Recommended by lpslucasps on this list.

I've managed to shoot myself in the foot a little bit by promising to "review" anything on the aforementioned list, as this game has proven to be an especially difficult one. I've got a lot on my mind after playing it and I'm going to have to cheat a little bit with the format, because I don't think I can nicely condense this down into a single review with a coherent theme.

- Loads of nostalgic authenticity throughout the experience. I don't think this comes as a surprise to anyone given that it's the most surface-level observation, but it's true. I was born at the right time and raised by a tech-savvy mom, allowing me to witness the end of this era of the internet, even if I was a little young. There are a lot of details here that are so easy to forget in the era of WordPress and Squarespace sites prepared straight out of the can, adhering to good graphic design principles.

- It's a little uncomfortable seeing how little some things have changed. There are still painfully earnest posts from children and teens trying to figure things out, every new technology is still a fight between little Davids trying to unseat massive, corporate Goliaths before they take over the Cool New Thing™. Communities have always had awful shit that moderators are woefully unequipped to handle, on platforms that the creators don't even fully understand...

- ...and it all reminds me of being at work. I work in IT and found myself slipping into work mode a lot here, forced to emotionally detach myself from the cases/tickets I'm working on. I see your very real, very serious harassment case, and I can't do anything to punish them because I don't have the tools. I am powerless, except when it comes to ruining someone's day because a policy they've never read said posting a picture of a cartoon fish is an actionable offense. New fires will always ignite as you're putting out the old ones, and moderators are given this cruel, Sisyphean task of rectifying every possible issue on a platform using extremely limited tools that are hardly suited to the task.

- I feel like a lot of my enjoyment is tethered to my own memory of the ugly, poorly laid-out webpages of old (complete with horrendously compressed gifs, videos, and music). I can't speak to how it'll play for those without the memories - the memories aren't important for knowledge reasons, but for patience reasons. This game is full of tedium, and while I'm not trying to pitch this as some "zoomers will hate this!", I would personally be a little annoyed by it all if it didn't remind me of times where I was younger and dumber. If you get past that (or don't care), there's a lot of love here - love for technology of the past, and love for the people that use it. It's a pretty little digital diorama, and I like what it represents.

- I stand with Gooper

Reviewed on Nov 07, 2021


2 Comments


2 years ago

Glad you liked it!

I'm replaying it myself and one thing that's clearer to me on a second playthrough is the insane world-building of this game. The world of Hypnospace has its own culture, similar to but distinct from our own. They have their own slangs, musical styles and movements, movies, comics, videogames, hoaxes, creepypastas (sorry, scaries), tabletop RPGs, sports... The devs thought about almost everything in excruciating detail. Even the way people from this alternative world engaged with their material culture is unique - just take a look at the practice of TapeExchange and how it shaped their music. And the best of all, all of these differences are fully realized. You don't just read about these things, you can also see and, most proeminently, listen to them, thanks to the abundance of clips, gifs, stickers, fanart and music files scattered all around the sleeptime network.

When it comes to the world-building, Hypnospace is in a class of its own.

2 years ago

It's done really well! I think it's easy to overlook that since you're not navigating in a 3d world. I think it's intriguing how each zone feels both independent from and lightly interconnected with the others, having a distinct subculture with the occasional idea or movement crossing lines into other zones on the platform. The fact that it's all contained and coherent in-universe really adds to the experience. I don't think the game would be as special if there wasn't a sense of novelty to it - everyone remembers some kind of Webkinz, Neopets, etc., but learning about Squisherz for the first time still feels new and like it's a thing people here are excited about