Mainlining Demo

Although most movies and TV shows depict hacking as some sort of keyboard-mashing frenzy that ends up with the virus escaping through the power cord, reality is much more boring than that, at least for an observer. You also have to consider ethical hackers as well, because there are people out there who do it in order to uncover weaknesses and exploits in popular services and help software providers improve their products.

Mainlining is a puzzle game that simulates a desktop interface and provides you with the chance to play the role of a hacker working for an espionage agency. It’s much less realistic than other hacking games, but its purpose is not to dazzle you with technical accuracy. Instead, the puzzles themselves are much more important, because they really put your mind to work.

In short, you play the role of a new agent working for MI7, an intelligence agency. The first task is to find the identity of the man who broke into the MI7 servers and tie him to something illegal, in order to issue an arrest on his name. However, things are much tougher than that, because you’ll soon find out that no sane hacker would use his own name to engage in illegal activities.

The simulated desktop is actually very well put together, especially when it comes to the way you interact with the programs. In fact, everything works pretty much like in your regular operating system, except of course that it’s much more basic in many regards. However, you can still drag windows, open multiple tabs in your browser and receive emails.

You also have access to a few interesting tools that help you with the investigative work, such as guidelines and databases with suspects. It’s possible to read or browse these at any time, but you should be careful when you make an arrest, because it’s very easy to point the finger at the wrong person and create chaos by arresting someone else by mistake.

In the end, Mainlining is very well polished and extremely engaging, especially if you are a fan of exploits and cyberspace stories. On top of it all, the puzzles should keep you guessing for quite a long time, which is always a plus in adventure games.