of nodes - it's almost like you're starting a completely new game altogether, you do however retain your tools you got from before you started the mission.

Labyrinths offers a few things that I enjoyed over the base game - for starters, while the base game does refer to organizations like Entropy and CSEC as "groups", it never really felt like a group to me. You rarely ever interacted with any members other than the admins who would send you mails every once in a while. In Labyrinths however, you know exactly who you're working with as you're all communicating with each other via IRC and you can even see the missions that other members of your group are working on, making it feel much more like a group setting where everyone is working together! A neat byproduct of this IRC - it allows the game to explain certain mechanics to you very naturally, including some neat tricks that are totally applicable to the base game but I never even thought of! Labyrinths also adds a few new tools that either make life a bit easier (for example a new tool to deal with that pesky FTP port a lot faster than what the base game gives you, or a program that deals with the trace timers which you don't just get access to at the very end of the game), or simply new tools to overcome brand new obstacles.

Certain parts of the expansion also stood out to me. There is an optional segment about halfway in that forces you to straight up use your computer's command line to recover from an attack, which I found brilliant - the whole game is centered around using a simulated command line, and then you suddenly get thrown out of the game with an open text file with instructions on how to make use of your actual command line! The climax of the expansion is also well made and hits you with a literal life-or-death situation and little time to consider your decision, sending unprepared players into a bit of a panic (I'd know), and the little details and jokes scattered around the game that you don't need to find but will if you're a curious explorative player are still as great as the base game and did get the occasional chuckle out of me.

One thing that did strike me as a bit of a negative point was that I felt the IRC had more potential to really involve the player with the group - you are given no obvious option to chat yourself, making you more of a spectator than a member at times. I found this irritating as certain parts of the expansion straight up tell you to "put some information in the chat". I get that building a simulated chatroom where the other members accurately react to whatever a player might input at any point is not feasible, but you could've at least given a player some options to choose from when it comes to dialogue. For example, once you open a file on another computer that contains valuable information, the IRC would give you an option to share this information with your group. It would also be another great option to sprinkle in more humour with some offhand jokes.

Overall though I was very pleased with the expansion and felt it to be a great addition to the existing content. It sets itself apart very nicely from the base game but doesn't stray too far from the gameplay, giving people who enjoyed Hacknet even more Hacknet-esque gameplay with some added twists - pretty much a mini-sequel within the game itself. If you enjoyed the base game, I can't recommend this expansion enough. It does some things better than the base game but also comes with its own weaknesses, at the end of the day however I enjoyed my 3-4 hours of playtime with Labyrinths quite a lot. If there's ever more Hacknet, this is setting up quite the expectations.