Adventure Gamers - Forums

Somehow I missed those news completely. Jay Tholen, the multi-talented musician, artist and game developer of Dropsy and Hypnospace Outlaw, announced it earlier this month, around the same time the Return to Monkey Island was revealed (probably explains the lack of hype). Jack even dedicated a piece of news to it before he left, but it seems like it went unnoticed by everyone else. It didn’t even make to the Hype-o-Meter™ despite the release date (”coming soon”).

The game is not a direct sequel and takes place not in the alternative 1990s, but in the alternative 2000s instead, but the concept is the same:

an early ‘00s internet simulator in which you solve cases for an array of strange and endearing characters as a Sleepnet Private Investigator. From hunting down elusive soup recipes to unearthing global conspiracies, you’ll need to explore countless pages, download apps and master minigames to close your cases and solve Sleepnet’s mysteries.

Not sure how everyone feels about it. To me Hypnospace Outlaw was absolutely one of the best adventure experiences of the 2010s (despite both developer and audience prefer to call it “an internet simulator”) and one of the best concepts in a long time. I loved almost everything about it, especially the writing worthy of Infocom fame. Tholen, who is as indie as they get, made a game that wasn’t advanced technologically, yet it couldn’t look like anything else, because it simulated the era of the early internet.

Of course, it was a sci-fi dystopian game, taking place in an alternative reality where people created internet pages and communicated during their sleep, so it was more of a revisionist history rather then a proper recreation of the 1990s internet - why some people were left disappointed as the tools in our possession were too advanced for that time. But, at the same time, he managed to 100% recreate the feel of the “free internet” with no borders and no strict rules of how to manage personal pages.

At the same time, we took the role of an “enforcer”, an early-day censor who banned and reported everyone who didn’t follow the “rules” before discovering there was something fishy going on. And that’s when the game turned into a proper adventure mystery, with some really smart puzzles based on internet search as we used all sort of in-built tools and secret programmes discovered during our investigation.

But even without this plot it was a pure joy to explore the fictional internet, countless pages created by all kind of weirdos who communicated with each other, created communities and reacted to all outer invasions (from us and other stuff). It was often very, very funny, but by the end the plot made a turn and became very tragic, leaving you depressed. The game got 4.5 stars at Adventuregamers, and it fully deserved it. I really wished for a sequel as soon as I finished it, and here it is.

It doesn’t look like Dreamsettler advanced much since 2019 and, sincerely, I don’t think it should’ve. While I witnessed the internet during the late 1990s, I truly discovered it during the 2000s, and it wasn’t exactly state of the art either, but it was also lots of fun. All they need is a great story.

P.S. Tholen also promised to release an oldschool shooter to accompany the game which is also heartwarming news to me

Great recommendation!

Hypnospace Outlaw was really wonderful and I’m glad about the sequel. I might be even more glad that it’s a spiritual sequel, since Hypnospace Outlaw was wholly its own thing and the development team is talented enough to give us something original rather than “more of the same”.