Assange 'Em Up: First Look at Disrupt

I am a bit of a sucker for games that make me feel like a ninetiesesque hack ninja with florescent fingerless gloves, a RECKLESS disregard for meatspace, someone with USBs instead of toenails, cameras instead of eyeballs... drools... Lekë Dobruna is in the early stages of making a game called Disrupt enabling you to legitimately yell to your flatmates that you've just found a backdoor into the Chicago Police Department to erase silly Yez's DUI.

Lekë Dobruna is based in Pristina, Kosovo, and in his game Disrupt you take the role of a hacker who has gained access into a secret governmental Operating System, allowing you to play the role of Big Brother and control the main infrastructures of cities. He knocked together some very very early demo footage of his game for me here:

I asked Lekë if his game is in any way influenced by Uplink, and he said it was a "big influence," along with "movies like Die Hard 4 and Track Down". He said in his email:

In Disrupt you take the role of a hacker in a very vast and rich environment. The player manages to gain access into a governmental operating system, which he will use throughout the game. The operating system gives the player backdoors into servers, making it easier to hack secure mainframes and servers such as local police department, medical center, academic, electric servers etc., giving the player the ability to mess with peoples life's if he so desires. The player can also use this operating system for his own personal gain, doing side-missions in order to have money to upgrade the hardware. There will also be a story-line intact, giving the player something engaging to do and investigate while still having the options to still interact with the cyber infrastructure. The main and final point that the game tries to get to at the end will be 'If you had the power to the flow of information, would you use it for personal gain or share it with the world?". Decisions that we make throughout the game, such as what type of side-missions we decide to take-on, will affect your reputation and the way the environment interacts back with you.

Also I'm very excited about the modding abilities that will be bundled in the game, including an built-in editor, allowing the player to create their own content and stories for the game, including new characters, new cities, new servers, new missions etc.

The game promises to have you be able to upgrade your in-game hardware and download the newest in-game software in order stay one step ahead of your enemies, and you must travel from one city to another to avoid local police departments from detaining you.

You can track Lekë Dobruna's progress with this game here, at his dev log. He has apologised to me about his lack of a Britney Spears soundtrack.