A bunch of users “leave” the main area in favor of an independent section called “Freelands”, which crows about the freedom that anyone can do what they want, but is fact ruled by the arbitrary whims of one of the admins. Many users aren’t happy with how Hypnospace is being run, not only in your role in keeping clean (the schoolteacher whose page you scrub of the aforementioned cartoon character begins a patriotic crusade against your actions), but in various technical and organizational issues. Some of them know each other in real life too, as you can see the juvenile high school drama in the first area you need to patrol, dubbed “Teentopia”. Behind each of the pages is an individual, whose identity manifests itself in their creation – their hobbies, politics, religion, taste in music, and so forth, much of it achingly earnest but presented without derision. But actually “beating” it is only part of the experience – the real fun is being immersed in it. It’s a good while before the “plot” actually kicks in, as the company gets ready for the Year 2000 switchover, but altogether, if you break down all of the steps you need to beat the game, Hypnospace Outlaw is not very long. But it quickly becomes clear that you might not be the “good” guy here – after removing an unauthorized payment system from a online business, you return and find the author begging that you’re basically ruining their way of living. Your initial tasks are the sort of things that are technically illegal but ultimately rather petty, like scrubbing fan art of an old cartoon character drawn by children. This includes harassment, copyright infringing material, shocking and offensive content, and so forth. There’s even a BIOS which acts as an advanced options menu.īut your main role is that of an Enforcer – that is, a moderator that searches for and scrubs any content that violates the rules. Some of these are “free” (or can be pirated), some are purchased via in-game currency, some come with irritating pop-up ads. There’s the web browser, which is where much of your time is spent, and the e-mail program, where you receive your orders from, but there’s also a virtual desktop, a music player where you can customize your own soundtrack, screen savers, wallpaper, virtual pets, viruses, virus cleaners, and assorted applications of varying utility. There’s also an introduction area where you click around first-person areas similar to adventure games like Myst, which was a common theme in 90s multimedia PCs.Īn enormous amount of effort was put into this so that HypnoOS looks and feels like an actual operating system.
#HYPNOSPACE OUTLAWS DREAM PLUS#
Each page is given a set of tags, which you can use to search for various topics, plus each are categorized into major themes similar to the webrings of old. The setup is akin to America Online, where there are different “zones” of various interests, while the user created page designs are a combination of the average Angelfire/Geocities/MySpace site. The entirety of the game’s cyberspace is contained inside of dream virtual reality helmets, experienced while users are asleep, and is a mishmash of eras and technologies. This isn’t quite the same 1990s, rather an alternate and reimagined one.
It creates its own virtual 1990s setting, complete with gaudy backgrounds, dithered visuals, auto-playing music, and an overwhelming amount of animated GIFs. That is, of course, a romanticized version of the past – this was before conveniences like streaming media, and no one really wants to go back to phone line modems – but it still provides an interesting setting for Hypnospace Outlaw, a detective adventure game from Tendershoot. It was back in the time when the World Wide Web was in its infancy – a shiny, brand new thing to be chartered, largely shaped by the individuals that chose to partake in it, rather than being dominated by major corporations. The late 1990s could be seen as the golden days of the modern internet.
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