Aw, gosh. If there was ever a game coded for me, it’s S.P.L.I.T. Hacking, typing, and horror. The only thing that could make it better is if I could boot up Chip’s Challenge on the in-game machine.

It’s interesting (and unplanned) that I’d play this game so soon after my review of Typing of the Dead where I talked about my love of typing. S.P.L.I.T. incorporates it in a novel way, but the real core of the game is the hacking. That’s an interest I never really talked about (that I recall). I’m not actually a hacker. I worked nine-nearly-ten years in I.T., but that was helping lawyers navigate their email program and keeping antiquated software ticking on modern servers. Hacking video games, though? Ayyy.

However, when I say horror, there isn’t any sort of monster that pops out of the in-game computer screen. No, this is the sort of horror that requires a content warning at the beginning and probably shouldn’t be touched by someone who has my specific kind of brain worms.

Probably a mistake, but, ah, I think I’m okay.

TOO MANY POINTS

S.P.L.I.T. casts you as a part of some sort of hacking group doing something important. The exact circumstances are a bit vague. Actually, everything outside your window is rather vague. The only thing really concrete is that you have an old “Field Kit” that connects to a particular type of old server that you want to get root access to.

You’re given instructions through an IRC-like chat with your two fellow hackers. However, the instructions are pretty non-specific. In fact, S.P.L.I.T. is so niche that if you have no experience with command line, whether that’s through real-world experience or similar hacking games like Hacker Evolution or Hacknet, you’re up the creek, chum. It’s tether swimming for you.

Uh, let’s see. To start of with, you need to scan the network for the ID of the field kit, connect through that, try to download the unprotected files, find out you need to add the field kit as a trusted connection, backtrack to the file managing trusted connections, edit it to include the field kit’s ID, then go back and download the files before locating a necessary ID within them. All through command line. That’s just step one.

I did it. I feel like a smart person.

A REAL SMARTY PANTS

It gets a bit more complicated from there, actually. However, you don’t have to stay at it for long. It was suggested to me that the overall length of S.P.L.I.T. is 90 minutes. I did it in 48 (again, I feel very smart).

I had my notebook out, jotting down all the bits of random information I needed, but I only needed a page for that. Still, there are more files in that computer that I didn’t look at, so maybe there’s more to this.

S.P.L.I.T. is controlled entirely by keyboard. Throw that mouse away. This is probably pretty easy to imagine when looking at a big command prompt, but you can also look in preset directions by holding the alt button and hitting the arrow keys. You don’t have to do this much; mostly just to look between the monitor with the chat program and the one with your command prompt. You can look out the window, and at the field kit, but there doesn’t seem to be much reason to do so outside just getting a feel for your surroundings.

HACKING OF THE DEAD

During the chat sequences, you also don’t type the messages. Which makes sense, since this isn’t a chatbot. Well, you do type, but regardless of what keystroke you make, your character types out whatever the next character in the message is. If there’s one thing I hate about S.P.L.I.T., it’s how slow the protagonist types. It’s not 1:1 when it comes to keystrokes. So, you can hammer your keyboard as hard as you want, but the protagonist types at the speed that he types, which is faster than, say, my mother, but frustratingly short of what my Typing of the Dead trained fingers can do.

So, the best way to describe the frustration is: you know that one major game design sin that keeps cropping up? The one where you have to follow an NPC, but your running speed is faster than them and your walking speed is slower so you just have to keep speeding up and slowing down? That’s what this typing is like. Drives me up the wall.

However, you don’t stay in front of the computer. When it’s time to get to your feet, you’re presented with floating words that you need to type out to advance the action. I wish I could spoil more about this, because it’s used in an extremely effective and very disturbing sequence. Very disturbing. Erm, very, very, disturbing. But it’s best if you experience it yourself.

S.P.L.I.T.-TING HEADACHE

S.P.L.I.T. is a pretty harrowing game. While the plot is somewhat nebulous, it makes clear that you’re doing something that carries massive repercussions for you. You might not know what you’re doing, but you know you’re not supposed to be doing it. The mission might be unclear, but the consequences are apparent. So, I hope you don’t have anxiety and a guilt problem, because that would suck! Haha! Ha!

The result is a shortform game that presents a pretty crunchy hacking challenge, yet still manages to tell an effective story. Other hacking games might establish stakes, but few of them are able to give you more than a whiff. It’s hard to communicate through command prompt. S.P.L.I.T. does it in a pretty simple way. It’s easy to imagine it being developed as an experimental hacking game before getting jammed into a story. You could even imagine a story where a hacking game gets jammed into it. I’d even be willing to accept that these were two separate ideas that wouldn’t stand on their own, getting glued together.

However, it came to be developed, the result is otherworldly. It’s a sliver of a story with enough depth to pierce the brain. It’s (maybe) 90 minutes, but with enough punch to knock out a rhinoceros. It’s involving, and affecting, and disturbing, but it also made me feel smart for solving a computer problem. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I felt so proud of myself and satisfied for completing a game. Just make sure that your loins are thoroughly girded, and your command line skills are sharp before logging on.

8/10

This review was conducted using a digital version of the game. It was provided by the developer’s PR.