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0 As a resident zoomer, live streams hold a long shadow over my leisure time. I’ve spent days of my life in chatrooms, posting laughing emojis as white men twice my age play games meant for children. So when I saw a mystery game themed around the streams I love so much, I had to give it a click.
Hacked: The Streamer is an FMV interactive film developed by Button Interactive and NAISU, and published by GameDev.ist and Gamersky Studios. After three years of development, it was released on Steam on April 6 of this year. Was it worth the wait?
TCulture22 Donated $10: “dude show the review LULW”
In Hacked: The Streamer, you play as internet streamer PinkyPie, whose routine stream is turned upside down when a hacker threatens to expose compromising photos of her unless she pays $50,000. The hacker may be someone close to her, and she must find out their identity while keeping everyone’s suspicions low.
It’s a great hook, but unfortunately, the delivery is lacking. Acting performances fall across the spectrum. PinkyPie’s actress gives a decent performance, especially in non-verbal chatting sequences, and does a great job acting panicked. Her moderators, on the other hand, have very stilted and robotic deliveries. They also barely appear on-camera, which only makes the poor vocal work stand out further. Granted, the devs aren’t English and are performing in a non-native language, but that only goes so far.
I also have issues with the central mystery of the game, but those are more gameplay-focused.
Gameplay
As an FMV game, actual gameplay is very light. You primarily interact with the game by selecting choices at certain points to influence the main character’s decisions. There are a few short “interactive” sections, but these mainly consist of extremely simple tapping minigames while footage of another video game plays beneath it. It’s less of a game and more of a film, which is par for the course for most FMV titles (At Dead Of Night excluded).
There are also sequences where your character panics, allowing you to choose a flashback to watch to learn more about the suspects. This is a really neat idea that, unfortunately, is used very sparingly. The game also makes a big deal of reminding you that you can only watch one memory at a time, which made me think I had limited options and would need to be strategic about what memories I viewed. However, this isn’t actually the case; you will see all the memories in a single playthrough no matter what. I feel like forcing the player to pick and choose would have increased the tension, and improved replayability.
Detective Work
The game is split into three chapters, and at the end of each chapter you get to see a map of the branching nodes and the path you took through them. This is a fantastic feature that, for some reason, isn’t used to its fullest extent. While other games save the map progress and let you use it as a guide for replays, Hacked: The Streamer just resets it between each playthrough. This makes it much more frustrating than it should be to see new events on later replays.
The core gameplay loop is primarily gathering evidence, building up to the final sequence of the game when you select who you believe the hacker really is. You do this by collecting evidence in your notebook, earned by watching specific scenes and making certain choices. Evidence is separated between the different suspects, and you require a certain threshold of evidence earned in order to select them as the culprit.
Unfortunately, the actual detective work involved is lacking. There are a few genuine hints towards the identity of the hacker, but for the most part all the “evidence” you get is just the main character’s conspiratorial thoughts towards their friends. Good for understanding the character’s mental state; bad for actually drawing conclusions. Ultimately, I made my choice based not on evidence but on who I thought had the least obvious red herrings, and even then that was a shot in the dark. If you’re looking for a real deductive Obra Dinn-style game, you won’t find it here.
Graphics & Audio
Since this is an FMV game, I’ll focus more on the cinematography instead of the graphics. The videos are competently shot and lighted, but since they’re all in a single room things get repetitive quickly. There are some flashbacks and clips of gameplay to vary the footage, but it only goes so far.
Unfortunately, quite a bit of the game is just screenshots of Discord conversations. Easy to film, certainly, but not very fun to watch. They’re difficult to edit, too; the text added in post sticks out from the regular Discord font like a sore thumb.
And, of course, there’s the AI art. The game’s Steam page claims it only uses AI for an in-game sequence where PinkyPie generates art for her stream. However, this simply isn’t true. This game is dripping with AI graphics, from the props in PinkyPie’s bedroom to the owl adorning your investigative notebook. Every moderator has an AI-generated profile picture, which you’ll get to stare at instead of watching the actors, you know, act. Using AI is one thing, but downplaying and lying about it just puts a bad taste in my mouth.
The game’s soundtrack is simple and orchestral. There isn’t much to write home about. It’s effective for what it needs to be, but you won’t be humming it as you do the dishes.
Longevity
Hacked: The Streamer is a very short game. It took me little more than an hour to finish. And while I could replay it to see other scenes, the aformentioned game design choices make that difficult to do.
Final Thoughts
Hacked: The Streamer is a valiant effort by a new team, but it unfortunately falls flat. The narrative is convoluted and uninteresting. Gameplay is minimal and borderline unnecessary. And the game deliberately hides its actors, the most important part of an FMV game, behind Discord calls and AI art. There are signs of an interesting premise, but the delivery is wholly lacking.
That’s harsh criticism, I know, but that’s because I can see the glittering of a solid game beneath all the ugly rubble. May this be a learning experience, and may their next project be an improvement.
I give Hacked: The Streamer the Thumb Culture Bronze Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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