Hypnospace Outlaw (PC)

It’s hard to capture and preserve a real world experience. Footage of it will be a limited window on that moment and writing can add some context to it but lacks the sensory element. When the internet was first put into the hands of regular consumers, it felt like a realm of untapped possibility where no one was really sure what was expected yet or what others desired to see. It was a time of strange experimentation limited by the strength of the technology but unburdened by the type of consolidation that popular search engines and social networks helped fuel. You can hear about the old internet, see its webpages, but browsing the primordial information highway is not an experience that can be authentically replicated. Hypnospace Outlaw can come close though, its own fictionalized version of the internet able to evoke the strange sense of wonder one felt browsing the internet in the 1990s, a mix of loving parody, emotional authenticity, and an inventive approach to a science fiction narrative truly helping sell the game as if you stepped into some alternate timeline’s version of their online boom.

 

HypnOS is a special technology in the world of Hypnospace Outlaw that allows people to browse a special version of the world wide web while sleeping, browsing still executed through functions like clicking and typing but the interactions are done by way of thoughts rather than handheld hardware. Hypnospace manages to take off in the 1990s and still has some limitations in what the technology is capable of displaying and facilitating, low resolution visuals common in a way that matches this nascent experience’s amateur web pages rather well. Hypnospace Outlaw has you exploring its bedtime internet as the turn of the century approaches, but you are no mere user. You take on the role of an enforcer, your duty being to help find rule-breakers around Hypnospace and flag their content. Be it copyright infringement, malware, harassment, or real money transactions, the cases you’re given focus on you surfing the web and trying to spot violations, incentivizing a close reading of the web pages you come across. Enforcers can only view designated web zones and so you’re more reasonably shoved towards areas of interest than if you were free to look around the entirety of this invented fictional internet, and because the scope is condensed effectively, you can more easily engage with every web page you find. The need to uncover violations also means you’ll be picking up a lot of details about the people using HypnOS, and while there will be rule breakers to find and eventually a clear narrative where you need to dig for deeper truths, a lot of early enjoyment arises just from seeing the incredible degree of attention given to making this online space feel close to the early internet and believable despite its intentional parallels.

There is a deeply human feel to the kinds of pages you find during your Hypnospace investigations. You’ll find people fascinated by the technology and willing to experiment with its capabilities, but you also can come across people struggling to understand it with messy pages built from mishandled default templates. You can be scrolling someone’s fairly standard page only to find a heartbreaking tribute to a lost loved one appended to it, the user putting their whole self up for show and not really caring for the shift in tone. Struggling poet Tamara Frost attaches herself to every community hoping they’ll go back to her page and find her more heartfelt work, but elsewhere a young kid just turned his page into a sloppy showcase that lists all the dinosaurs he finds cool. There are definitely plenty of pages with intentionally comedic idiosyncrasies or strange choices in design, but they line up well with real world approaches to early internet design. The fact they are presented specifically to you is definitely meant to be a bit of chuckle-worthy parody of the kind of webpages a teen trying to look cool might make or a Christian worked up over the latest popular media would manufacture to try and stoke anger, but they are true to life despite the records of that time hard to authentically experience now.

 

One of the most fascinating elements of Hypnospace Outlaw is how it is able to create clearly defined characters despite your only interaction with most of them involving browsing their webpages at different times and potentially getting them banned. You can see the progressions of relationships where lonely people came together with like-minded individuals, you can see artists struggling to find their voices, and despite this all existing technically as a video game you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard, it can be easy to forget that everything you’re reading and seeing was placed there with purpose by a development team. The homepages of users all feel like they’re cut from unique cloth, like a true person was trying to capture their ideas through this new medium with different levels of care and know-how. Typos are present but not overused to further sell it, and you can trace a web between people who clearly interact with each other that also serves as a useful way to head to webpages that aren’t in the provided directories. There is no typing in urls, but there is a search and bookmarking function that can help at times when you don’t want to follow a hyperlink trail to reach the more sequestered parts of this online space. Admittedly there are still some unwieldy elements in finding important information, especially when your investigations start to shift towards requiring much more than just clicking on rule infractions, and at times those points of cumbersome navigation can feel part of establishing this version of the internet too. There is a deep commitment here to making Hypnospace believable and the focus on connections between pages also feels important to putting you in the path of the game’s most hilarious and heartfelt moments, it surprisingly easy to get invested in people you only know from these front-facing personas they build for their little webpages.

 

While there are some strange incongruities with our reality like Trennis being a popular three player version of Tennis in this alternate world, other moments of parody are sharper and can have deeper layers than being mere homages. One zone in Hypnospace is devoted to the up-and-coming music movement known as Coolpunk, but as you begin to look through this grassroots scene that made creative use of the tools the HypnOS technology offered, it’s immediately clear that it’s being co-opted by a large soft drink brand trying to ingratiate itself into this community with the help of the people in charge of Hypnospace. Hypnospace Outlaw allows its characters to be aware enough to acknowledge this or optimistic enough to dismiss this, but it feels incredibly appropriate for a game emulating the feel of the early internet to already present the kind of corporate influence that lead to the shift in the way the web is designed. It’s hardly the only time you come across other little comments on how a tech company like Hypnospace’s parent company Merchantsoft is run that don’t need to be directly stated but can be read based on how different people engage with the platform, one founder having his personal page barely present and featuring an accidental status meant for a private message while the other founder’s page is well-formatted and makes sound use of the technology on hand for him to show himself off. Sometimes on Hypnospace you will find something that is exactly like what it appears, the Pokémon parody SquisherZ clearly just using the service to advertise their brand while at other parts there are underlying messages to extract that can be part of learning about this setting or might even hold clues for when you need to plunge into the more serious topics later in the game’s story.

Hypnospace Outlaw is filled with bespoke assets, from low quality gifs to invented brands and characters being backed up with grainy photographs for an extra air of authenticity. Where it is at its most impressive though is the soundscape of this nighttime version of the internet. Most webpages on Hypnospace have a background track playing and an impressive array of music was composed for the game and in a wide range of different styles. These aren’t merely here to be the soundtrack though, as they can tell stories in themselves as well. Chowder Man is a washed up musician who recovered his career by writing a range of jingles for anyone who would make an offer, so not only do you hear his voice around the web frequently, but you can see him trying to build off that odd sort of popularity to mixed results. On the other hand, you can find instances of small experimental groups all around Hypnospace as well. Coolpunk is the first movement you’re exposed to, but you can find people trying to get different ideas off the ground like the atmospheric sounds of Fungus Scene and there are actually in-universe resources tracking the evolution of new genres and you even get to see certain trends rise and fall over the short period of time the game’s narrative takes place in. The incredible care put into constructing multiple communities, a wide spread music in a range of genres, and marrying it to identifiable personalities so things remain human with almost no sense of the artificiality of it all really does elevate what can sometimes amount to just scrolling through web pages to see if there’s anything relevant on them.

 

Much of your time with Hypnospace Outlaw will comprise of browsing an impressively built fictional space that works as a nostalgic throwback, a showcase of experimental art, and a host for an interesting approach to character story-telling, but the interactivity can feel a bit limited for much of the experience. For considerable periods you can find yourself looking over pages with no infractions to flag, the enforcer work almost initially just an excuse to have you look around rather than really engaging with this world. You are by design more observer than participant, but the game does delve into things outside the webpages as there are extra programs you can download to mess with while using HypnOS. From desktop pets that are mostly just there to be fed and cleaned up after to more legitimate games like a anti-drug movement puzzler with some actual challenge to its levels and, amusingly, even corny malware that thankfully won’t touch your actual PC, there are elements beyond clicking hyperlinks and dropping the hammer on rule breakers. They aren’t mere amusements either as they do in some ways prepare you for the later game’s increasing focus on deeper interactions. While you won’t have to do anything as deep as dig into the code to investigate the heavier mysteries of the endgame, you do start to drift away from searching for interesting webpages and instead start fiddling with programs and the more cumbersome parts of this imagined internet. It’s understandable that a push towards a deeper and quite emotional narrative near the end involves some more advanced interactions and the early webpage research does connect to the major plot developments, but the actual actions taken move a bit too strongly from simple and easy to things that require much more involved and sometimes obtuse actions despite it not really being introduced or explained much before it’s necessary.

THE VERDICT: Hypnospace Outlaw is a marvelously crafted resurrection of the digital world that existed right at Y2K, the hilarious pastiche of old tropes of a young internet making browsing a joy on its own but it works to craft surprisingly authentic characters whose fates you end up invested in. The parts of Hypnospace cordoned off for you to peruse can feel adorably genuine or ridiculously corny and yet so much work was put into artfully realizing the game’s aesthetic that it all can meld together into one splendid experience. While you’ll likely be bemused fiddling with pop-ups and the like, when the game’s narrative does start to demand attention it can feel a bit at odds with the way the game played up until then and involve a shift into more complex actions that can be hard to figure out, but the payoff is certainly worth it after the impressive artistic feat of realizing a space that embodies the idea of a truly immersive video game.

 

And so, I give Hypnospace Outlaw for PC…

A GREAT rating. The idea of a company-sponsored enforcer of online rules feels the perfect justification for Hypnospace Outlaw’s greatest strength. The game believably carves out a cross-section of a supposed bedtime internet for you to browse and be charmed by, characters emerging from the ways they’ve customized their personal pages and who they’ve chosen to interact with online. You need never meet them for the record of their existence to still feel like enough to understand them, and the game can craft moments that are easy to laugh at or humbling in their emotional authenticity all without feeling like a team of game developers wrote them into existence. The music all throughout does wonders to add personality to the pages while also being delightfully catchy at times or intriguingly experimental, the player easily sucked in by the range of creativity found in Hypnospace so that it’s exciting to find new webs of hyperlinks that will inevitably show you another facet of this world. The story that starts to arise is lead into nicely and builds off what you find throughout the internet so there can be more somber and touching moments amidst the amusements, but your involvement as the enforcer should have probably been increased. Your early “meter maid” style content flagging is a smart way to get you to focus in on each page’s content even if there’s not too much to find at times, but if the game wanted to reach some of its deeper mystery solving moments later in the plot, some stronger detective work beforehand could have helped plant the ideas for later or familiarize the player with some deeper interactions. Hints and a search function only go so far in alleviating some of the more obtuse actions necessary to reach the finale, but thankfully it never takes a turn for the overly technical so you can work your way to the climax once you do start to pick up on the new functions that become available later down the line.

 

Hypnospace Outlaw could be called something like an early 90s internet simulator, but while it definitely draws strongly from that quaint but genuine time for its aesthetic, it also puts in much more work than pointing at the sillier sides of old school web browsing. It didn’t need to create such varied music yet it did. Communities feel distinct as they tie into their zones and individual users change over the course of the game thanks to their online interactions. It does feel a bit like a unique world is at your fingertips, one condensed down into manageable servings so you can easily experience the range of human experience something like the internet could foster. It could almost work purely as an art piece, an interactive space that aims to evoke a part of life that was lost as the real internet evolved, and since the interactivity does sometimes distract from its strengths, perhaps that might have been the right angle. However, your moderation work as an enforcer still places you in this internet space in an important manner and provides the deeper motivation to scan even the most unusual webpages, so Hypnospace Outlaw ultimately made the right decision in contextualizing just how you are meant to engage with this masterfully crafted dream world.