Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-09-26 07:54 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-09-26 07:54 pm
Entry tags:
Squisherz Are Really Cool.
Last year, zarla posted some interesting thoughts on Hypnospace Outlaw and the way the Internet has changed over time, and I thought I might check the game out if I got the chance. I picked it up in an itch.io bundle earlier this year, and, after the Spamton Sweepstakes ignited my nostalgia for the old web, I finally sat down and gave it a try.
Hypnospace Outlaw is one of the strangest and most interesting games I've ever played. It's also extremely absorbing; I wasn't prepared for how thoroughly it would get its hooks into me. It combines the addictiveness of browsing personal webpages in 1999 with the addictiveness of constantly progressing by performing small tasks in a videogame, and I found it extremely difficult to put down.
I also found Hypnospace Outlaw very stressful at points. I don't want to have to download malware! I don't care if it's fake malware that will only mess up my fake operating system!
While I enjoyed myself, I do have a couple of complaints. The first is that, at times, what I was supposed to do felt a little too obscure. I ended up losing confidence in my ability to work things out for myself and relying a lot on walkthroughs. Hypnospace Outlaw is basically a puzzle game, and puzzle games don't really work if you don't trust them to present you with reasonable puzzles.
My other complaint is that the ending felt incomplete, somehow. I think it needed more follow-through: a final message from Sam, maybe, and getting to see T1MAGEDDON's reaction to learning he wasn't responsible after all.
A bit more leadup also might have been nice. It seemed to me that Dylan had joined the project to prevent the truth getting out, and his 'oh, ha ha, you're still flagging people?' email was terrifying; it was clear to me that he was suspicious about what I was doing and wanted to shut it down. So I was startled when it turned out he'd been aching to confess for a while: enough time to program his confession into a game. That's not the impression I had at all!
I was already pretty scared of Dylan. I didn't check his email when I was reporting music on his FLST page, so I had no idea I'd got myself in trouble; I just kept reporting song after song, oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong, until 'YOU HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM ACTIVE DUTY' suddenly covered the screen. It was extremely startling!
I'm fascinated by T1MAGEDDON. An obnoxious kid who's just trying to be cool online and then gets slammed with six years in prison and twenty years of guilt and grief? Tell me more.
(Nobody's willing to tell me more; there's no fanfiction about T1MAGEDDON. I sigh and open a Word document.)
Even if there are some aspects of Hypnospace Outlaw I'd change, the core of the game is the reproduction of what the Internet was like in 1999, and that was so, so well done. I loved the variety of sites, from well-laid-out websites with a clear purpose to unfocused single-page websites made by people who are just trying this new thing out. And cool experimental things like the Freelands! Also, 'Ready to Shave' is the raddest song about shaving I've ever heard.
I collected all the Squisherz and displayed them proudly on my desktop. Obviously. Of course I couldn't resist the fake Pokémon. I'm glad there was a Pokémon analogue in Hypnospace Outlaw; 1999 wouldn't feel right without it.
zarla posted some interesting thoughts on Hypnospace Outlaw and the way the Internet has changed over time, and I thought I might check the game out if I got the chance. I picked it up in an itch.io bundle earlier this year, and, after the Spamton Sweepstakes ignited my nostalgia for the old web, I finally sat down and gave it a try.Hypnospace Outlaw is one of the strangest and most interesting games I've ever played. It's also extremely absorbing; I wasn't prepared for how thoroughly it would get its hooks into me. It combines the addictiveness of browsing personal webpages in 1999 with the addictiveness of constantly progressing by performing small tasks in a videogame, and I found it extremely difficult to put down.
I also found Hypnospace Outlaw very stressful at points. I don't want to have to download malware! I don't care if it's fake malware that will only mess up my fake operating system!
While I enjoyed myself, I do have a couple of complaints. The first is that, at times, what I was supposed to do felt a little too obscure. I ended up losing confidence in my ability to work things out for myself and relying a lot on walkthroughs. Hypnospace Outlaw is basically a puzzle game, and puzzle games don't really work if you don't trust them to present you with reasonable puzzles.
My other complaint is that the ending felt incomplete, somehow. I think it needed more follow-through: a final message from Sam, maybe, and getting to see T1MAGEDDON's reaction to learning he wasn't responsible after all.
A bit more leadup also might have been nice. It seemed to me that Dylan had joined the project to prevent the truth getting out, and his 'oh, ha ha, you're still flagging people?' email was terrifying; it was clear to me that he was suspicious about what I was doing and wanted to shut it down. So I was startled when it turned out he'd been aching to confess for a while: enough time to program his confession into a game. That's not the impression I had at all!
I was already pretty scared of Dylan. I didn't check his email when I was reporting music on his FLST page, so I had no idea I'd got myself in trouble; I just kept reporting song after song, oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong, until 'YOU HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM ACTIVE DUTY' suddenly covered the screen. It was extremely startling!
I'm fascinated by T1MAGEDDON. An obnoxious kid who's just trying to be cool online and then gets slammed with six years in prison and twenty years of guilt and grief? Tell me more.
(Nobody's willing to tell me more; there's no fanfiction about T1MAGEDDON. I sigh and open a Word document.)
Even if there are some aspects of Hypnospace Outlaw I'd change, the core of the game is the reproduction of what the Internet was like in 1999, and that was so, so well done. I loved the variety of sites, from well-laid-out websites with a clear purpose to unfocused single-page websites made by people who are just trying this new thing out. And cool experimental things like the Freelands! Also, 'Ready to Shave' is the raddest song about shaving I've ever heard.
I collected all the Squisherz and displayed them proudly on my desktop. Obviously. Of course I couldn't resist the fake Pokémon. I'm glad there was a Pokémon analogue in Hypnospace Outlaw; 1999 wouldn't feel right without it.
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I would absolutely hesitate to download fictional malware.
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(It was, indeed, very annoying, and you had to pay in-game currency to uninstall it.)
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