Hypnospace Outlaw
PC
Set in an eye-watering evocation of an alternative late-1990s Internet, where users don a headband to go online as they drift off, Jay Tholen’s follow-up to offbeat adventure Dropsy is as captivating as it is dizzyingly strange. It casts you as a moderator of sorts, tasked with patrolling a series of authentically ugly, gaudy Geocities-like web pages, looking for a variety of transgressions. These range from illegally distributed software to copyright infringement, targeted harassment and questionable images: your job, at least for a while, is to find the links and highlight them to your superiors, bringing down your corporate gavel for a relative pittance in virtual currency.
Your role grows more complex, involving smart use of bookmarks and tags, before asking you to dig deeper, accessing password-protected links (which can be deciphered or brute forced) and locating pages hidden from standard searches. The process combines the archival research and retro aesthetic of Her Story with the cross-checking and overarching mystery of Papers, Please, but it’s arguably most reminiscent of Return Of The Obra Dinn. It too becomes a detective game where information is delivered unconventionally, inviting you to rely on powers of observation, memory and
deduction to piece together solutions from clues found in different places and via different methods.
As with Lucas Pope’s game, it’s worth keeping a pen and paper handy. It also boasts an obstinate selfassurance in its approach, and is so committed to the consistency of its fiction that it draws you in completely. Occasionally it goes too far: glitches and viruses are perhaps too realistically irritating, and though faster than dial-up the deliberate loading delays – which you can speed up by wiggling the mouse pointer, just as we once imagined – can grow tiresome in the moments you become lost in a sea of broken hyperlinks.
Yet an in-game hint system – hidden, but easily found – awaits when you get totally stuck. And besides, during that trawl you’ll find countless amusing details. As a parody of the nascent Internet, it’s meticulously observed, from disaffected teens to Christian mums, conspiracy theorists, wannabe hackers, hideous jingles and overanalysis of terrible rock songs. Put it this way: we hope Tholen is working on a Chowder Man spin-off.
It’s a vicious yet oddly affectionate depiction of a time that feels so recent and yet so long ago. It will, inevitably, mean more to those who were there and suffered through it, but don’t be put off if you weren’t. This clever, funny, hallucinatory head trip may leave you frazzled, but Tholen’s wonderfully singular vision will be burned into your brain for a long time.