Hypnospace Outlaw

Extremely creative

After gaming for a long time I really value experiences that are just darned weird. There’s really not enough of the weird or surreal in gaming, and that’s a shame. To me, I don’t think any entertainment medium is as capable as gaming is at diving into the realm of weirdness that many of us secretly desire. I don’t always want another by the numbers open-world game, or another game that festers itself with dark moments and aura. I want something that is zany, and goes off the rails a bit. I know many often bring up Kojima’s work when it comes to games that aren’t afraid to get weird, and I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t exactly want that either. There’s a certain brand of weirdness that not even Kojima has really delved into that I particularly desire, and Hypnospace Outlaw is the embodiment of that. Hypnospace Outlaw is an Indie game that does its best to emulate the 1990s era of the internet. The time of Geocities, hyperlinks and expression via your own web pages. I won’t act like I was around for this era per-say, I wasn’t quite old enough at the time, though I experienced early 2000s internet which wasn’t too far off. From what I can recall of my early days on the internet, much of it was spent in forums or iirc chats, but those odd little websites that emanated like a window into a person’s life were still around. I’m sure someone who experienced the internet proper in this era will be hit by Hypnospace Outlaw’s themes and atmosphere much harder, but I nonetheless found the game to be fantastic. The interface Hypnospace Outlaw uses looks like its own desktop operating system, called HynoOS. When you open this game on Steam, it’ll actually open in its own window labeled “HypnOS’. A lot of work was done here to make it authentic. You can change the wallpaper, change the color scheme, and even adjust the placement of icons upon your desktop. You can buy one of those shady desktop assistants at one point, or even buy virtual pets who will run around on your desktop. HypnOS has its own web browser that you’ll be using extensively through the course of the game’s events called “Hypnospace Explorer”. As you’d expect while using this custom browser, you’ll find a sudden injection of nostalgia, the numerous links to different web pages are all there. I genuinely appreciate that Hypnospace Outlaw does not have any time limit at all - for this is a game that deserves to be explored. The attention to detail here to make all of these different web pages feel real, fitting, and authentic is miraculous. You can click on a plethora of links that aren’t even relevant to the main plot and simply see someone’s page advertising a product or writing about their personal fanfiction, or promoting their band’s new song, mundane things you’d expect to see. To enhance the experience further, Hypnospace Outlaw also has its own soundtrack, where you’ll hear plenty of music on pages you explore, just as many individuals would choose custom music for their pages back in the day. It really invokes a different methodology when it comes to the internet, doesn’t it? This era of self-expression is one we’ve really lost over the years, and it makes me genuinely sad. When you browse Twitter or YouTube or even BlueSky, everything feels very minimalistic and professional. Everyone’s profile looks exactly the same beyond their avatar and banner. There’s no real way anymore to truly express yourself or really exude one’s personality from their page alone. Hypnospace Outlaw makes me ask - Why have we devolved this far? Where’s our creativity? Where’s our expression? What happened to really being ourselves? Hypnospace Outlaw, via this emulation of the 90s internet, dares to remind you what it’s like to be painfully and remarkably human. The personal pages of Hypnospace Outlaw make me feel like I know that fictional person more than I do a real person who I’ve clicked on the profile of online. The more I find myself reflecting on this, the more a pit forms in my stomach in distraught over what we’ve lost. The internet has become so much more significantly tasteless. Beyond being a web browser, the moment to moment gameplay of Hypnospace Outlaw is actually a puzzle game. You’ll be placed as an Enforcer for “Merchantsoft”, likely a parody of Microsoft in this world, whose job is to police the web. Your duties involve reporting any signs of crimes you find online. It’s here where I appreciate the game has a text-to-speech feature. You’ll need to do a lot of reading here to absorb the game, and often having it read to you makes it click when you’re not really registering the first time, particularly when you’re a person like me who has issues with focus. The crimes you’ll be looking for can range from copyright infringement, extortion, scams, cyberbullying, and more. Quite humorously, one of your first tasks in this game will be to copyright strike images of a retro cartoon character that people are reproducing online - the “offender” in this instance being a poor school teacher who is merely a fan of the character. Even the drawings of the character that her students made which were subsequently posted to the site are liable for copyright infringement. Sorry, Bethany, Age 7 - your drawing is getting the copyright strike hammer! It’s utterly hilarious and a really fun way to introduce you to the game by making you do something that isn’t really morally correct. You’re given very vague information to solve these different cases you’re handed. It is up to you to explore the internet and delve into where you can find the reported violations. Hypnospace Outlaw as a result becomes a mixture of a mystery and puzzle game, adding to the uniqueness it has overall. Beyond merely browsing, you’ll also find yourself having to dig up passwords or download programs in order to really find the solutions to these cases. One case in particular had a solution that involved me downloading a program and clicking the pop-up ad it gave me to be taken to a web page that was only accessible via that pop-up ad, from which I could then report. It is a game that really encourages you to explore and take your time, though I did find myself stuck a few times from how vague some of the cases get. Hypnospace Outlaw is one of the most unique experiences you’ll find in gaming, and it really pains me that I can’t dive into the story side of things here since I need to remain spoiler-free. Hypnospace Outlaw really exudes this feeling of being human in a way that is stunningly beautiful. Although my main critique would be with how abruptly the game ends and shifts to its climax, I still adored my time with it. This is something to genuinely be cherished. It is not simply a homage to the 90s web. Hypnospace Outlaw is much more than that - it is a masterpiece that reminds you of so much that we take for granted. The self-expression and spontaneity of the early internet. The way the internet has plummeted from a place of color and flavor. The things that seem mundane but make us human and unique. I’m floored by how creative Hypnospace Outlaw is and I cannot recommend it enough. I personally had it on my radar for a while, but when Jay Tholen, the man behind this game, announced that the sequel called Dreamsettler was cancelled, I was heartbroken to see how devastated he seemed. I hope Jay is doing well. To Jay if he’s possibly reading this, and to all creatives in general - I want you to never stop creating. Your creativity is beautiful, it’s special, and it deserves to be harbored in a way that the world can see. Flex your creativity and let your colors shine. In many ways it's a depiction and embodiment of what human creativity can be. If anything is your takeaway from here, I want it to be that we don’t get experiences like this if we aren’t afraid to get weird or creative, so what’s stopping you? Fly free and make the art you want people to see. Score: 95

Surprised at how MUCH there is in this!! I really did expect this to be like.. a kinda cool visual/musical experience that kinda nostalgia-baits and thats it but its that PLUS theres like. actually kinda challenging (well... maybe for some :3) gameplay and a "story" of sorts. The one kinda negative here is the way that this ends being so strangely anticlimactic (though it was a Bit moving i suppose). But otherwise! The users were all so specific in their adherence to some kind of internet "archetype" in that of course you have the super obvious ones, like the old people with badly made pages and the edgy teenagers and the secret hacker collective and the conservative conspiracy nuts and the musicians etc, but the sheer DEPTH of each of these individuals was kinda crazy (and super unexpected) -- the "flip-flop" rapper having his work deleted because of a microaggression, the spoken word artist whos desperate for recognition and creates a page in every zone, the husband-wife rpg duo who are sillygeeks but you don't have to look very close at all to see the cracks in their marriage (between the way they approach character design, Gill being absolutely the most infuriating guy to everyone in the Freelands AND FLST TOO, and Sarah writing secret poetry),,, I can keep going. The wheelchair bound kinda-cringe 3d artist whose work gets silently rejected by the music journalist transitioning from traditional media to the nice software engineer who helps people out regardless of their zone to the redditor annoying "antagonist" of the game who isnt evil as much as he's a sexist immature "whiz kid" who is eager to please the cool Hackers to the amateur musician kid who switches scenes and messes up the fungus scene aesthetic... MAN there is just so much. I really wish I could go on playing this forever with endless missions (despite, of course, the ultimate conclusion about enforcement as a role) but I will have to settle for the entire soundtrack instead.

Webページのリンク巡りをするゲーム PCOTで翻訳してプレイ 英語の量がすごい PVの英語をさらっと読める人ならかなり楽しめると思う

A unique fantastic experience, if you used the internet in the 90s and like to solve puzzles, this game rips.

so surreal

I wish I could go back in time to the first time I played it. It did not take me long to complete the main story, but it's one of the few games that made genuinely sad to see it over.