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-
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-