Quadrilateral Cowboy (AKA:Shadowrun Rigger simulator)

[Anonmare]

Quadrilateral Cowboy is a hacking based puzzle game, I'd like to tell you about the story and who you are but the game never outright tells you. There are degrees and letters you can infer your identity from but I never really bothered to memorise them. At any rate, you play a hacker using some knock-off Oculus Rift if it was made in the late '70s to plan heists to steal something from a location. You will be placed at an insertion point in the level, be told your objective and get it and yourself to the extraction point.
In between you and your objective are a variety of security measures from something as simple as a locked door to a laser grid and everything in between. Your most valuable tool that you will almost always have every mission is your deck - a portable computer that looks like the bastard child of a laptop and a CRT monitor. As you progress through the game, new gadgets and abilities will be made available to you such as a portable, remote control turret.

The story is abstract and without dialogue, it's like your typical indie artsy-style game in that regard but the best way I can describe it is if Cyberpunk had a DOS aesthetic and has similar themes in that regard. The game honestly felt far too short and there's never really a level that required a serious composition of everything you've learned. That being said, for what it is, I had a lot of fun with the hacking/coding mechanic and I never really encountered a point where I had any difficulty due to poor design (only my poor intellect). It's £14.99 on Steam (roughly ~$20 USD) and I'd recommend it if you have some cash handy. Just don't expect a terribly long game.

[Wyzack]

That would make it a decker simulator. Riggers just control drones mostly

[Anonmare]

Yeah it's more a rigger simulator since most of your coding will be used to manipulate your gadgets, like your first gadget beyond your deck is a Weevil, a small quadruped drone. To manipulate it, you have to feed it text based commands like go 100;wait(10);turn(90);wait(1);datajack 0.
You even have to set up the monitor to see through the camera yourself since computers from the 80's didn't have GUIs.
It honestly moves away from actual hacking far too early for my tastes and the number of levels are too few. It sorely needs more levels in my opinion because the actual core mechanic is very enjoyable.

[DemonFiren]

Am I correct in getting Duskers, Uplink and very slight Clandestine vibes from your description?
Because then this might b gud.

[Anonmare]

[youtube]2fqvEG5E0jk[/youtube]
Here's a quick example of the type of gameplay to expect. There is a steam workshop and modding tools so more levels might be added, I hope so anyway because I was left wanting more at the end of it.

[Timbrewolf]

>he thinks controlling drones with a deck makes him a rigger

Legit triggered. Shut the fuck up. Riggers use a vehicke control rig implanted in their nervous system yo control vehicles and other machines. Security riggers are a thing. a completely retarded concept that I fucking hate but they existed at one point.

Saying the player character is a rigger because he uses programs and issues commands to the drones could not be any more wrong.


REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[DemonFiren]

You mean, "legit riggered", don't you.

[dezzmont]

Security riggers were always a thing, it was building riggers that were dumb, and all of their functionality is gone from the game or part of mainstream hacking and rigging.

Also for the last few editions the control rig was getting less and less important. In 4e it was all about your programs, and your rig did jack shit. It was so bad that the hacker and rigger role were literally identical. In 5e, rigs are back as a thing, but are arguably the least important part of being a rigger, in the same way that some punk teen buying smartlink eyes is not a samurai. Its useful again, but your own abilities, and the power of your rigger command console, will let you come out ahead of some jackass who thinks that becoming a car makes him a l33t rigger.

Unfortunately while they took all the rigging toys away from hackers they didn't actually do much to improve rigging as its own thing so now riggers are just totally dumpstered as a role because your robots are made of tissue paper and jumping into one is just asking to get your brain melted when your drone explodes from a stray holdout pistol round. It is all about rigger-sams who don't even have a control rig now, because you can actively hurl your massive metal body in front of your robot buddies to keep them alive for longer than one pass, it is completely ridiculous.

[Timbrewolf]

Security riggers and "there's a security guard with a VCR behind all these drones controlling them" are not the same fucking thing.

A security rigger is a dude who is plugged into a building so that he feels like he is a building for some stupid fucking reason that basically only exists so that you can have a rigger pull double-duty as a decker sometimes because someone got upset that the decker was horning in on their rigger shit and felt it only fair they get to steal back from them.

It's the dumbest idea ever considering I should be able to walk into the building, kick a hole in the wall, and give the security rigger hiding in a back office brain damage for doing it.

For all the bad decisions Fasa and Wizkids ever made in making the game, the bullshit implants, the powergame-y traits, metamagic feats, broken builds, etc. I still think the concept of security riggers are the absolute worst thing they've ever added to the game and I cried tears of joy when I realized they were just completely erased from history in 5E.

Fuck Security Riggers. Fuck everyone who ever played one. Fuck every GM who ever used one in an adventure to defend a facility. Fuck the authors who created them. Fuck the editors for letting it go through.

[tedward1337]

Anon is #Riggered

[DemonFiren]

God I hate this fucking space elevator.

[Anonmare]

If you're on the level I think you're on, that one took me a while (the one with the laser floor). If it's that one, I can tell you that the solution requires more than one blink bind-key.

[DemonFiren]

I figured as much since casing the damn thing.
Shame you can't really seem to chain Wait() together, else I would have my ittle drone buddy walk back and forth between the laser switches.

[Anonmare]

I figured as much since casing the damn thing.
Shame you can't really seem to chain Wait() together, else I would have my ittle drone buddy walk back and forth between the laser switches.

I learned pretty early on that if you don't put in a wait() command between two different movement commands (I.E. go 20;turn 90), it'll try to do both at once which is annoying. I also learned that you can't datajack two different data access points in a single command line. It just doesn't seem to get it.

[DemonFiren]

It doesn't work because the Weev's only got one jack.