The Hacker's Toolkit

The Hacker's Toolkit was a mixed-reality hacking simulation prototype. You were thrust into the dark web and handed a limited set of tools by an underground "security" organization called the HTK Group. Prove you had what it takes and you would earn membership, bigger jobs and bigger risks.

The game was designed to be played across separate desktop applications that mimicked real hacker tools, all connected to the same save file: a password cracker, port scanner, decrypter, encrypter and crypto wallet to start, with upgrades such as steganography, firewall bypass, trace route, VPN and facial recognition planned as your dark-web reputation grew. New jobs were to arrive through the HTK Group's secure messaging service, and the story was to reach into remote desktops, QR codes, cryptography and websites such as the HTK Group's htk.icu and the fictional company MantiCorp's site.

It was built across several engines and tools, including Unreal Engine 4.27 and 5 with MetaHumans and live face capture, Unity 2022, DreamOS, GameMaker Studio 2, Visual Studio 2022 and web technologies. The prototype first appeared on itch.io in July 2021, followed by dev updates, a gameplay mission preview and an early trailer draft on YouTube through February 2022. In 2022 the itch.io page was relaunched with more screenshots and a Windows pre-order at $9.99, but no playable build appears in any archived copy of the page, and by December 2023 the pre-order had been removed.