Hacking

Hacking is a minigame added in the Relics of the Past DLC that consists of a series of extremely short and simple games. In the context of a run, hacking can be used to win items at arcades, open certain doors, and gain other benefits. When the player approaches something that can be hacked, a prompt will appear showing the difficulty, the number of layers (how many minigames must be completed), and the results of succeeding or failing the hack. If the player completes every layer, then the hack succeeds, but if they lose even a single one, the hack attempt fails and ends immediately. The minigames themselves involve moving a pixelated ship around a 5x5 grid to complete an objective shown at the top of the screen such as "Collect!" or "Survive!". The player is only given a few seconds to complete the objective, indicated by the depleting red border around the edge of the screen.

Uses
These are all the places the hacking minigame can be played during a run. Aside from these, there is also a hacking terminal in the Tutorial, and the Rad Sentinel NPC in the Hub that allows for practicing the hacking minigames.

Arcades
Arcades are special rooms with terminals that can be hacked for various rewards. There are 3 types of arcade terminals, listed below.

Create.Reward
This type of terminal costs debris to hack, and dispenses a random pickup for each successful hack. There is no direct penalty for failure, but the player has a limited number of attempts to hack it, shown on the "on_failure" line of the prompt. This number decreases for successful or failed hacks, so failure means losing the spent debris and a potential reward. The price and difficulty increase with each floor, but the number of layers is always 2-3.

Item.Upgrade
These terminals start out with a pickup already available to take, but by hacking the terminal the pickup can be upgraded. After each successful hack, the item is replaced with a slightly better one. Once the item is taken the terminal screen goes black and can no longer be hacked. Hacking the terminal costs debris, but it can be hacked any number of times with no penalty (other than the lost debris). The starting price increases with each floor and is also increased by 20% (multiplicative) every time the pickup is upgraded. Each hack only has 1 layer, but the difficulty level increases with each success.

There are a number of pre-determined "paths" that the item can take as it's upgraded, always starting with either 1 HP part or 5% max ammo and ending with a cartridge, after which every upgrade simply changes which cartridge it is.

Collect
Collect terminals have a special hacking game where the player collects as many items as they can within the time limit. This terminal doesn't cost any debris to hack and doesn't have any penalty for failing, but it can only be hacked once. Most of the collectable items are diamonds worth 50*(floor number) debris, but there are also hearts that heal 1 HP (or an HP part if full), and ammo pickups that restore 10% ammo.

Hackable Doors
Some Vaults are locked behind an electronic door that can only be opened by successfully hacking it. This can be attempted any number of times, but every failure results in taking damage. The difficulty level and number of layers increases with each floor, and on later floors these can be some of the hardest hacking challenges in the game.

Plug
The Plug cartridge allows for hacking weapon troves, upgrade terminals, and shops for varying effects. Hacking with Plug always has 2 layers, a difficulty level of 3, and a penalty of taking damage. Successfully hacking weapon troves and upgrade terminals results in more weapons/upgrades to choose from, while hacking shops lowers their prices.