Firewall Screenshot Concepts

Firewall title screen

Firewall is an action-puzzle game in which the player controls a packet that traverses a heavily locked-down network. Players "hop" from router to router, and deduce the path to their destination by following the routers' IP addresses to the final host address. The player does not get a birds-eye view of the network like they would in a program like Packet Tracer, however. The game is played third-person from behind the packet, and players can only see their next immediate hops.

The main menu of Firewall

Firewall offers a single-player game mode based on traversing as many networks as possible with a given number of packets. There are additional options in the single player menu, as well as a multiplayer menu for competitive network races. Finally, an options menu is also available from the main menu.

Firewall's main action screen

 Firewall's main action screen is a third-person view of the packet within paths across the network. Above each router, the respective IP address of the router is visible, and players must deduce their path by hopping to other routers that match the IP address of their destination. A small top-down map is visible in the corner of the screen to show players when to expect an incoming router, and the packet's integrity (health bar) is also visible under the minimap. The number of hops made is visible on the opposite corner of the screen to show the player how many hops they have made in their journey across the network.

Results screen at the end of a network in Firewall

 Once the player reaches the end of a level, the results screen is displayed on the "screen" of the host's computer. The player is then shown a command line on the screen that shows how much health they finished the network with, as well as the number of hops they made to get there. Packet integrity is divided by the number of hops made, and then multiplied by 100 to reach a final score for the player. In this case, the player made 12 hops, and had 70% of his health at the end of the network. This earned him an average score of 583.