blacklight

Why I built this: I've always been fascinated by the golden age of hacking culture - the 80s and 90s when everything felt possible if you just knew the right commands. Most "hacking" games today are just puzzle games with a cyberpunk skin, but I wanted to create something that actually felt like sitting at a terminal at 2 AM, following digital breadcrumbs deeper into a conspiracy. I built Blacklight because I missed that authentic, text-based experience where your imagination fills in the world around the green text. What's unique about it: Blacklight uses real UNIX commands and authentic terminal behavior - no flashy Hollywood hacking sequences or fake "HACKING IN PROGRESS" bars. The story unfolds entirely through the files you discover, the emails you decrypt, and the system logs you piece together. It's like being a digital archaeologist, reconstructing a conspiracy from fragments of data. The game respects your intelligence and doesn't hold your hand - if you know how to navigate a real terminal, you have an advantage. What I'm most proud of: The moment when players realize they're not just following a linear story, but actually conducting a real investigation. I've watched people start keeping physical notebooks, drawing connection maps between characters, and genuinely getting paranoid about what they're uncovering. The game creates that authentic hacker mindset where every system is a puzzle to solve and every file could contain the missing piece. That feeling of "just one more server to crack" at 3 AM - that's what I'm most proud of capturing.