Stalker Strikes Online

The Internet game Net St@lker is undergoing beta testing in anticipation of its release later this month, said Hotmind Software, the game's publisher.

The game, which will be played in real time, will make use of web sites, e-mail, newsgroups, Internet Relay Chat, freeware, and other Net resources, Hotmind says. In the game, players can choose to join the forces of The Movement, a chaos-spreading band of cyberpunks, or La Fondation, an organization dedicated to stopping them.

The game features 30 missions that the player must solve, ranging from entering CIA headquarters to retrieve a secret code to stopping a computer virus from destroying the Internet. Once players think they have completed one mission, they will submit their solution to the Net St@lker server, which will then hand out assignments for the next mission.