Hacker Evolution 2010 reminds me of the one time I went to a casino.  I could not figure out how the games were played and quickly lost interest.  The premise probably isn’t that complex, but it is just different enough to confuse me.

The goal of the $0.99 game is to hack the computers being shown on the screen using either a direct hack or a virus.  You start out each level with a certain number of viruses for attacks and a firewall level that reflect the strength of the servers you can hack.

The key to this process, and what is smarter than I am, is that if you don’t do these attacks in the right order and bounce your attacks off of the right servers, you run out of viruses and firewall and can’t go any further.  To make this more frustrating, there is no “restart” button on the screen.  You have to exit out to the menu and start a new game.

The game offers a couple of pages of help.  But, contributing to my confusion, the text is fairly small and I can’t read it.  I think the game would really benefit from a tutorial level that walked the user through a level.  I don’t believe the game is complicated.  I like a game that is a challenge.  The addition of a short tutorial and/or some larger text in the help section would help with the understanding though.

Overall, I’d probably give the game a score of a B.  It isn’t as addictive as other puzzle games I’ve played, but should offer multiple hours of challenge for a reasonable price.  If you want to check out the concept, Hacker Evolution Lite is a free version of a similar title from the same developers and should give you a good idea of game-play.