Hypnospace Outlaw
Police the internet of the past.
Once upon a time, the internet was something you went on rather than something that was always there. It was a thing you’d occasionally enjoy, usually in the evenings when it was cheaper; not a fibre optic thread running through every facet of your existence. And Hypnospace Outlaw, a cyber-detective adventure set within a fictional computer operating system, is a nostalgic return to this Old Internet. In the game’s alternate 1999, people climb into bed at night, snap on a high-tech headband, and drift into Hypnospace. This garish low-res internet, inspired by the digital shanty towns of GeoCities, is fully realised. There are hundreds of pages to click around, split into zones that reflect the personalities of their eccentric creators.
You are an Enforcer hired by the creator of Hypnospace, Merchantsoft, to locate and destroy objectionable content. This could be copyright infringement, harassment, or malicious software. And when you find something that breaks the rules you click on the gavel at the top of your browser, then on the offending article, and watch as it’s scrubbed from the internet. In return you receive a bounty of HypnoCoins — a currency used to buy software, desktop wallpapers, virtual pets, and screensavers.
But it becomes clear after a few cases that you are not a force for good, and have been weaponised by Merchantsoft to ruthlessly censor and control the web. An early case sees you removing cute kids’ drawings from a teacher’s website because they contain a copyrighted image of a cartoon character. Bringing the gavel down on these harmless doodles was genuinely difficult, and the sound of HypnoCoins tinkling into my virtual wallet only made me feel worse.
Later cases are much more involved Tasks include busting an illegal filesharing ring and infiltrating a hacker collective, and doing so requires some genuine detective work. You use a search engine to trawl the web for unlisted pages, secret communities, and passwords, and I had to have a notebook on hand to keep track of important names and keywords.
COMPUTER LOVE
The interface holds everything together well, being a fully functional operating system in its own right. You can drag icons around the desktop, download and open documents, listen to audio files in a WinAmp-style media player, and even change your screensaver. It’s also possible to contract viruses.
It all feels nicely clicky, although it can get a little confusing when you have a lot of windows open simultaneously. I also found the slow loading times, as authentic as they are, a little frustrating when trying to navigate quickly between pages. You can waggle the mouse cursor to make the page furniture pop in more quickly, which is a cute idea, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly.
Those criticisms aside, Hypnospace Outlaw is, rather unexpectedly, one of the best detective games on PC. It respects you enough to let you figure things out at your own pace, and with almost no hand-holding. Its internet is a joyous explosion of art, music, creativity, and weirdness, and a pleasure to explore.