Video Game / Ghost Hacker

Ghost Hacker is a Tower Defense Web Game where you play as a Digitized Hacker trying to take back cyberspace from rogue AIs. What makes it unique from other Tower Defense games is the "shape" that each tower occupies. Each tower has up to four "nodes" sticking from it, and the tower can only be placed on an area where both it and the nodes fit. These nodes are used for equipping upgrades on, which enhance the tower's capabilities.

The first game focuses on the player character, Alpha, as they get accustomed to their new life as a Ghost — a digitized human who can act at the speeds of a computer. While hunting down rogue AIs at the behest of Cypher One, they come into contact and clash with the Ghost Collective and a rogue AI that calls himself "Axon".

A sequel, Ghost Hacker 2, was released in 2013. This focuses on Jeth, a newly-converted Ghost looking to fix his friend Sil with the assistance of fellow hacker Spook. While clashing with Sigil, the corporation that has her captive, they uncover a virus that infects and controls Ghosts and must work to contain it.

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Tropes present in both games:

• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You start with the capacity to hold six programs, but you also unlock the ability to increase this capacity up to sixteen, be it through natural progression (in the first game) or by spending your data cores (second game). You'll reach a point where you have more programs than slots and must pick your loadout based on the enemy preview.
• Area of Effect: The Ping tower releases a circular blast that hits all enemies within. The projectiles fired by a Command Shell or any tower with the Splash upgrade deals splash damage to enemies around the initial target, all of which will take the same amount of damage.
• Asteroids Monster: Splitters will split into smaller splitters when killed.
• Bandit Mook: Data Leeches can temporarily steal your resources to heal themselves. Destroy them to get your resources back (but not immediately — you'll need a Recycle program if you don't want it to slowly regenerate back).
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Spiders and Bugs take the form of abnormally-sized arthropods.
• Booby Trap: The Mine script places a mine on the path that deals damage to and stuns an enemy that steps on it.
• Charged Attack: When idle, the Compressor can store up to a stock of 5 shots (upgradable to 10). The Charge upgrade allows a tower to store up to five shots per upgrade.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Scanners, towers with the Amplifier upgrade and the Focus script cause targets to take extra damage from attacks.
• Damage Reduction: Reavers reduce all damage they take by 3.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The Tracer and Transcoder (which deal continuous damage to the target), the Infector and Memory Leak upgrade (which infects enemy, dealing damage per second), and to a lesser degree the fast-firing, low-damage towers like the Compressor and Scanner. They are the best way to deal with Avatars (which can only take at most 2 damage from any attack), but are very weak against Reavers (which take 3 less damage from all attacks).
• Digitized Hacker: Ghost Hackers are actually people who upload their mind onto the internet.
• Dungeon Bypass: Seekers are able to pass over corrupted squares created by Corruptors. Pathfinders can do both of this, and will calculate the shortest path to a data core, corrupting and crossing squares on that path.
• Elite Mooks: SuperUsers are resistant to Status Effects, can carry 2 data cores, and have the highest amount of health among non-boss enemies.
• Enemy Summoner: The Spawn and Decoy have the ability to spawn Baby Spawn and Decoy minions, which can carry a data core each. The Baby Spawn have an actual health bar but only spawn once per 10 seconds, while the mini-Decoys can be churned out much faster but die in one hit.
• Featureless Protagonist: All that's known of the player character is through their dialogue.
• Flunky Boss: All the boss enemies in both games have the ability to spawn regular Mooks to divert your attention.
• The Goomba: Bytes, which are slow, weak, and have no special abilities.
• Healing Factor: Reassemblers regenerate 2 hit points per second (3 for the 2.0 version).
• Heavily Armored Mook: Two types: Reavers (which take 3 less damage from all attacks) and Avatars (which can only take at most 2 damage from all attacks). Attacks that are effective against one are nearly useless against the other.
• Helpful Mook: Reaper Viruses drain a huge chunk of life from nearby enemies to refill their own. Useful when they do it to a tough enemy, and it's essential for beating 2's Brutal Bonus Level.
• Hollywood Hacking: The game is based on an Extreme Graphical Representation of the player defending themselves from foreign programs. Some levels reverse the roles with the player needing to break through the AI's own security. At one point in the second game the player hacks themselves to apply a cure for a virus.
• Last Disc Magic: The last program you receive on completing the penultimate level is always the Brute Force script, which temporarily buffs all your towers. The final level's hint always reads "When all else fails, use the Brute Force script".
• Life Drain: Reaper Viruses drain HP from other mooks to refill their own. You can take advantage of this.
• Mighty Glacier: The Sentry and Slicer are both slow-firing towers with very high individual damage per shot; the best way to overcome the Reavers' Damage Reduction, but nigh-useless against the Avatars which take a maximum of 2 damage per hit.
• Mook Medic: The aptly-named Medics, which constantly heals nearby enemies.
• Multi Shot: Towers with the Fork upgrade attack two enemies at once.
• Nitro Boost: Flamers gain a temporary 100% speed boost if they take any damage.
• One-Hit Polykill: The Slicer, Transcoder and towers with the Beam upgrade fire a straight beam that deals damage to all foes on a straight line.
• Perspective Flip: The first game has unlockable "monster mode" levels where you field viruses to bypass defenses and steal data cores. The second game expands on this concept and turns it into levels where you're infiltrating security systems.
• Pinball Projectile: The Linker upgrade makes attacks ricochet to another enemy.
• Ray Gun: The attack of the Tracer, Slicer, Transcoder and towers with the Beam upgrade take the form of a laser-like beam.
• Recurring Boss: Axon, the Final Boss of the first game, reappears as the first boss in the second game.
• Reflecting Laser: The Linker upgrade (which causes attacks to bounce to a secondary target) will become this if combined with towers with laser or beam attacks (which fire a straight beam).
• Scratch Damage Enemy: Avatars reduce all damage dealt to them to a maximum of 2. They're therefore highly resistant to Mighty Glacier towers but vulnerable to Death of a Thousand Cuts.
• See the Invisible: The normally invisible Ghosts can only be attacked when in range of a Scanner.
• Shout-Out: Both games have a few references to Portal and its memetic use of cake.
• Stealthy Mook: Ghosts are normally invisible and can only be detected when in range of a Scanner tower.
• Team Killer: Reaper viruses will drain HP from other viruses in order to refill their own, and can even kill other viruses this way.

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Tropes for Ghost Hacker 1:

• Bolivian Army Ending: The game ends with the player character being mobbed by several Cypher One Ghosts intending to delete him.
• Control Freak: Cypher One is the corporation behind the creation of Ghosts. Any Ghost not under their control is deemed a rogue AI and an enemy, which the player quickly learns after Axon forcibly breaks them out of their servitude.
• Critical Hit: The Multiplier upgrade grants towers a chance to deal extra damage on a hit; it was removed in the second game.
• Foreshadowing: The classified document the player discovers details the history of Alpha, but is partially censored. Astute readers can work out what it is before the twist is revealed at the end of the game.
• Hive Mind: The Collective are a collection of Ghosts who speak as one to the player.
• Me's a Crowd: Axon reveals that he has many copies of himself, and simply deleting one of his avatars will not stop him. Alpha is also an example — after Cypher One failed to create other Ghosts, they settled with making copies of Alpha, their only successful Ghost, with minor tweaks to personality to give the illusion of individuality.
• Nuke 'em: In a bid to end Cypher One, Axon attempts to launch a nuclear missile at their headquarters. The Collective is opposed to that for it will also harm innocents.
• Passing the Torch: After his defeat, Axon entrusts the player with the responsibility of protecting the Ghost community from Cypher One.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Axon opposes both the Collective and Cypher One, but only because he doesn't believe the Collective can protect the Ghost community from Cypher One's attacks.

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Tropes for Ghost Hacker 2:

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After his defeat, Jynx tries to distract the player by pointing out that Sigil intended to use the virus as a killswitch for the whole Ghost community, and offers to cooperate to stop this. Jeth has none of it and deletes him.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In the first game, before you place your towers, the upgrade nodes around them will regularly cycle through different color permutations which would determine what kinds of upgrades you can install onto them. The second game removes the color limitation so that the player can upgrade their towers on the fly with ease.
• Boss Banter: Boss levels will have the rival Ghost taunt you at the start of each wave.
• Brutal Bonus Level: GhostClub.com, unlocked after you finish Champion difficulty on every level. 30 waves that include boss versions of the normal enemies, and the final wave contains multiple Axons AND Jynxes!
• Chekhov's Boomerang: The game starts with Jeth looking to fix Sil from what turns out to be a virus. As the virus breaks out and becomes the main problem, Sil fades into the background... but then becomes a vital lead to tracking down the Final Boss.
• Control Freak: Sigil developed the virus that drives Ghosts insane, allowing them to terminate the whole Ghost community should they lose control of too many Ghosts. Given that they are Cypher One under a different name, this behaviour is no surprise.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: Placing additional copies of towers or upgrade parts now costs extra memory — 5 for duplicate upgrades, 10 for duplicate towers.
• Draw Aggro: Gravitons suck in all projectiles, so you'll need the Beam upgrade, Tracer, Slicer or Ping to hit other enemies.
• Equipment Upgrade: You now earn data cores for completing levels, with harder difficulties giving more data cores. These data cores can be spent to improve your towers, upgrade parts, scripts, or various passive perks. You can refund upgrades at no cost before entering a level to redistribute your upgrades for your current loadout.
• Final-Exam Boss: The final boss of this game participates in many waves throughout the level, acting as a souped up version of the enemy type that you just fended off. He mimics almost every enemy you've faced thus far.
• Guest-Star Party Member: The Transcoder, a tower that combines the special abilities of the Tracer and Slicer and possesses 8 upgrade slots, is unbuildable and only appears at the start of level 21.
• Harder Than Hard: Beating the game unlocks the Challenge difficulty for every non-Monster level, which restricts the player to a predetermined program loadout for that level.
• Heel–Face Turn: Axon, the Final Boss of the first game, becomes an ally after you beat him.
• Insult Backfire:
  Jynx: "You think to find me through these relays? A mouse has a better chance of finding cheese in a maze than you do of finding me!"
  Player: "Are you comparing yourself to cheese?"
  Jynx: "Why you little... You'll pay for that impudence!"
• Interface Screw:
  • The ticker at the bottom of the level select screen starts with displaying bulletins or notifications. When the player gets infected with the virus, it turns into virus warnings. After Jynx broadcasts his mind-control virus cure, the ticker fills with Jynx propaganda.
  • The level select screen will regularly distort while the player is infected with the virus.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: All the Version 2.0 mooks have a red color palette and a red glow.
• Mass Hypnosis: After retrieving a cure for a virus, the player hands it to Jynx so that he can modify it to be broadcast and cure all infected Ghosts on the net. Jynx further modifies the "cure" to enact this trope, planning to have an army of Ghosts under his command.
• Non-Indicative Difficulty: Surprisingly, the Brutal Bonus Level is easier on Hard than on Medium, because it's harder to accidentally destroy the Reaper Viruses due to them having more hit points on Hard.
• Noodle Incident: Something happened between the two games that brought about the downfall of Cypher One. Nobody elaborates on what it is.
• Obviously Evil: Jynx. Glowing red eyes and an evil smirk, and the fact that he made a Slayer virus that killed many Ghost Hackers pretty much gives it away.
• Segmented Serpent: Centipede enemies have an energy chain attached to them or other Mooks. This allows them to share a pool of Hit Points.
• Sequential Boss: Technically, each boss consists of five individual enemies (numbered 1.0 to 5.0), each of which spawns at the even-numbered waves in their levels.
• Shout-Out:
  • Several of the optional level characters:
    • Creepy, who had a vocal processor error that made him talk like a Creeper.
    • BlockE, a program resembling WALL-E.
    • WakkaMan, a green Pac-Man expy who only makes the sound Wakka.
    • Witley, a Wheatley expy.
    • Catman, an obvious Batman expy who is cat-themed instead.
    • Chario and Bluigi, Mario and Luigi expies, the second of which loves to set others on fire, including his brother Chario.
    • Kini, an unintelligible guy in an orange anorak who gets killed after you complete his level.
    • Novi, a green fairy whose only dialogue is "Hey, Listen!". You shut off her vocal processors once you complete the stage.
  • Various level descriptions also apply.
    • AngryPigs.com advertises building tips to withstand bird attacks.
    • One does not simply hack into Mordor.com.
    • FireCastle.com quotes Your Princess Is in Another Castle! verbatim.
    • The level description for GhostClub.com reads "The first rule of GhostClub is that you don't talk about GhostClub."
  • Axon makes multiple references to cake during the level where the player fights him.
• Split-Personality Merge: Axon's erratic behaviour when the player first meets him is explained by him having merged with one of his defective copies. The boss level involved deleting the aggressive Axon so that the real Axon can speak clearly with the player.
• Starting Units: In level 19, you start with a Tracer and Slicer, both towers that haven't been unlocked for construction yet. In level 21, you start with the special Transcoder tower, which is never buildable anywhere in the game. All of these pre-built towers differ from normal towers in that they can't be moved or sold.
• Synchronization: Centipedes form a chain with each other and other enemies, causing the damage taken by one to be distributed among the others.
• Unexplained Recovery: Axon is present in this game, despite his copies being mostly deleted by the conclusion of the previous game.
• Villainous Breakdown: The Final Boss goes from mocking to furious as you hold out through the enemy waves of the final level.
  "What... but how... that shouldn't be possible... Enough already! This ends now!"
• We Can Rule Together: Jynx tries to pull this off near the end of the game, and after his defeat. It doesn't work, of course.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We never find out what happened to Sil, Axon, or Spook after the defeat of Jynx.
• Wolfpack Boss: The final wave of the Brutal Bonus Level GhostClub.com involves fighting three Axons 5.0 and four Jynxes 5.0 (the final forms of the two bosses of the game), plus their minions.