Squally, a game to teach hacking

Hacking is perhaps one of the most tedious things to learn, and the existing learning materials caused me a lot of frustration as a kid. Walls of text, lectures, and lessons delivered by people who are bad at simplifying the material.

There has been a recent boom in software making it fun to learn web development and scripting languages, so I find it surprising that there are very few tools that have made it easy to learn to hack. This is the problem that our team wants to solve.

We’re launching our Kickstarter for Squally, a PC game to teach the fundamentals of hacking. Our goal? To raise $420.

Okay, okay. We know that $420 is not enough to build a video game. However, we’re bootstrapping and self-funding most of this project, so we are not strapped for cash at the moment. We intentionally set the bar low so that we could focus on building this game, instead of begging people for money.

What we want are pre-sales, and a community. Kickstarter is the perfect place for getting a community excited about an awesome game. Also, there is some glory to being the first serious Kickstarter to launch at $420. If this back-fires, we will write a follow-up story about how we are morons.

You can also sign up to receive updates on our progress from our website here: https://squallygame.com

Rewriting the game’s code in x86 assembly

For those who think that teaching people to hack is evil, you are wrong. By the time I was in college, I was able to skip all of my computer science classes for the first 2 years. Landing a job after graduation was a breeze. I’m not a genius, I just got a head start by learning to hack games.

Perhaps more importantly, cybersecurity is a growing field that pays exceptionally well. With companies like Equifax leaking social security numbers, the PlayStation Network hack, and the countless other recent cyber attacks, we need more good guys who know how to prevent these things — and to stop hackers, you need to know how to hack.

Hacking topics introduced in Squally

Our goal is to help people take that initial, scary first step. If this sounds like a fit for you or someone you know, check out our Kickstarter.