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SpaceHack is a good first effort from Rebelmind Games that is worth every cent of the twenty bucks it will cost you - but not much more.

Space Hack is the first effort from developer Rebelmind Games. They promise an Action/RPG game that provides 80-100 hours of addictive action-packed gameplay spread over 45 levels. With an MSRP of $20.00 USD, this could be the best bang for your buck title currently available in PC gaming.



The game takes place on a colony transport spaceship that is transmitting human populations to other planets due to the overcrowding of earth. The ship becomes trapped in a black nebula where it is then attacked and taken over by aliens. A small group of humans survive in one of the onboard biospheres and aim to reclaim the ship. The game's main character is an ex-military man named Hack who is given the chore of cleaning out the alien threat. He does it alone with no help from the other survivors. In fact, the other survivors actually make Hack pay for weapons, armor and healing items even though they are depending solely on him to save their lives.



The first thing that struck me about this game is the low system requirements. This game fits on one CD and uses a mere 500MB of HDD space. It only requires a 1.4Ghz processor and a 32MB Video card- modest to say the least. Combine this with the $20.00 price tag and this game makes one of the smallest impacts on the wallets and PCs of today's gamers out of all recently released titles.

With this small size comes some drawbacks as well. The graphics, for example, are adequate but dated. The game is rendered in full 3D but still looks as if it's already a couple of years old.

The sound is also lacking in comparison to most recent titles. It lacks surround sound support and has no voice acting. All dialog is text dependant. The sound effects are decent but many of them sound as if they were lifted directly from Diablo 2.



The gameplay offered here is fast hack and slash combat with nearly constant action. Provided instruments of destruction are your choice of melee or ranged weaponry using traditional or energy technology as well as "Tech Items" -which is the Space Hack equivalent to magic.

Each one of the 45 levels are large and packed full of enemies who are definitely not the sharpest tools in the shed. The term Artificial Intelligence may be overly generous to use when discussing the actions of enemies in Space Hack. Basically, once you come within a certain range of the enemy (even if there is a wall between you) they charge straight at you with a complete disregard for personal safety. While this is not what we have come to expect from today's games it doesn't really cause as big of a problem here as one would expect.



Large numbers of enemies tend to be clustered tightly together and placed sporadically throughout each level. The enemies' mad-rush tactics make each encounter with one of these veritable wasp's nests a pulse raising, white knuckled affair.

While this formula makes for an easy to pick-up game that is a lot of fun at the start, it can become repetative long before the games advertised 80-100 hours of gameplay are finished.

The main problem is that the first level is nearly identical to each subsequent level: Hack teleports into an area, Hack kills all the aliens as he zig-zags his way through the meandering level design, Hack teleports to the next level, rinse and repeat- 45 times.



Compounding the repetative gameplay is a relatively small number of enemy types. They do change somewhat as different biospheres are entered, but the overall variety is limited so you will end up fighting the same enemies over and over again. The weapons on the other hand range widely in damage and effects dealt, although there is a limited number of models and names for them.

On the RPG side of things, character upgrading is done through increasing Hack's stats selectively to increase his skills in the corresponding abilities; eg. increasing strength to raise melee attack power. Increasing stats occurs through distributing points made available each time Hack levels up by accumulating experience points from killing aliens.



As a whole Space Hack is a good game due to its price point. As far as budget titles go, this title is very good. The game is fun for a while, easy to get into, and offers many hours of play. The caveat of the game's length is that the repetative nature makes the game feel even longer than it is. In this particular case more may not be better as the game is really too long for the level of variety found within it.

Review by Nigel Grammer.