I’ll admit, when I first booted up Net.Attack() , I was fully prepared for yet another standard run-based survival game. The genre has been booming lately, and I was expecting the usual routine: walk around, auto-fire at hordes of enemies, pick a random weapon upgrade when I level up, and repeat until my screen is a mess of particle effects.
But about ten minutes into my first run, Net.Attack() threw coding-related shenanigans into my expectations.
Net.Attack()’s premise is straightforward enough on the surface. You play as a program navigating a neon-lit, retro-styled circuit board, fending off viruses and system infections. The game’s interfact is crisp and heavily stylized around PC hardware – think of CPUs, transistors, and capacitors making up your battlefield. Its banger of a soundtrack also deserves praise.
However, the game’s first real “God damn” moment happened when I pressed ‘E’ for the first time.
Instead of pausing to give me a choice between a fireball or a magic wand like in Survival.io, the game opened up a visual scripting interface. If you’ve ever used a game engine with node-based coding, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. In Net.Attack(), you don’t just select your attacks; you literally wire them together with a drag and drop system.
I started with a basic “On Tick” node, meaning whatever I attached to it would fire every second. I dragged a line over to a “Pulse” node, and suddenly my character was shooting a laser beam once a second. Okay, God damn, I thought. But then I visited the in-game shop and bought a “For Each” loop and a multi-pulse modifier. Within a few levels, I had wired a ridiculous string of logic which miraculously triggered an eight-directional laser blast multiple times a second, turning my game into a dazzling lightshow.
This system completely rewires how you think about progression in a survival game. When you level up by collecting dropped experience, you boost your passive stats like health, speed, damage, and luck, much like in any other bullet heaven, reverse bullet hell, or survivor-like. All of your other DPS is mostly contributed by how cleverly you can string together the game’s 190+ scripting nodes. It turns the usual mindless dopamine hit of the genre into a genuinely engaging puzzle, which I appreciate. I spent almost as much time tweaking my logic board to optimize my damage output as I did dodging enemies.
That isn’t to say my first few hours were entirely flawless, as the shop where you buy new nodes relies heavily on RNG. I faced a lot of frustrating runs where I had a brilliant idea for a nested loop of attacks, but the shop flat-out didn’t give me a specific node or modifier I needed to finish my code. When you can’t complete a circuit, your damage falls off quickly, and the viruses will overwhelm you. It leaves you reeling with thoughts like, “Damn, bro, I just wasted my time on this run“.
The end of a level also brings a massive spike in adrenaline. You’re given 60 seconds to reach the exit before a massive, glitchy red circle of death closes in on you like a Fortnite storm. This will force you to stop your lightshow creation in order to make a mad dash for survival.
The Verdict So Far
After my first few play sessions, Net.Attack has completely hooked me. It takes the addictive foundation of the bullet-heaven genre and layers it with an incredibly creative, brain-tickling mechanic. If you like the idea of building your own weapons from the base code up, this is absolutely one to watch. I would rate this a solid 6.5/10.
