
Bitburner is a programming-based incremental game. Write scripts in JavaScript to automate gameplay, learn skills, play minigames, solve puzzles, and more in this cyberpunk text-based incremental RPG.
Revenue comes from in-game items and microtransactions, which our price-based model doesn't estimate. The player count below is how many people own it, not what they spent.
About
After 5 years of development, contributions from hundreds of developers, the critically acclaimed open source programming hacking sim is available on Steam.
Inspired by games like Else Heart.break(), Hacknet, Uplink, and Deus Ex, Bitburner is a programming-based idle incremental RPG where you, the player, take the role of an unknown hacker in a dark, dystopian world. The game provides a variety of mechanics and systems that can be changed through coding and solved or automated in whatever way you find suitable.
While a very basic programming background is recommended, it is not required to play the game!
Write scripts in JavaScript to automate your gameplay
Hack through a network of servers to train your abilities and earn money
Solve real programming questions to hone your skills and earn rewards
Improve your character with 100+ Augmentations
Trade in the stock market and write automated trading scripts
Interact with various gameplay mechanics to increase your stats and earn money
Explore the world and discover different companies, locations, and factions
Mini-games
Unlock secret perma-upgrades
Continuing development!
You can play the web version at
Genres
Stats
Languages: English
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 172 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
It's a good idle game that offers a decent balance between idle and upgrading or inputs. But it's really not suited for learning JS or programming in general. After four hours I've not been encouraged to write my own script. The tutorial made me copy something. Then the documentation offered another early game script to use. But there's really no natural progression to learning new combinations or effects. So I stomached the wall-of-text tutorial, and then the wall-of-text documentations. And I used Python and PHP for roughly a year now. It's not like I don't know what functions are. Would i understand anything of this game without background? No. No, this is absolutely not a game for someone who's not coding. Even researching the bruteforce program I am afterward left without any popup or instruction on how to use it. So I am again forced to skim through external documentation (because help in the terminal does not offer script commands) to find out what to do with it. It'd be working if your reward for leveling up hacking would be obtaining new syntax. Like you'd get the while loop for level 5 or something, and that would nudge you toward finding a way to use the while loop, and you'd also know that it exists. But like this, not sure what I am even supposed to be looking for. I can level-up hacker nodes. Or look for more guides because experimentation is discouraged. But I can also level up cookie factories then. Essentially the same loop.
Media

Related
Related
Price dynamics, follower growth, revenue and sales trajectories with interactive tooltips
This and every other Pro feature is free until October 20, 2026. A free account is all it takes.
Hours played at review time, across 174 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
it is a great help to get started with javascript. all the hours i have spent in the game are me trying to make an automatic script for when ever i install augments and start over. it is a great game an nice teaching tool.
I enjoy this game as it's an incremental where progress is driven by your own learning and understanding, and I found it a great way to learn programming concepts. I'm a few hours in now, but I think soon I'll truly see why JavaScript is the best language ever made.
The game is great, I went into it with no programming knowledge, and it forced me to learn some basic Javascript, which was painful. But steam says I'm 800 hours in and I'm still having fun. Truly a great game though it might not be for everyone. If your remotely interested in living the 2000s era hacker man fantasy this is the game for you
The only reason I am comfortable with linux style commands is because of this game. I played it years ago and I didn't even know what it was preparing me for lol.
以 JavaScript 为核心的硬核编程游戏。 从discord服务器上看,似乎有许多代码零基础或新人入坑,但必须说明的是,本作的难度曲线断层。新手在通过基础教程后,如果不借助 AI 或外部文档,无法独立完成中后期的代码编写。 游戏前期的体验很有意思,其设计理念极度偏向系统工程与分布式架构。如果你本身热爱研究数据流转与系统架构,最初关于服务器调度以及资源分配(游戏文档的 Advanced Mechanics - Hacking algorithms 部分)设计逻辑的进阶极其优雅。 然而,后期的设计却令人失望。游戏并未在核心机制上深挖并产生令人惊喜的涌现性,而是试图用无限堆砌新机制来伪造假复杂度。而且各个模块之间缺乏整合、各自为战,不得不为几乎孤立的新系统编写割裂的代码,不断跑出新接口,感觉就像为了玩这些拼凑机制而玩家不得不去做个能连接这些接口的新系统(meta game? 用自己做出的游戏去玩游戏?),个人体验极度疲倦而弃坑。 另外,游戏也支持网页版,可以导入导出,方便摸鱼。离线时,也可获得资源。
HIGHLY recommended. A slow-paced idle game with a lot of options just under the surface. You'll at the very least pick up basic scripting pretty quickly - It's more or less necessary to make your way through the game at all. Bitburner teaches you how to code, then expects you to dig deep enough to break it with the code it taught you - Multiple achievements are unlocked by using day-to-day programming tools in specific ways. Others are just game progression, but why would you Just Play The Game once you've written code that plays it for you, or even lets you skip chunks of it? The game's setting and lore are very, very heavily inspired from existing cyberpunk media. Without spoiling anything, I've seen plenty of direct and indirect references to iconic books and films, putting quite the smile on my face. Even if you have zero programming skill, try it if you just want a reasonably automatable idle game. The allure might just draw you in.
It is a really fun and addictive game. At first it can be a little confusing, but once you get into it, it becomes really enjoyable. I like the coding, upgrading, and seeing your progress get better over time. There is a lot to do, and it’s easy to spend hours playing without noticing. Definitely recommend it if you like games with coding, progression, and automation. Really worth trying!
If you need to learn any coding or JavaScript, I would recommend this game to beginners or elite pros
01001001 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01100011 01101011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100010 01110010 01100001 01101001 01101110 00101110
Active players
Estimated daily and monthly active players (DAU/MAU) modeled from peak concurrency.
Players by region
Where this game's players are, estimated from review languages.
Players also reviewed
The games this title's players most often review too — audience affinity.
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $4.5K | 22 | 64% | $7.99 | |
| — | 0 | — | — | |
| — | 0 | — | — | |
| — | 0 | — | — | |
| $3.4M | 9.5K | 96% | $7.99 | |
| $109.2K | 158 | 93% | $12.59 |