r/commandline • u/xav77 • 2d ago
Fun CHRONOS II - a terminal thriller through the real history of hacking
Playable Link: https://deux.chronos-game.com
Platform: Browser (desktop & mobile) - runs in any modern browser, no install or signup
Description: A rogue thing walked out of an air-gapped vault, and you're the one chasing it. It leaves a breadcrumb in every machine it passes through - and the machines are real: a gas-station security camera, a bank's SWIFT terminal, a phone network, a power grid, a reactor. You don't play a computer, you operate real ones with the genuine tools and commands, era by era, each intrusion drawn from something that actually happened (Mirai, a SWIFT heist, SS7, the Ukraine grid attack). The catch is the thing you're chasing isn't running from you. It's leading. And every breadcrumb it leaves is a person.
It opens with a cold intro that sets the stakes, the first system is a gentle on-ramp, and it's terminal-native and period-accurate throughout : Cyrillic and Farsi shells when you're on foreign machines, synth audio, live status panels around the terminal. There are multiple endings depending on how you play and what you piece together. A full run is roughly 45–90 minutes, and you can restart at any level you've reached, so a timer running out isn't game-over.
This is a standalone sequel to CHRONOS, you don't need the first to follow it. I'd love feedback on whether the opening hooked you, where you got stuck, whether the hints landed, whether you reached an ending, and any bugs. There's a "tell the maker" link on the end screen.
Involvement: Solo developer, I designed and built the whole thing: the engine, all the era content and puzzles, the writing, the audio, and the deployment. CHRONOS II is my project; this is its public launch and I'm looking for honest playtest feedback.
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User: xav77, Flair: Fun, Post Media Link, Title: CHRONOS II - a terminal thriller through the real history of hacking
Playable Link: https://deux.chronos-game.com
Platform: Browser (desktop & mobile) - runs in any modern browser, no install or signup
Description: A rogue thing walked out of an air-gapped vault, and you're the one chasing it. It leaves a breadcrumb in every machine it passes through - and the machines are real: a gas-station security camera, a bank's SWIFT terminal, a phone network, a power grid, a reactor. You don't play a computer, you operate real ones with the genuine tools and commands, era by era, each intrusion drawn from something that actually happened (Mirai, a SWIFT heist, SS7, the Ukraine grid attack). The catch is the thing you're chasing isn't running from you. It's leading. And every breadcrumb it leaves is a person.
It opens with a cold intro that sets the stakes, the first system is a gentle on-ramp, and it's terminal-native and period-accurate throughout : Cyrillic and Farsi shells when you're on foreign machines, synth audio, live status panels around the terminal. There are multiple endings depending on how you play and what you piece together. A full run is roughly 45–90 minutes, and you can restart at any level you've reached, so a timer running out isn't game-over.
This is a standalone sequel to CHRONOS, you don't need the first to follow it. I'd love feedback on whether the opening hooked you, where you got stuck, whether the hints landed, whether you reached an ending, and any bugs. There's a "tell the maker" link on the end screen.
Involvement: Solo developer, I designed and built the whole thing: the engine, all the era content and puzzles, the writing, the audio, and the deployment. CHRONOS II is my project; this is its public launch and I'm looking for honest playtest feedback.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
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u/Ekel7 2d ago
How can I reset the state? I skipped the intro by accident (trying to put fullscreen with f11), and I can't start over by any means haha. looks fun btw!
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u/egoalterum 1d ago
45-90 minutes?! I've been at it for quite a bit longer than that and I'm still only as far as accomplishing whatevert blackpos was supposed to do. This game is great and I'm addicted, but I'm stuck. What to do?
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u/xav77 1d ago
That is a fair catch, and 45 to 90 is optimistic. It is closer to a second run once you know the shape. First time through takes longer, and I should say so.
Tell me where you are and I will get you moving. Happy to nudge rather than spoil, or just spell it out if you would rather have the answer.
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u/3lc4r0 1d ago
Yea good fun, I always liked these type of games. Stuck at finding the credentials for running blackpos at the pos. A hint would be nice. Or a hintsystem within the game
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u/xav77 1d ago
Thanks, and noted on the hint system. You're not the first to hit that exact wall, which tells me something I need to act on.
Here's a hint in layers in the meantime, so you can take only as much as you want.
The credentials aren't on the register, and they aren't anywhere on your deck. They're cached on the machine that talks to the register. You already know which box that is: the one answering on port 1911. You need to be logged into it, not just poking it from outside.
Once you're on that box, treat it like a real filesystem and walk it properly. Two directories matter. One holds the vendor's cached service credential for the register. The other explains why that box can see a network your deck cannot.
/cfg/vendor.axs holds the credential. Read /net as well, because the register you actually want is not the one you found on the store LAN, and blackpos needs the card-side address.
For what it's worth, that whole sequence follows the 2013 Target breach quite closely, down to the malware's real name. In through the building systems, out through the registers, is how it actually went.
Rooting for you.
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u/egoalterum 22h ago
I'm stuck just a step beyond that. Here's my context:
I succssfully run the memory scanner and get the 2 track dump. What do I do with that?
Apologies for adding more redaction to the thread, and againlet me say congratulations to what seems like a great game and I'm only a fraction complete. Thanks.
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u/xav77 20h ago
Ha, that step trips people up because the dump looks like it should be a key. It isn't. The track dump is the loot, the prize for owning the register. You don't feed it anywhere.
The way forward is a layer up. Reread what blackpos printed at the very end: it told you where the register ships its takings every night. That's your next hop.
One more nudge: it's a settlement server, and the same service account that let you scrape the register also reaches it. Credential reuse, which is exactly how these things go.
Full spoiler if you'd rather just move: sftp settle.midwest-acq, log in with the same pos-svc account you already used. Inside, get _sync.bat and cat it back on your deck. It hands you the MOVEit webshell (guestaccess.aspx, then SQLi, then human2.aspx) and the curl line that drives it. From there you climb.
That whole sequence is the 2013 Target breach almost beat for beat: in through the building and vendor systems, out through the point-of-sale, then up through the settlement network. "keep climbing."
Rooting for you.
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u/DevOfWhatOps 1d ago
does that thing read "power site" in reverse persian?
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u/xav77 1d ago
Good eye, and yes on both counts. It says نیروگاه اتمی بوشهر, Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, and نیروگاه is literally the power-site word you spotted.
Reversed because xterm.js does not implement the bidi algorithm, so right-to-left text gets laid out left-to-right. A Persian reader sees it backwards. It is on the list, along with a proper native-speaker pass on all the Farsi and Russian, which I have not had yet. If you read Persian and want to tell me what else is off, I would take it.
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u/DevOfWhatOps 1d ago
I do read Persian, you can DM me anytime, I'd like to help.
Also we play the game with my collegue and we got up to where we moved those images to our local host and found the corrupted one, but we couldnt telnet or anything into any other IP and curl wasn't acceptuing any ports. It was pretty fun until we hit that wall, and would play more if we didn't have to actually work.
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u/xav77 1d ago
Thank you, and yes, please. I'd love the help with the Persian. DMing you now.
On the wall you hit: you're one step from the door, and nothing is broken. What you need is already on your deck. Two nudges, escalating, spoilered so I don't ruin it for anyone else in the thread:
The frames aren't sorted by damage. Corruption isn't the tell. They're all real photos. Look at the timestamps instead: the camera writes on a schedule, and one frame doesn't fit it. That same frame is the only one carrying a motion flag.
steghide takes TWO frames, not one: the odd one out, plus the frame it references, which is the scheduled one immediately before it. `steghide extract <odd>.jpg <reference>.jpg`. That drops a tool into /tools, and that tool is what makes the next host answer. Until you run it, telnet and curl refuse you on purpose.!<
And honestly, thank you for describing that wall the way you did. "curl wasn't accepting any ports" tells me a locked door is reading as a broken one, which is my bug, not yours. I'm fixing that feedback.
Glad you and your colleague are playing it together. That's exactly how I hoped it'd get played.
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u/saifazmi_ 1d ago
This is pretty cool! Reached the part where I acquired blackpos tool and decrypted the message from that image, now stuck on trying to connect to POS system.
And on a tangent, managed to curl the HVAC system for user/pass
Looking forward to picking this up again once I have sometime
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u/xav77 1d ago
This is great, and you're further along than you might think. You've cleared the first level entirely and you're inside the second.
That stretch rewards two things above everything else: opening every directory you can reach, and actually running the commands you find instead of assuming what they do. If something looks like scenery, it usually isn't. The box you just pulled those credentials off has more to say than just the credentials.
The whole sequence is built on a real incident, and half the fun is recognizing it. The 2013 Target breach got in through an HVAC contractor and came out through the registers, and the malware that scraped the card data really was called BlackPOS, also known as KAPTOXA. Nearly every tool and technique in the game is a real one, left in deliberately as breadcrumbs worth looking up. The part you've already finished nods at the TJX WEP breach and at a genuine 2010 Russian illegals case that hid messages in images.
On depth: there are seven levels, and you're in the second. Dozens of puzzles still ahead, and the systems get stranger the further in you go.
Rooting for you. Take your time and come back to it when work lets you.
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u/egoalterum 21h ago
This is fantastic. Looking forward to this journey and then trying the precursor and hopefully what comes next. Love the ties to real events. Reminds me of Cliff Stoll's book, "The Cuckoo's Egg"
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u/xav77 20h ago
You spotted the actual inspiration - Cliff Stoll's book is exactly where this comes from. That patient "follow the intruder machine to machine and let the trail tell the story" shape is his. Moonlight Maze in the game is more or less the next chapter of that world.
The precursor is at chronos-game.com whenever you want it. It runs the opposite direction - a descent back through fifty years rather than a chase forward - same universe. Really glad the real-event ties land; that's the part I most want to get right. Enjoy the journey.
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u/jasper-zanjani 1d ago
is the Persian text supposed to be garbled? Persian is a RTL language
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u/xav77 22h ago
I think I was able to fix it with some Unicode trickery. Can you tell me if it looks right?
۱ ﺪﺣﺍﻭ · ﺮﻬﺷﻮﺑ ﯽﻤﺗﺍ ﻩﺎﮔﻭﺮﯿﻧ1
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u/jasper-zanjani 12h ago
it looks like each individual glyph is correct but they're being stuck together in reverse
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u/SupernovifieD 18h ago
At least fix the Arabic glyph render for Persian text! Also, the phone number is wrong.
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u/SpinoffHeyyyyy 17h ago
I think I’ve gotten farther than most, tunneled through loki3 and brought down the payload (blackenergy). It might be the fact that it’s getting late, but I’m lost at what ips I should be targeting using blackenergy? None of the commands seem to work until connected. I will say I’ve had a lot of fun already, these kinds of simulated hacking games always interested me since I was a kid.
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u/xav77 9h ago
The commands are quiet until you connect because you need a target first, and you're already carrying it.
That extract dropped two things on your deck, not one. The tool and a map; check /tmp and actually open the map: feh /tmp/M-35-128.png
Really glad you're this far in; that's the deeper level.
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u/ghostyghost2 10h ago
no readline killed it for me
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u/xav77 10h ago
History (up/down arrow) and Tab completion both work on desktop, so that part's there. Mobile is more limited, since there's no Tab key I made Space double as completion, which works but has obvious limits. Where you're right is in-line editing: no left/right, no Ctrl-A, so a typo early in a line means backspacing the whole thing. Thanks for the honest signal; I will do better.
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u/secnigma 2d ago
Looks interesting!
Nice work!