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Null State

An RPG dungeon crawler; play as a mid-21st century hacker who robs from the rich and gives to the poor.
Null State

What is it?

Null State is a moddable CRPG built on classic gameplay styles and themes found in cyberpunk games from the late 80s and early 90s.

Inspired by classic cyberpunk stories (& other, older tales of downtrodden folk heroes), you will be tasked with helping the people in your community until you discover that your world is barely holding together — and about to be pushed over the brink.

Why would I play it?

You’ll enjoy Null State if you want to explore and learn about a post-apocalyptic world where not everyone is just in it for themselves. You will be faced with difficult moral & ethical decisions, however you won’t feel like you’re doing bad things for good reasons.

How do I play it?

Contacts from your local community will ask you to do jobs for them. You can always say no!
Each job comes with a set of objectives to complete; mostly, you'll be hacking networks.
Almost every network will have cybersecurity you'll need to avoid or defeat to finish the jobs.
While in the network, you'll have access to download any data you find there.
Sometimes, you'll be asked to do things which have consequences outside of the network.

How do I win?

We're shipping it with several plotlines which have a beginning, middle, and end – you win every time you resolve a plotline and learn more about the Null State universe!

With that said, Null State is an open-ended RPG: you can mod the game to include additional plotlines (written by anyone in the Null State community) that go beyond the ones which you'll get in the base game.

Why does this remind me of something?

Null State's combat mechanics are inspired by strategic guessing games like Memory or Battleship. The network / node map has some influence from the hacking mini-game in the Sega Genesis game, Shadowrun – as well as other classic dungeon-crawler games & TTRPGs from the early 90s.

Where can I find it?

Null State is currently available to wishlist on Steam:

Null State on Steam
You are a hacker - a rarity in a world nearly destroyed by a cascading global systems failure. Prowl through networks node by node, disabling their security in risky turn-based combat, as you explore branching storylines to uncover what caused Obsidian Wednesday.
STEAM