Hypnospace Outlaw asks and answers one simple question: ‘Can you make an indie game out of what the internet was like in the 90s?’ The answer to that question is: ‘Absolutely, yes.’ You’ll be able to give it a go too when the beta launches this Friday.
In Hypnospace Outlaw you’re a newly-enlisted Enforcer of the Hypnospace Patrol Department, an agency tasked with scouring the Hypnospace hunting down wrongdoers. You need to keep an eye out for copyright infringement, internet bullying, and other cyber-crimes reported to you by the department. In your free time, you can also customize your HypnOS desktop with wallpapers, screensavers, helper bots, and software all harkening back to the garish and over-animated aesthetics of the 90s world wide web.
If that sounds mental, I’d be partial to agree with you, albeit in a positive way. The same can be said for Mike Rose, ex-journalist for Kotaku and formerly of TinyBuild, now brainchild of indie publisher No More Robots. In the press release announcing this beta, he concluded with, “So excited to finally see people playing this — it’s absolutely batshit!”
Hypnospace Outlaw is, unsurprisingly, being developed by Tendershoot, who came out with clown-hugging point-and-click adventure game Dropsy in 2015. With the quirky, garish, but oddly earnest atmosphere of that Devolver Digital published game feels like it’s navigated its way into Hypnospace Outlaw, at least from what can be seen in the trailer, which features grainy full-motion video, blocky polygonal 3D models, webpage real estate smattered in obnoxious GIFs and a soundtrack that wouldn’t feel out of place on a vaporwave album.
If you want to give Hypnospace Outlaw a spin this Friday (I damn well will be) you can sign up for the beta at the Hypnospace Discord server, and you can add it to your wishlist by visiting the game’s Steam store page.
