It's a UNIX system! I know this!

Midnight Protocol appears to sit somewhere between Hacknet and NITE Team 4, in terms of both realism and aesthetics. Its hacking mechanisms are less artificial than Hacknet's, though still abstracted from reality to be more "game-y." And while it revolves around a flashy node-based network visualization (similar to hacking in the newer Deus Exes), you still control everything with a command-line interface.

Unlike most hacking games, Midnight Protocol is turn-based: the "trace" countdown only ticks when you take an action. So, you can take your time planning how to optimize the CPU usage of exploit and stealth programs. There's an Uplink-style economy, where your ill-gotten money can be used to purchase upgrades -- the demo didn't show it, but there is a "hardware" tab, so I assume that your rig will scale up (as will program requirements) over time.

And the story teased by the demo is promising: you've got a dark past, there's some underground conspiracy, a hack gets abruptly interrupted by a counter-hack with ominous messaging... all typical stuff, but the quality of the writing "sells" it fairly well, typos notwithstanding.

Basically, everything I saw in this demo was good. But I'm trying not to get my hopes up; hacking games have a habit of letting me down with some combination of clunky interfaces, under-baked game design, and boring narratives. I'll want to see some post-release opinions on whether the rest of Midnight Protocol can measure up to my admittedly-high standards.

Progress: Finished the demo.