Zach Barth-founder of Zachtronics-grew up reading 2600, a hacking magazine that’s also behind the HOPE conference, and would buy old computers at swap meets.
Expaunks is steeped in 1990s Cyberpunk aesthetic.
If it all sounds like a William Gibson novel, that’s the point. A mysterious computer program makes an offer-hack for me and I’ll keep you alive. The player character has the phage and needs medicine that costs $700 a day to stay alive. That’s the power of Exapunks, a game set in an alternate 1997, where a terrible plague called “the phage” is ravaging the population, computers run everything, and the players have to hack to stay alive. Clearing the small hurdle made me go from feeling like the dumbest person in the room to the smartest. After a few minutes of experimenting, I did. This was just the tutorial, but Exapunks expected me to mostly work it out on my own.
