At the time of writing this, it is Hypnospace Outlaw's fifth anniversary so I thought now would be a nice time to review it!

Quick background, I found out this game existed through a recommendation that someone made to a streamer I was watching, and based on the description they gave I was like "that sounds fun and unique, I'll grab it if it's on sale"

I went into the game expecting to have fun exploring the sites and pages, but not really feel much more than that. I was wrong, this game blew my expectations way out of the water!

I didn't have any real nostalgia going into this, I was born WAY after the events of this game, but nonetheless the presentation was just so damn good- Nothing in this game ever felt like it was out of place for its time period and everything was just the perfect amount of chaotic, scuffed, and pixelated.

The gameplay is really solid, it's fun to scour all the pages looking for stuff that falls under what the current violations and cases are. There's some pretty good puzzle solving elements too, where things aren't as simple as just reading someone's page until they say something that falls under harassment or whatever. You can also see your actions influence the characters! Every time you hit someone with the violation hammer, you can expect to see some sort of reaction from that site's owner, whether it's a rant in their status message or even an actual addition to their site. Some of the puzzles near the end DID feel a little "... I would never have gotten that without glancing at a guide" but Im willing to consider that just a me-problem rather than a game-problem. There's also a built in hint system that I didn't use and dont remember if it ever got explained in game but it exists and supposedly it's pretty good! (Type "hint" in the search bar)

The individual sites themselves are all fantastic- From the conspiracy theories to the storefronts to the crappy and crude pages made by people who aren't too tech-literate, every single one just oozed personality. I NEVER got bored of just reading through them and going down each one of their rabbit holes because each one was just such an interesting or funny read.

And that's not even mentioning the characters behind these sites at all! I expected them to just be funny but for me to ultimately not care about them and literally the first case in, I was proven so wrong. By the end of the game, I cared so much and was so invested in quite a lot of these characters! There's a real sense of community and friendship around them all, the way they interact and link to each other's pages or come to each other's defenses or maybe get mad at each other all feels so natural and real- Even the characters that are all pretty contained and dont influence the main story much (-there IS an actual story to this game, and I cant talk about it much more without spoiling but it's phenomenal) have their own little micro-stories around them that I couldn't help but be invested in too!

And not to mention the music, the various doodads and silly stuff and decorations you can buy for your desktop, and all the stuff I've just completely missed due to how I played or the pages I didn't pay full attention to...

It's definitely a weird recommendation for me since it's ABSOLUTELY not something that everyone will enjoy, but if you love just reading and exploring weird and wacky and fun websites then I CANNOT recommend this game enough! Every second of it was just such a blast.

Thank god I decided to be nosy and look into that recommendation not directed towards me-

I just finished this game not even an hour ago but I just loved it so much and wanted an excuse to talk about it a lot so... here goes!

Very quickly before I gush about this game, I do want to get some negatives out of the way. The game isn't "bulletproof" when it comes to bugs- The biggest instance I had for this was chopping a tree down, where you basically wave at your cat Daffodil to come over and help you saw it. It's really cute, but it DOES rely on Daffodil actually walking over to you, and when there's a bug in the game where Daffodil just fucking... disappears....... you're basically stuck at that tree (Save & Quit didn't fix it but closing the game and reopening it did!). Without getting spoilery, I had a slight immersion break earlier on when I found a character somewhere where I shouldn't have, and my boat got stuck in a rocking animation once while I got called over by Atul to start the lightning event, only for said lightning to strike exactly once before my boat continued sailing and the rocking stopped. Other than that, I think I had a pretty smooth experience.

With that out of the way... I consider this game an absolute masterpiece.

It's a slower kind of game, and that's okay! I thought the gameplay was at a right amount of simple, I think adding more complexity to it or making it "harder" would've made things get tedious after a while. (if the rest of the game was as hard as fishing up a goddamn tuna fish i would've been crying for a whole different reason). Outside of following specific character quests, you're basically just trying to keep everyone on board happy by hugging and feeding them and that never got annoying to me. Yeah, each character has two or three specific kinds of food they wont eat but like that was a non-issue for me.

The art and music for this game are fantastic. This game might have my favorite video game soundtrack ever, DEFINITELY the coziest one in any I've played. Each area in this game looks gorgeous, even the little unique patches of sea you sail across. Every character has a fun unique design and it's always exciting to have that reveal of what they look like once they step onto your ship.

Speaking of the characters, THAT'S where the game truly shines. Every spirit you come across has their own story that you learn about the more time you spend with them and you really do start to feel for them. Some are definitely more likable than others, some of these guys ARE kinda fucking assholes, but the stories behind them are all just so heartbreaking and sad and sincere that I cant help but at the very least feel bad for them. Hell, some of the stuff the characters go through resonate with me and make the game hit even harder. And the fact that you KNOW that no matter how attached you are to these characters that you HAVE to say goodbye to them eventually... this is the first game, maybe even the first bit of media ever to actually make me cry and it did it a LOT. There is a greater overarching story of course, it's not just the individual stories of each passenger... and I fucking cried at that too.

If you enjoy cozy games and are willing to just take things slowly, and dont really mind playing a game that's characters and story first over the gameplay itself, then I genuinely GENUINELY cannot recommend this game enough. It's just such a beautiful and emotional experience that will absolutely stick with me for a long time, and will probably forever stay on the higher end of my all-time favorites.