Played a bunch of 868-BACK
I love Michael Brough's mobile games all so much that I've kept several of them installed on my phone for years. Cinco Paus dominated one of my Christmas vacations to the point where my husband started joking about my love for pontos, or points. Imbroglio is just really fucking good. I have had the mobile version of 868-HACK installed on my phone for probably over seven years. I don't play it a ton, but I'm glad to have it there.
It's been a little bit since the sequel, 868-BACK, launched on Steam, but I finally got a chance to play it this week. It's really really good!! Brough figured out how to make 868-HACK more complicated, and I'm a sicko who's been playing that game off and on for a decade, so I definitely enjoy a big heaping serving of "more, and more complicated".
I still haven't gotten good enough at it to have anything profound to say about that "more complicated," though. Maybe after I've finally won a three-week-long hacking spree I'll have something to say. (Within the scope of the game, three business weeks of hacking, or a win/survival streak of 15 back to back games, seems to be "a full run." That's what the UI is suggesting to me right now, anyway.)
One thing I can say right off the bat is that the game looks and sounds amazing. Brough's artstyle has always been one of my favorite things about his games. He's really good at garish, neon pixel art - his games look kind of pleasingly shocking. BACK has beautiful scribbly pixel art and tons of lovely weird hacker VFX. The fonts in the game are delightful. I just really adore the way it looks!! And the way it sounds. I love a game that someone clearly spent a lot of time and care on!!
This game feels extremely large, so I'll probably write about it again later. But I do recommend it! If you've never gotten tangled up in one of Brough's roguelikes before, I think any of them is a perfectly good place to start. I played Cinco Paus for, like, half an hour a day for basically a month in 2017. It's great. They're all great!!