Let's discuss Hypnospace Outlaw together in the RPS Game Club today
Live from 4pm BST
It's time to discuss the focus of this month's RPS Game Club, Hypnospace Outlaw! We've spent the last month writing a bunch of articles about Tendershoot's weird and wonderful alternate-reality internet simulator, mourning a time when the internet used to be fun, reminiscing about virtual pets and even having a chat with the Hypnospace creator Jay Tholen about the game's origins and legacy. But now it's time to hear what you think about it.
From 4pm BST today, we'll be here to chat about the game together thanks to our fancy liveblogging technology. If you have some thoughts about Dylan Merchant, Coolpunk or Granny Cream's Hot Butter Ice Cream, then make sure you pop in to let us know!
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
rolloroyce says: Squisherz are really cool, and this game was superb
They're slimy gooey animals! Giraffes and wolves and so much more!
Mine has got to be Colder Than The Rest by Fre3zer. I just think its existence is like, testament to the amount of work that went into the game's music, specifically? A song that belongs to a genre that revolves around remixing an old Soda jingle, commenting on the ridiculousness of crass consumerism. It's just... perfect?
rolloroyce says: There's something really special about games whose main developer also composed the music (Undertale, Lisa the Painful, this). I don't mean to be all auterist - I know this game was very much a collaboration, including the music - but it does lend a certain unity of vision. Other examples like this?
All I can think of at the moment is Obra Dinn? Lucas Pope knows how to bang a bell, that's for sure.
Joe Wright says: Yeah I've got to go with Ready to Shave - It's silly, accessible, awesome ... and I absolutely refuse to believe Chowder Man intended any of the hidden layers that one webpage attributes to it
An excellent choice, and I completely agree. What I love about The Chowder Man is how well Hot Dad nailed that performance in a way that is silly but still believable.
I mentioned this in the article I wrote about Chowder's discography the other week but the lyric "And I'm not frightened, I just am" is genuinely incredible.
pete says: The Games Pass app broke for me in August, just before I was going to play this. But tempt me to fix it - especially whether you needed to have spent a load of time on the kind of sites to enjoy playing
Nope! I think it's accessible enough to enjoy even if you don't have a huge amount of nostalgia for the era. It's just a great detective game that takes place in a unique setting!
Joe Wright says: On the other end of the scale, Colder Than The Rest actually DOES have hidden layers, and most of the in-universe fans of Coolpunk seem completely oblivious to it. FatherFungus' whole thing was both hilarious and heartbreaking
The whole Fre3zer saga is one of my favourite plotlines. It's so good, and so easy to miss!
I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says: Can't beat Christmas Pain in Christmas Town. I was already positively predisposed because of Alice O making it a poignant RPS tradition long before I encountered it in the game itself. Icy Girl also dug its claws in me.
I was a fan of Alice O's Christmas traditions long before I joined the team (Skeal is a yearly tradition for me now, too) and although I did know of the track before she started writing articles about it, it's gained a new level of poignancy over the last few years.
Zane is such a good character because of how obnoxious and grating he is though, right? Like, clearly the goal was to create an annoying teenager that gets in your way constantly and, well, mission accomplished. That kid sucks, but I have a lot of empathy for him. Probably because I was also a dweeby, edgelord teenager.
Slayers X does a good job of fleshing him out further, too.
rolloroyce says: The Seepage songs are pitch-perfect.
I wish there were more of them!
While we're on the subject, I can't not share this banger:
Joe Wright says: Special mention also to Ghosts of the Grotto for making the subtext some very funky text. This is probably actually the track that looped around for me the most while playing, it just felt like a very appropriate soundscape for the game, a little bit whimsical, a little bit haunting.
Properly excellent track, that. It's incredible, really, that a song serves as a narrative delivery vehicle for an important sub-plot. It's not really something I've ever seen in a game before.
Joe Wright says: Conversely, foreknowledge of adult Zane means I'm less fussed about saving him in retrospect, lol
This is a good point haha. I do wonder if there's an ending that's considered "canon", and if we'll see any returning faces in Dreamsettler...
Joe Wright says: Conversely, foreknowledge of adult Zane means I'm less fussed about saving him in retrospect, lol
I'm big into this sentiment.
rolloroyce says: Obviously the game really got people thinking about internet eras, as evidenced in the lively comment section of Liam's great piece about the internet sucking now. I thought HO absolutely nailed the internet of 1999, but it did not make me nostalgic for it. I think my favorite internet era was around 15 years ago, when there were a lot more weird great specific websites with active communities (like RPS!), just before social media destroyed social media. What about others?
Oh this is a great question, I'd love to hear your answers as well!
Other than the era I discussed in that article (thnx for your kind words xx) I sort of miss the dawn of social media, back when it was more personality focused and weird. MySpace. Bebo. Piczo. Even Twitter, in its earliest form. Hell, even Facebook. It was an exciting time, although in hindsight it feels a bit like the dinosaurs all commenting on how the incoming meteor really added a certain something to the night sky.
SeekerX says: >How did everyone else find the game's desktop UI? The music player sent me into a spin of nostalgia for WinAmp skins.
I miss WinAmp so much. What a thing! What a time!
Joe Wright says: This is probably a complete co-incidence, but that Netsettler page where the time-traveller is looking for investors for his nonsense products strongly reminded me of one of the first web-pages I remember. It was the mid-to-late 90s, so forgive me for the out-of-date humour, but it was a site where someone posing as a 'mental patient' was attempting to sell or get investors for things like 'hand-chewed polystyrene cups' and 'a room with a view of a room with a view'. For some reason that's one of my strongest memories of the early internet (along with the hamster song and 'Brian May's Nit Circus') and the similarity was so strong I am almost convinced it was a direct inspiration.
Interesting! It reminded me a lot of the old YTMND bit (meme, I guess?) "Safety Not Guaranteed".
SeekerX says: re: social media vs. specific websites with active communities-- There was a period of years in the noughts when my WoW guild's forum site was a bustling hub and the place I 'hung out' on the internet. Nowadays that'd probably be a Discord
I actually dislike large Discord servers as I find them too overwhelming. Forums were slower, and more... permanent? You could have multiple conversations on the go at once and were able to slowly catch-up at your own pace. Also threads didn't disappear, or get buried in the same way they do on Discord. Bring back forums, I say.
Joe Wright says: @rolloroyce I would agree that the peak of the internet was the era in-between Strong Bad Emails beginning and Facebook arriving. Otherwise known as the MySpace era, as strange as that is. The core appeal was that anyone could stake out their territory and present whatever they wanted, however they wanted - social media and general content aggregation has drastically reduced the scope of creativity, now that there's a regimented format for algorithm-friendly content.
It was far better to create for the sake of creating, with the vague hope that you may get recommended enough on StumbleUpon, Digg or Reddit to find an organic audience, than it is to constantly chase the algorithm. Agreed. One thing I've always loved about RPS is that sense of a traditional community here in the comments.
SeekerX says: re: what a jerk Zane can be -- I think Hypnospace does a pretty good job of giving nuance and humanity to even its ne'er-do-wells and ridiculous goofballs. (I'm thinking in particular of the new-age lady with the hidden non-approved real money payment processor, but there are a lot of examples)
Completely agree. That new-age lady, by the way? Based on a real person.
rolloroyce says: yeah, SeekerX - the game strikes a great balance between satire and empathy. even Dylan is more complex than he appears
The final message you get from Dylan - and the application included with it - is a real gut punch.
Joe Wright says: I'm definitely hyped for Dreamsettler, although what Jay mentioned in the interview about the higher standards for content rings true, it seems like a tall order as a dev. Best of luck to him!
If anyone can do it, it's Jay. I can't wait to see what he's been cooking, no matter how long it takes.
I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says: For anyone who's enjoyed this, I thoroughly recommend Secret Little Haven, another game from a different cyber-era.Oooh I've never heard of this before, I'll make sure to check it out!