History VideoGame / Histacom

* CallingYourAttacks: While you're waiting to time travel for the first time, 12padams and the Hidden Hacker have a sort of duel where the former tries to disable the Time Distorter and the latter tries to allow it to continue. Everything they do is announced in their chat window shortly before it happens.
-->'''12padams:''' OK NOW YOU HAVE DONE IT!!!!
-->''Stop Timer''
-->'''12padams:''' Bet You didn't see that one coming...
-->'''The Hidden Hacker:''' Oh but i did...
-->'''The Hidden Hacker:''' I converted the stop function to the hide function when i first logged on...
-->'''12padams:''' THATS IMPOSSIBLE
-->'''The Hidden Hacker:''' Oh Is It? Well watch this!!
-->''Show Timer''
-->'''The Hidden Hacker:''' Oh and heres one more command for you to learn
-->''Disconnect 12padams''
-->''12padams Has been Disconnected...''
-->'''The Hidden Hacker:''' Good luck Windows 95 user... Ill see you in the future!

* DisproportionateRetribution: When [[spoiler:the Y2K bug causes one of the protagonist's journeys to go wrong and land him two years after his intended destination, 12padams refuses to believe that his software has failed, and thus assumes that the Hidden Hacker is hiding the protagonist as part of a conspiracy. [[WhatAnIdiot Even though the whole point of the trip was to test the Time Distorter for this very bug.]]]] His response? To create a virus so powerful that it somehow destroys nearly the entire Internet.
* DuelingHackers: See CallingYourAttacks above.

* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent: Rather than the Internet trawling, chat rooms, and "hacking" from the previous levels, the Windows 2000 level consists almost entirely of the GameWithinAGame, Survive The Day.

** On the Windows 2000 level, 12padams makes the protagonist play his new ChooseYourOwnAdventure style game, "Survive The Day", before he'll let the Hidden Hacker and the protagonist download the latest version of Time Distorter.

** The player discovers the Time Distorter based on [[spoiler:a tipoff from the Hidden Hacker which is for some reason displayed to them when they try to make an empty Google search. This directs them to 12padams' site, where they are supposed to click "the thing you would least expect to click". Upon clicking the copyright notice at the bottom of the page, they are for some reason shown 12padams' Hotmail address and password. Using those details, they are able to download a program delivered as an attachment, known as the "Hidden Website Content Viewer". Using this on the 12padams site entire the download button for the Time Distorter]]. It doesn't get any more realistic from there.

-->-- '''12padams''', original developer of Histacom[[note]]Actually, there are numerous mistakes in the representation of each operating system, and which one you're using only affects cosmetic aspects, not gameplay.[[/note]]

The game was first released in early 2013 and once received regular updates from the original developer, but was abandoned around 2015 and then given to a new team, who added an extra level to the game (which is actually inaccessible thanks to a severe lack of playtesting) before passing it on again. This third team's version of the game entered DevelopmentHell almost immediately and eventually fizzled out with nothing much of interest being produced. The fourth team to develop the game renamed the game to [=TimeHACK=] and then back to Histacom; their version, marked 2.x, remade most of the original content from scratch, but development has eventually stalled. In August of 2019, lempamo has officially killed off the game.

The original developer later created a SpiritualSuccessor called ''[[VideoGame/ShiftOS ShiftOS]]'', which had a similarly murky development history.

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: At one point, the Hidden Hacker and 12padams ask you for your real name. For a while after you tell them, they start using it a LOT. The worst example is probably:

** You might think this is an attempt to avoid using gendered pronouns, but 12padams has already confirmed earlier in the chat that the protagonist is a he.
* DependingOnTheWriter: Before beginning work on the new engine, the third developers briefly tried to maintain the existing VB.NET version of the game, and they intended to clean up the nonsensical grammar and spelling used in the original game. They only ever cleaned up two seemingly arbitrarily selected blocks of text, and somehow managed to make one of them ''even worse'' - although it's now grammatically correct, it is horribly stilted and does not flow at all with the unchanged text before and after it. For example:

* ExactProgressBar: There is never any fluctuation in speed when downloading files - they always download at 8 KB/s, and the progress bar moves forward at a constant speed as a result. All of the files are also exactly 100 KB. This is corrected in 2.x.

-->[[spoiler:Username: 12padams@hotmail.com]] [[note]]On a side note, Hotmail addresses are not allowed to begin with numbers.[[/note]]

** The player discovers the Time Distorter based on [[spoiler:a tipoff from the Hidden Hacker which is for some reason displayed to them when they try to make an empty Google search. This directs them to 12padams' site, where they are supposed to click "the thing you would least expect to click". Upon clicking the copyright notice at the bottom of the page, they are for some reason shown 12padams' Hotmail address and password. Using those details, they are able to download a program delivered as an attachment, known as the "Hidden Website Content Viewer". Using this on the 12padams site reveals the download button for the Time Distorter]]. It doesn't get any better from there.
* InfoDump: The ENTIRE Windows XP level is reading the Hidden Hacker explain what happened. You can't even do anything except move to the next level once he's done, [[spoiler:because opening IE here will cause the game to end]].

** It's unclear if this is intentional, but [[spoiler:after the player is accidentally sent to 2002 and opts to travel back to 2000 and pretend nothing happened:]]

*** The "correction" from the third developers (see DependingOnTheWriter above) makes this even worse:

* ManChild: The Hidden Hacker sounds like they're about to throw a tantrum at one point:

** Trying to turn on the lights immediately after you wake up will cause a house fire.
*** Running away from said fire will cause you to get hit by a truck and die.
*** Any attempt to put the fire out will fail and lead to you burning to death.
*** Trying to call the emergency line will lead to your phone cutting out; yelling out for help will get the attention of your neighbour, "a mean guy who has wanted you dead for the 12 years you have lived in your house", and you are obviously LeftForDead. In both situations, your house collapses and crushes you to death.
** If you opt to explore the house without lights, you will brush against something, knocking it over and smashing it. No matter what you choose next, you will inevitably cut yourself on the glass and bleed to death.
** Setting your alarm and going back to sleep gives you the option of eating toast, a bowl of cereal, or [[BreadEggsMilkSquick "last week's sushi"]].
*** Eating the sushi will cause you to become sick. Trying to drive to the doctor will cause you to pass out and die in a car crash, and going to sleep will simply mean you never wake up.
** There are a lot more options, but they all end up pretty much the same way.

-->''Hopefully all computers can be successfully converted to 4 digit dates to that this global crysis never happens.''

* PaperThinDisguise: To hide his identity while using 12padams' "Web Chat 1999", The Hidden Hacker adopts the name of "The Known Checker", although he reverts to his original name as soon as he finds the protagonist. He gets caught.
* PuzzleGame: {{Subverted}}. The first level comes across as one, although the puzzles are ridiculous, but once you befriend 12padams, he pretty much does everything for you and you just have to read him and the Hidden Hacker talk for a while, then time travel to the next level.
* ReadTheFinePrint: The agreement in the installers for any of 12padams' programs seems a bit over-the-top (although the installers don't actually check to see if you agreed):

* RightUnderTheirNoses: The Hidden Hacker tries this, waiting for the protagonist with the ridiculous fake name "The Known Checker" in 12padams' own "Web Chat 1999". [[SubvertedTrope He gets caught pretty quickly.]]

* {{Unwinnable}}: Reaching the Windows Me level will cause downloads to stop working, making the game impossible. (They're actually going to the Windows 2000 desktop, which you can't access, in the background.)

* UrExample: A lot of the elements of this game were later used in VideoGame/PonyIsland, although that game did a lot more with them.