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Hello dear friends, and welcome to - Guaranteed nobody here remembers me, but I did a failed LP of Arc: Twilight of the Spirits 2 years ago! Covid-19 has inspired me to have a crack at a (much shorter) game, and what better game than this absolute gem? What is Hypnospace Outlaw? Hypnospace Outlaw is a bit of an odd game, but is fundamentally a style of point and click adventure game. Instead of an inventory, verbs and a character to move you navigate the game using a fairly faithful 90s era desktop and internet browser. The game has a rather interesting story and, unlike the mocking attitude to that era I was expecting, is actually quite gentle and faithful to the era of internet posting. The game is about 4-10 hours long depending on how long you take, and if you're interested by my early preview trust me, it's good the entire way through and you won't regret buying and playing it yourself! Is this game stupid? It's silly, but not at all stupid. It's a very earnest and lovely tribute to the 90s Internet, good AND bad. The premise of the game is that you're a player moderator for Hypnospace, a fairly new development of dream technology that allows people to use the internet while they sleep. Hypnospace is competing with a similar platform that offers better gaming choices, and is struggling from a lack of moderation and growing discontentment from its core userbase of nerds. As a moderator you use a special client that disables you being able to communicate with anyone in the interest of safety, so while people can message you, you can never reply. How is this LP going to work? This will be a screenshot LP where I'll try and capture some of the more fun gifs. This game has a pretty good soundtrack with some absolute bangers, but I won't be ripping and posting the entire thing as it's currently for sale on Steam. I'll try and link some of the more memorable songs from YouTube. Currently the LP posting schedule will be Spoilers are a complete no-no. This game is all story, what are you playing at! If you absolutely must discuss something going to happen, you can spoiler tag it, but I'd rather you not discuss entire plotlines because the temptation will always be there for people to read them. If you want to discuss easter eggs or the sillier things, or you feel I've missed something, go for it and I'll try and show them. Now...  Let's enter Hypnospace!  ---  Update 1 - Creating our HypnOS Login Update 2 - Exploring Hypnospace Update 3 - The Good Stuff Update 4 - Copyright Culprit Update 5 - Golden Oldies Update 6 - Scaries! Update 7 - Harassment in Teentopia Update 8 - Open Eyed Update 9 - Ice Girl, Nice Girl Update 10 - 1999.11.26 Update 11 - Hypnospace Clean-up Update 12 - The Freelands Update 13 - The Axxelerator Update 14 - The New Year Update 15 - Mindcrash 2k Update 16 - Hindsight is 2020 Update 17 - Outlaw v1.0 -- Chinely fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Nov 7, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 16:21
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THIS SPACE RESERVED
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Apr 23, 2020 16:22
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Update 1 - Creating our HypnOS Login Greetings my friends, and must I say how handsome and correct you are to join me on this journey through HypnoSpace. First things first, we need to create our login. This game is set in 1999 and so we need an... appropriate name.  An important thing to note that won't be shown through this LP is that the game will use your own computer systems default voice to speak to you. So I will get the default Microsoft voice calling me "Frog Lover 85" every time it speaks to me. As it should.   Oh, you thought I was being abstract when I said we got a desktop? Oh no, this game is literally controlled through an emulated 90s desktop. This little fella even rotates.  This desktop will be customized by me later. I might take some requests on what style you want me to replicate as it can get pretty... faithful, to the original desktops of the era. For now we don't have much in the way of customisation.  This game has several fun little touches, one of which is that if you leave your desktop idle it'll display a screensaver. I'll be pointing out the ones I know about as we go, but feel free to mention these as they appear.  Up here we've got the settings, which includes both simulated settings for our desktop and the actual settings for the game.  I've done us the favour of choosing an uglier wallpaper and a more irritating screensaver. You're welcome.  Controls is basic, what you'd expect. Just showing this so you won't wonder if anything fun is there.  And the final part, which would let me put mouse trail on max if I wanted. Which I don't, funnily.  This is the apps menu, which contains nothing of use currently. The chest in the bottom left is our launcher, where we can put apps we find later. Right! Let's get started on that tutorial!  The future...  Is YOU.  Your PASSION.  Your IMAGINATION.  Your HARD WORK.  And now, with the help of HypnoSpace...   You have the tools - and the time! - to make it a reality.   Witness the dawning of a new world!  Where sleep time, is no longer downtime.  It's where the future is built.  A future built by you.  HypnoSpace.   Welcome, to HypnoSpace Patrol Department Enforcer Training. After that lovely video it's time for us to learn how to do our job.   Thank you for volunteering to keep our wonderful community of Hypnospace citizens safe. HypnOS Enforcer Edition is different from the standard version of HypnoOS in several key areas. This tutorial will guide you through everything you need to know to best serve your fellow Hypnospace Citizens and earn HypnoCoin along the way. Let's do this.  Right, I'll run through all the tutorials. They're quite funny as several parts are recorded by an intern with a far lower quality microphone, instead of the professional voiceover that most of it has. I'll distinguish it by putting the intern in italics. Let's learn how to use HypnOS! Feel free to skip most of this once you get the jist, this is genuinely the games tutorial that I'll be documenting for those who are interested.  Direct your attention to the top of your desktop, and you'll notice the HypnOS InfoBar. From left to right, this handy toolkit features quick ac- TO, the SETTING MENU.  THE QUICK SWITCHER.  The APPLICATION MENU. The current date AND time, your HYPNOCOIN bonus. The restart and the log off buttons. Make sure to click the log off button to save your PROGRESS, and safely exit HypnOS!   The info bar may be repositioned anywhere along the top or bottom of your Desktop. That's tutorial 1 done. If you noticed from my rapid switching, the intern recorded over some of the original dialogue. It's amazing.  HYPII, also known as the Hypnospace Intelligent Intermediary is your digital helper. He'll notify you when you receive important messages, and even alert you to new HypnOS system updates. HYPII is always happy to help!  Here's a useful tip: Right-click any text in Hypnospace and HYPII will read it outloud. [In the background and said by someone else] that's good enough.  Time for 02, CHIME Laws.  CHIME is an easy way to remember the five types of violations we'd like Enforcers to keep an eye out for:  This is the main gameplay mechanic. We'll be looking for these violations and flagging them. Next on to 03, the HSPD Inbox.  The HSPD Enforcer Dashboard is a special, secure program that only our volunteer Enforcers have access to. The Inbox allows you to receive messages from Merchantsoft, Hypnospace or HSPD Dispatch agents.  You may also receive automated communications from Hypnospace pages. Some messages come with files attached,     Most of your time will be spent on cases assigned to you by an HSPD Dispatch agent. Cases are generated in response to Hypnospace citizens or leads from the Hypnospace Security Team.  Once a violation has been found, the offending citizen's name will be listed here. Click to jump to the page to- to where the violation was removed from (???)  Once all reported violations have been found in a case, you may close it by clicking the close case button. Upon closing a case, you will earn a payout of 5 Hypnocoins per violation reported. Time for 05. Only one more tutorial to go!  The version of Hypnospace Explorer you'll be using has been modified with an expanded search feature.  enabling you to find unlisted pages by searching for the tags that they contain.   use the stamp system to keep track of which pages you've visited.  Use the stamped page list to revisit stamped pages. Hypnospace's citizens place the pages they've built in our themed Zone communities. You will be given search and browsing access to Zones  ONLY if you've been assigned them by a Dispatch agent. Your assigned Zones will be listed in the HSPD Access Hub.  This information is only viewable by HSPD Enforcers or Hypnospace Security Team members, and may not be shared. Last one!  Your version of Hypnospace Enforcer has also been modified to include an enforcement tool. If you spot text or images that appear to be in violation of CHIME, first click the enforcement toolbar.    If a citizens content has found to be in violation of CHIME, they'll accrue violation points, and you'll receive hypnocoin.   To promptly alert the Merchantsoft Security Team. They'll promptly review the flag to determine if further disciplinary action is necessary.  Because you may be asked to report on citizens engaged in malicious, harmful or illegal activity your former account will be temporarily deactivated. You may not send messages or other outgoing communications to HypnOS citizens for the duration of your volunteer service.  Right! That's the tutorial done. Upon leaving...  We get an important message from Merchantsoft, followed by a second from Dispatch. We'll have to check these out! Next time! Chinely fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 18:21
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So far, the general idea of this game reminds me of Digital: A Love Story.
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Apr 23, 2020 21:15
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For now all I can say is this is a very cool and good game. Will be watching this LP.
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Apr 23, 2020 21:23
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I've had this on my list forever but I think it's time to admit to myself that I'll never get around to it. So I'm glad this showed up 
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Apr 23, 2020 21:27
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This game is incredibly good
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Apr 24, 2020 02:02
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Man, this was interesting enough that I jumped on it, and man, no regrets.
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Apr 24, 2020 08:58
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I totally didn't notice the plush Dropsy in the background the first time I played this!
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Apr 24, 2020 09:39
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Oh lord, Hypnospace Outlaw is like someone took the old Amiga diskmag Grapevine, and turned it into a game. It might be aiming for 1999, but it's really captured 1994 
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Apr 25, 2020 01:11
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geri_khan posted:For now all I can say is this is a very cool and good game. Will be watching this LP.  Also, we have a couple of Hypnospace Outlaw gang tags active on the forums. Hopefully this LP will cause them to spread!
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Apr 25, 2020 06:22
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I gotta be honest, the music for this game is like half of the charm and enjoyment for it, it's so loving good, Hot Dad is the best.
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Apr 25, 2020 07:29
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Update 2 - Exploring Hypnospace Hello friends. How was your day? Good to know. Mine? Uh, so, anyway, Hypnospace! Let's actually try exploring this time. Oh, and for people who saw that this game will mimic booting an old PC on launch and wondered what happened if you held B to launch BIOS -  You get this cool little BIOS screen with some more indepth settings! This game has a load of cool little things. For one, the game will actually simulate a memory leak. If you have the game open for a few hours it'll start to slow down and pages will take longer to load. You can also shake your mouse when a webpage loads and it'll load quicker. I might have a little fiddle around with the BIOS options later but for now, it's time to check dispatch.  Copyright infringement? Oh, you thought we'd be stopping people selling drugs over the internet or stopping some harassment? Not a chance, we work for Merchantsoft (no relation to any existing real company).  This fella is Gumshoe Gooper, a comic and cartoon from years ago. The alternative universe features are pretty light in Hypnospace, mainly concerning internet dream technology and media. There's some more significant stuff but it never really becomes a big plot point.  We also got an automated welcome email from Merchantsoft, specifically the founders Adrian and Dylan. Adrian is the businessman and CEO of the pair, and Dylan is the programmer/artistic side. We'll meet them more indepth later.  Let's go!  Here's our homepage. The little music player in the corner will autoplay pages music, and true to life on the early internet a LOT of pages will autoplay music when you open them.  As we're a good Hypnospace Enforcer, let's check out the handbook first before getting in to any of the good stuff.   These pages and the links follow a large majority of the gameplay. Each one brings us to a page, and the view counter only tracks our views to let us know if we've been on a page before or not. From there it's mainly following in page links or, if you're smart, using the search function to find unlisted pages that are hinted at within the page.  The handbook mainly goes over the tutorial stuff again and I'll save you the pain of having to read all that again.  Except this part, which is a description of what happens if someone is temp banned following you flagging them. Read only and they'll constantly be advertised to during their sleep.  Hypnospace Central now. This contains a bit more of the story around Merchantsoft, and is uh  hideously decorated.  What's that you cry? More tutorials!!!! (don't worry it's actually an in-story explanation now)  Tuba Buffet - Brass Shade (if a song is a banger, like this one is, I'll link to it on YouTube)  If you're wondering, yes everything is horrifically animated on this page. There's too many animations for me to capture them all without making this LP take up 30 gigs. However I will let you see the majesty that is the HYPNOSPACE OFFICIAL GUIDE GIF:  ACCEPT NO IMITATIONS   This video mentions why the game talks about keyboards, mouses and clicks despite this all being in your mind while you sleep:  It's virtual! You simply pretend that you're using a keyboard and Hypnospace will react like you are. If you think this sounds like it might be difficult to control, well. You saw that one of the regions open to us is for the elderly. Prepare yourself.  Interesting. Now what is hypnocoin?  Well, this, but also  It's basically an early version of 'points', and we can use it to buy screensavers and hotdog stickers for me to abominate my desktop with.  Now this is the travel guide that features the first song from CHOWDER MAN, a  This... hard to read guide "allegedly" written by some "sitcom" "dork" is some fluff about the US of Hypnospace.  It certainly wasn't edited by anyone.  Historic bathrooms!  Pool tables!  The Tallulah Promise!  It's literally just a copy pasted email! I'm not american so I have no idea if there's some jokes I'm missing outside the obvious, although I did google Tallulah Falls and found out it's a town... in Georgia.  Back to Hypnospace central, and a really nice feature: it tracks views on the pages, even if you didn't access them through the portals themselves.  News of the day and we're already being told that Y2k won't be an issue, so thank god.  ...Merchantsoft CEO Adrian Merchant was particularly confident in the ability of his company to weather whatever threats may come. "Our culture is enthralled by the idea of some faceless apocalypse," Merchant said, "so I want you to look at the faces behind me. THis is just a small portion of our hundreds-strong support and maintenance team. I have complete confidence in their ability to tackle any, minor issues that may arise due to the Year 2000 rollover." The support staff grouped behind Merchant waved. This reporter, waved back. I hope you guys are good at spotting propaganda, because this is a tricky one!  SquisherZ, which is similar to Pokemon except everything is made out of horrific goop and eats each other, are great. The article also mentions Taurus & Mutela: X but sadly they won't be quite as prevalent as SquisherZ! Are really cool!  Hughes is opening pre-sales of his Presidential memoirs this Friday at 8 AM EST. Now some politics for your fun videogame LP.  Here's the Hypnospace US which, as far as I can tell, is the same as far as borders go. I assume those are missing lines and not that the US has fewer, larger states.  Also they play Trennis, which is similar to Tennis except there's a ball catcher in the middle and it's played with three people.  Next an advert for Hypnocure, an antivirus. Plus isn't at all worth it, but we'll be buying pro at some point to unlock the "Safe Mode" browsing tool, which is necessary for some bugged pages.  Touching tomorrow... together.  NetSettler was their old version of Hypnospace and, as you'll see here, a back handed insult at "techies and whizz kids".  Adrian might be a bit of a dickhead, and might be the one who dictates what goes on this page.  The partners page just mentions who you'll be seeing advertised non-stop, and this page hints that things might change in time. Spoiler: they do.  Last part of Hypnospace Central and we're going to make some cold, hard, hypnocoin!  Oh hell yeah, 11 Hypnocoin.  Let's have a look...  WITH HYPNOSPACE, THE EASIEST SLEEPTIME SOCIAL NETWORK, JUST KEEPS GETTING EASIER   "EVEN MY GRANDPA USES IT!"  "IT'S EASY AS PIE!"  "MY KIDS GOT ME IN TO IT!"  WITH OUR NEW HYPNOSPACE GUIDES, YOU CAN NAVIGATE HYPNOSPACE WITH THE DIRECTION OF TOP EXPERTS    FOR MOVIES, GAMES AND MUSIC TO CARS AND SPORTS  WE'VE GOT IT ALL!  "HYPNOSPACE IS AWESOME!"   WE'VE SPENT OVER 1 BILLION DOLLARS MAKING SURE HYPNOSPACE CITIZENS   "I WAKE UP FEELIN' GREAT!"  ...MERELY SLEEPING?!   "JUST BECAME A WHOLE LOT OF FUN!"  "FOR A BUSY PARENT HYPNOSPACE IS AMAZING!"   TAKE OUR 30 DAY NO RISK TRIAL AND LIVE YOUR DREAMS ON HYPNOSPACE!  ...  
Chinely fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Apr 25, 2020 |
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Apr 25, 2020 19:27
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lmao i missed that survey when i played through this
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Apr 25, 2020 19:57
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Gee, I wonder if Y2K is going to seriously screw with a system that connects to your mind. 
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Apr 26, 2020 07:20
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So what the hell is the Eye of Horus doing in the sky in that travel guide town? Also, can't we introduce that probation stuff to SA? If you're probed, SA pages just completely fill up with ads. Sounds like a great idea to me!
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Apr 26, 2020 08:29
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Eye of Horus? I'm not sure what you're talking about, friend. That's just a normal skyline in Hypnospace and I'll hear nothing to the contrary.
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Apr 26, 2020 16:06
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Man, I'm so happy to see this happening. Hypnospace Outlaw is a really spectacular game. The clear lack of editing or oversight on relatively official pages that you're directed to within only a couple of clicks is particularly delightful.
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Apr 26, 2020 17:06
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Update 3 - The Good Stuff Hello again friends. Let's actually read some non-Merchantsoft pages for a change... Eventually. We've got the survey and something else to do first.  Ah... pretending that I have money. Truly this game is a life simulator.      Oh, my God. It keeps going.  Fun LPer fact for you.   Why... why is this getting gross?!   Oh my God  Well that was awful. Moving on, I just remembered I didn't show you the rest of the Merchantsoft team.  We've seen these two, but we can check out their pages.  Adrian's page is barely set up but we CAN  look at his data and find out he's 42, and Merchantsoft is based in San Francisco.  Dylan has an actually set up one.  He's the actual programmer who made Hypnospace and is responsible for most of the apps you use.  ...Adrian is a balding stiff who knows how to make a deal or two. He's well aware of this dynamic and has made peace with it. :P In all seriousness, Adrian is a great guy and I'm fortunate to have him as a brother. He's also weirdly insistent about only listening to legally acquired music. Not at all related to him saying "he's been tamed" and also he never once downloaded illegal music how dare you say that.  We also see the first instance of a tag, in this case the HS_TechClub. If we click on this...  It'll automatically search the term for any pages with this tag. Useful, but searching is far more powerful than this. For example if we search, say... a random term that has no bearing on any strange symbols people have allegedly been seeing...  You'll find a related page!  We'll need to do some puzzling to work out passwords for some of the things in this game, so we'll leave this for now.  Quickly going back to check out Dylan's music page will have some links that you can actually click on to download the songs. DM_NO1ZPUSH3R - Ice Cream and Booze True to the virtual desktop style, we've got a version of that .HSM player Dylan made. Songs you're playing on this will pause the music playing on pages, so I never really used tunebox much. But it's cool, and you can acquire some songs that don't play anywhere else.  Next on we've got Roddy and Samantha, who are the most senior programmers after Dylan.  Roddy is amazing  You'll notice that the 5th line in his citizen data, 06_STARPORT CASTLE DREAMSTATION, refers to a hub we don't have yet. While you can reach the pages on hubs you don't have access to early, you have to do so by searching or links.   Samantha unfortunately has a rather straightforward page. She does however seem to have a combination of tech savvyness and professionalism that so far nobody else at Merchantsoft has, so that's nice!  We are... PASSION PEOPLE ... driven by unfettered ... VISION ... and a commitment to... DEDICATION is the creed at the bottom there. What a strange creed, I wonder who Chet Pinehurst - Earth Our Home Oh well that solves that question.  Artie is also great. And finally...   Chowder Man - I am the Chowder Man (WARNING: CLICKING ON CHOWDER MAN SONGS IS NOT OPTIONAL)   I'll just let Chowder Man speak for himself. Literally!   Chowder Man is just the best.   A really nice touch of the game is that if someone has a merch page, you can usually actually buy things on it. For example -   Much better.  There's also his timeline that I'll just write out for you: 1954 The birth of the Chowder Man 1966 The Chowder Man's momma buys him a guitar. 1974 The Chowder Man's first band: The Badd Crowd 1981 The Chowder Man's parents help him start Chowder Entertainment, his own personal record label. 1982 "If We Wanna" - Chowder Man's classic debut album, is released. The single "Jackin' Round" reaches spot 8 on the Swiss music charts. Chowder man is commissioned to write the legendary Gray's Peak Anthem. 1986 Chowder Man famously purchases his custom "Chowder Copter." His single "The Chowder Man's Hotel Room" reaches #2 on the USA rock charts. Chowder Man's record "Lookin for Trouble" goes gold in Switzerland. 1987-1991 Chowder Man's "Mountain Roar" (1989) and "The Zone" (1991) albums are recorded and released. Fans love them! 1991-1996 Chowder Man takes some much needed time off to focus on his health and family. 1997 Chowder Man resumes writing music. He produces jingles for some of the largest brands in the world. 1999 Chowder Man is hired by Adrian Merchant to help produce quality music for Hypnospace's Partner Brands. In late 1999, he finally returns to rock and roll with his new band, KRUNCHER! Inspirational. Let's mosey on down to the cafe.   We've already been on a few of these pages as they were linked elsewhere, but the Cafe is the 'default' hub and mainly has new accounts and people discussing music, including the brand new hit sensation, COOLPUNK!  And by that I mean, Barnaby's Chair! This was the band that Samantha mentioned on her page, and they're pretty good. Barnaby's Chair - Satellite Orchestra  What cool, irreverent 90s bad boys. They're owned by Esotonic Records (also has a partnership deal with Merchantsoft, there's a bit of a theme!).  Next on we have an advertisement for Chitchat, which is, unsurprisingly, just AIM.  Unfortunately as we're enforcers, we're completely unable to use Chitchat.  So luckily none of you will be forced to watch me talk to people from the 90s. Unless I LP Emily Is Away, anyway.  Next along is this mysterious page! If we try searching the username...   We can find the unlinked version.  It's a site for making GBS threads on people who aren't very internet savvy. Hm... that sounds... familiar.........  It should surprise no one that Hypnospace's oft-loathed 'Bubblegum' template lies at the heart of this oddly adorable atrocity of a page. Hey. Reggie. Level with us man, what were you thinking here? At least bump that placeholder graphic down a few pixels so your three visitors can actually read about your wife or whoever. We can visit his page and yes  it is hideous.   But, as the Dumpster mentions, incredibly endearing.     Teentopia again is a hub we can't visit yet, but! We can look at the linked page.  Oh hell yeah. Let's check out his first comic.   And the voters decided... SEEPAGE has... GOT GAME. no real surprise here *grins*  Those of you in your 20s-30s will surely be getting horrific flashbacks right now.  As will this!     Love a bit of casual internet cruelty. Let's round out the Dumpies (1999).   A little run down before we reach it proper, Coolpunk is similar to Vaporwave in that it's the remixing of adverts and corporate jingles to make a distinct style of music. In this case, an old soda campaign. Chowder Man - Gotta Climb Gray's Peak Yes, this page is giving my cursor a snowflake trail.  Back to the Dumpster to read the other articles, we've got an archive link that doesn't work   This review for .HSMs which is CLEARLY wrong because Pizza Dance This song bops.  As much as I hate to say it, the Dumpster is actually quite funny.     Perfect.
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Apr 26, 2020 19:58
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I'm kinda stuck (in...around the middle? of the game) and I'm pretty sure I missed a lot of hidden stuff before so I'm looking forard to seeing more of this!
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Apr 26, 2020 23:38
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It's really impressive how specific of an era those spottily-artifacted compressed images evoke.
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Apr 27, 2020 04:23
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90's Me would have been gobsmacked by that "haunted" desktop background. I was using Mechanisto and POV-Ray to do 3D and it was just so goddamn hard to get anything accomplished that looked like anything much. Little things like how the house walls curve would have been a pain to accomplish. And of course everything was dithered to hell and back to keep the color count (and therefore filesize) down as much as possible.
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Apr 27, 2020 04:51
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So, I've been noticing the clock in the upper area of the screen. Is the game on a time limit/filled with timed events? Because while this does look amazing, I hate games that are like that.
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Apr 27, 2020 07:04
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This is just peak geocities and I love it, including the horrible default bubblegum page setup.
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Apr 27, 2020 07:20
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NewMars posted:So, I've been noticing the clock in the upper area of the screen. Is the game on a time limit/filled with timed events? Because while this does look amazing, I hate games that are like that. Don't worry, that's just world building! I was worried about this too but no Hypnospace Outlaw is not timed outside of two segments that are a) short b) you can go back later and c) are extremely obvious that you're getting in to it, and there's no failing them. The time isn't 1:1 either, I've spent far longer ingame than the hour and change it's showing. Also! One thing I really want to encourage, and that we've had a bit of, is you 90s kids telling me what the game does to remind you. I was born in 1995 and so I'm juuuuust a little too young to have been on the 1999s internet (we got dial-up in 2002 as well), and while the 2005s internet was similar in a lot of ways it's not quite the same. Keep it comin' folks. also, update (maybe 2 if none of my friends are about) today
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Apr 27, 2020 15:00
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Update 4 - Copyright Culprit Hope you're doing well, friends. Let's all go on the Internet some more.  Last time we learnt how useful the search tool is and saw that Hypnospace is home to some, interesting individuals. Let's check out the rest of the cafe.  Aldrin's House of Sound has er, unfortunately, just 1:1 scanned his old articles and posted them as a page.  It's pretty unreadable!  You can go in to the articles if you like, and we've got here a tip page for new HypnOS users. Let's see what we can get!   More tips! I never realized how much this game tells you how to play it when playing it casually, but it does make a lot of sense. Hypnospace is new and has a lot of un-tech savy users.  The only sticker we have at the moment is that rotating Hypnospace icon, but don't worry. We will get more. The third tip is just how to place stickers, but!  As I mentioned earlier, this is no joke. Pages do genuinely load significantly faster if you wiggle your mouse. I do it intuitively so if I ever record myself playing, you'll see me wiggling it about.   Gregg does have a lot of really useful tips, such as the HypnOS Error Messages.  HXX0XXX - Your Hypnospace Headband hardware has been damaged. --> Link to my SamWich Encryption info page.   We've yet to see a SamWich encrypted file but they will start popping up to hide the 'juicier' things we can find.  For those who wondered if the internet exists outside of dreaming, yes! Merchantsofts version is NetSettler, and Hypnospace is just that but you're asleep.   That's right, we're on the boring version of the sleepternet.  Weird untested technology to dream the internet might be unsafe! Shocking!  Weird creeps can just message you on ChitChat without your permission. Suddenly not that upset that we can't use it.   For those of you interested in playing this game for yourself, a) do and b) don't worry too much about unlisted pages, searching and all that. If you're anxious the game will lock you out of completing it, it's very generous with making sure you aren't left behind as long as you read everything you have access to.  If you're still worried, there's this!  If you search for hints, you get the actual games hint guide. For hypnocoin it'll give you hints on how to progress through the story. This is the only way of finding this page and because you have to actually look for it, it's pretty straight up immersion breaking. But it's there if you need it.   There are also slightly less immersive pages that are put up by backers and discord users. I'll be documenting these after the games story is done, so don't worry.  Back to Gregg and we'll get the rundown on the music files.  ...to legally share files with one another. Struggling with illegal music sharing, eh. Oh the problems we used to have. That's it for Gregg for now, so on to Jas!  Jas is absolutely lovely and will update their page about good tech projects, so it's worth coming back to.    Worth noting for a bit of world building, Jas has the "HS_Lifestyles tag" and a rotating rainbow flag on their page.  So to us it's fairly obvious Jas is gay but uh. This game is set in the 90s and you couldn't really just broadcast that in public. So what I'm saying is be kind to each other.  Also they did genuinely give the picture 5 shells which is adorable.  Eh, what's this?   SCG is a little app we can download that gives you some ambient noises as we mess around with Hypnospace. I never really used it but in the interest of this LP, I'll whack the spooky noises on in the background and tell you how it is.  Horrifying.  DON'TNATE  Howard here has some tips for all you goons out there who haven't got their life together yet.  This was probably the first point when I was playing the game originally that I went "Oh, that's weirdly lovely and sad." Get used to that feeling, Hypnospace Outlaw is aiming for that far harder than it's aiming for "wasn't the 90s funny!"  Last but not least we've got Tamara Frost.  Keeping up with the cafes main theme of art and music, Tamara is a poet. She's actually got a spoken word poem you can listen to  er, I guess, eventually. It's called "I Choose" and I actually quite like it but it's impossible to find and isn't on the OST. Tamara Frost - Gray's Peak Coolpunk Spoken Word  You can see her Coolpunk page though, and our first show of Coolpunk music.  She's also got some of her written poetry up there. I'm a sucker for some poetry, so here's the entire thing.  If you know how to get your poems accepted by mags/journals, PLEASE ChitChat me! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!! Plus her "about" section. Which is also depressing me. Onwards!  Now with the Cafe done, we're on to Goodtime Valley. Who's ready to talk to the elderly! Small Town Kid - Front Porch  Pages here are mainly advertisements (for some reason) and middle aged people talking about the good 'ol days. Let's check out Abby.  That should be dread you're feeling right now.     Quick detour to her 'Hypnospace Heaven' page. It's a memorial for the deceased.    If you think, "is my first task as Hypnospace Enforcer in this game really to copyright claim a grieving widows 1st Grade art page"    The answer is yes. Merchantsoft baby! (and no, if you're wondering, there's no way around it. Nobody else has Gumshoe Gooper art on their pages.)  Except, you can be extra nasty...  and claim the actual artwork itself. Hypnospace! 
Chinely fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Apr 27, 2020 |
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Apr 27, 2020 16:19
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Chinely posted:If you think, "is my first task as Hypnospace Enforcer in this game really to copyright claim a grieving widows 1st Grade art page" tbh given the chance I imagine that many corporations would in fact copyright claim loving first grader's fanart of a character IRL.
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Apr 27, 2020 16:44
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i spent ages trying to find other examples of gumshoe gooper when i first played because i REALLY didnt want to ding her. (youd think it wouldnt be a thing--this mod star didnt make me as callous as i'd feared. once i started blocking that 1st grade art though it really did get easier!
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Apr 27, 2020 17:02
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You can scrape just enough Goopers from other places to avoid hitting the kids' art. But why pass up that free hypnocoin? IT'S FREE "MONEY!" As for references, let's start with the Tunebox program, which is obviously styled after classic Winamp. I'm a particular fan of Aldrin's page, so much of Hypnospace's worldbuilding is about music and he's a big part of it. Gearhead Gregg's page is probably one of the most important in the entire game. There's some sort of copyright problem deal with "I Choose" on Tamara's page. A bunch of people doing video LPs got dinged for it. I think it's been patched out of the game now. BTW did you mean to refer to Coolpunk as Frostpunk a couple of times?
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Apr 27, 2020 17:30
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Did I??? Oops. No I just really like that game haha, let's change that back. Cheers!
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Apr 27, 2020 17:38
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geri_khan posted:You can scrape just enough Goopers from other places to avoid hitting the kids' art. But why pass up that free hypnocoin? IT'S FREE "MONEY!" ahhh poo poo really? i mustve missed some. well, once i start hitting the kids' art i couldnt be stopped. the first ban is always the hardest 
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Apr 27, 2020 17:43
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Please note the one art piece that is so bad the system can’t even recognize that it’s supposed to be gumshoe gooper
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Apr 27, 2020 20:30
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Hey, thanks for the LP! Really neat reading your thoughts (and the replies!) while playing.geri_khan posted:There's some sort of copyright problem deal with "I Choose" on Tamara's page. A bunch of people doing video LPs got dinged for it. I think it's been patched out of the game now. Yeah. That song was listed as Public Domain on the Internet Archive so I foolishly assumed it'd be fine. I sent the original artist a courtesy email letting her know that I'd used her song from the Internet Archive in the game and it got a little weird. Resolved now. Learned a lesson. We've recorded 4 new Tamara tracks with new poems for an update coming in the near future that will coincide with a console release. :0) OH, also worth noting that Barnaby's Chair is actually Dan Warren/mofolotopo from the forums here.
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Apr 28, 2020 11:31
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Oh man. Hello Mr. Conana! Sorry for ruining your game by doing lame commentary over it! But thank you for it also!! I'm glad to be getting more Tamara. I feel everyone that plays this game has a few posters they get attached too (outside of the big story relevant ones, anyway), and she was one of them for me.
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Apr 28, 2020 14:13
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Update 5 - Golden Oldies Hope you're doing well my friends. After that mortifying experience of us having to do something ethically gross in order to keep our (volunteer) job, let's, uh  Not copyright claim the rest of these things! We'll be back, but this is the main way to progress the story. There's been some thread concerns that the game was timed and this might interfere with their enjoyment, but never fear. CHIME violations and solving cases is the way to push the story forwards and make time progress in Hypnospace Outlaw, so we're just going to explore the rest of the zones first.  Mm... delicious!   Well... we've got the coin... if people really want me to be hotdog themed I'll come back and make my desktop hideous. Guy Master Cool - Gamer Fortress (Leather Jacket Man on OST) Oh gently caress yeah!   Hm, beefbrain you say. Well, they are untested. I have to say from my personal stance, this kind of page would have mortified me when I was a teen but now  I am unironically 100% on board. Next up is, uh, another advert but we do get a song from Hot Dad! Chowder Man - Granny Cream's Hot Butter Ice Cream   *Lucille Hutcheson not pictured. This is a banger of a track but I'm... confused about what the product is?? It seems to be ice cream mixed with hot butter, then frozen again, and then you can microwave it to heat it up. Wouldn't that... be atrocious? What is this?? What is it!!! Ahrghh!  A little memo from our  who is, uh, here. Hi Scotty!  Let's have a look at, uh, oh no  So remember when I spoke about how Hypnospace might not be the most intuitive thing to control!  I think Mavis needs a bit of help! We've just covered about twenty different tutorials Mavis, I hope someone can direct you to them.  Off to- oh! This is the fella that the Dumpster was making fun of.    Here's some non-American background for you. That whole idea of 'Oh, I'm 1/4 Irish' is pretty uniquely American (which makes sense, being the land of immigrants and all.) If it leads to charming wizard art then I'm all for it. Let's see how Arlan is doing.  if you ever meet me, you may be surprised to learn that I am actually in a wheelchair. A car accident left me without the use of my legs at the young age of 22 years old. Well thats life as they say.  When I first got to Goodtime Valley I was honestly dreading that it was going to be a bit racist (or at least very nationalistic) and kind of horrible. And there is some of that! But it was just a lot of people past the prime of their life being incredibly earnest, and unfortunately it ended up hurting them. It's a bit of a running theme in this game. And, I suppose, the early internet. Well, there'll be none of that with Pete's Love Poems!    His poems will write and unwrite themselves and it makes them incredibly hard to catch. Your boy FrogLuvr85 managed it though. Pete also has the beefbrain image just off screen.  Worth noting is that our next fella, Reg. is one of the few Hypnospace citizens to have violation points without you causing them.  RR Ranch! There was a link from Arlan to some of his work, and this is where it ended up.   Reginald how dare you besmirch the good name of the Cafe, I love everyone there   He is however, ah, doing a scam watch. It seems Hypnospace despite seemingly incredibly professional has very poor security and user care. Still, Professor Helper... seems... familiar...  Oh, yeehaw.    Abby here asking for Sandy to become lea-  NO!  NO!!   You've got Hypnomail! Ooh!  Hurrah! We can stop flagging Abby now! Except we won't because you get more Hypnocoin for tagging all her posts!  Ah, and we've unlocked our next hub, Teentopia. We'll go there after we're done checking out Goodtime Valley and upsetting a lovely 1st Grade teacher.  Next up is future president of Goodtime Valley, Sandy.   We'll check out that humour page in a bit.  Looks like Goodtime Valley is really upset at the Dumpster for that mocking article. The article was honestly pretty tame, but when it gets a response like this...  I am open to ChitChat with anyone and everyone. Feeling down? Having a rough day? Please drop me a line! Ok this was lovely enough that it made me email my mother asking how she's doing during lockdown. Thank you Hypnospace! Let's go for some old fashioned humour.  oh god we have to flag more gooper   (as mentioned earlier, Sandy doesn't have enough Gumshoe Gooper on her page for you to flag her. You have to go after Abby.)  Detective Frank just LOVES carbonara. And finally, some wisdom for the kids... Kid, there's NO  Love it.  Wow, they don't care about Detective Frank!  Business as usual for Gumshoe Gooper.  Hello Bobby!  Lying a little bit about your age I see!   The links are broken, if you're wondering.  And lastly, Terry's GENERAL STORE!  Your friend and mine Reg warned us that these stickers have a virus. Well, I love living on the edge...  A lot of people say thanks to Gregg for helping them with their pages and it's honestly very sweet.  we do not acept Capa Cash... thank you to Randys Scam Watch for the warning. IT IS A SCAM  A... hm. A scary eye, you say... As an aside, one thing I've learnt doing this is if you idle on a page with a lot of animations it starts getting major slowdown and the music starts slowing down as well. Memory leaks!  TERRY'S HALLOWEEN STICKERS AND SCARY EYE PACK!  Hell yeah.  Oh no!!!  He's eating them all!  We've got our first virus! Our launcher keeps eating all our icons and throwing them up all over our page. We need some hypnocoin fast to get hypnocure!  Sorry Abby!  This is the end of the line for you, Gumshoe Gooper.  Dash Rendar is right, this really does get easier.  These are pretty cute. Free hypnocoin thou-  Learn how to draw, kid!  Now that we've got enough violations on Abby's account, and I've dinged all her Gumshoe Gooper posts,  Oh, this is new.   Ah. Oops.  Sorry, Abby. It's over to the Hypnospace Security Team now.  Time to close this case!  When my launcher throws up the email inbox, anyway.  Case closed!   Thanks, HYPII! Now we have the Hypnocoin to get some decent antivirus.  We'll be getting pro eventually, but for now we just need the ability to get rid of viruses.  Note for those wondering, the viruses aren't actually harmful or anything. If I click on the Launcher it opens normally and lets me select the program I want.  Hunger no more, Launcher. Hunger no more.  Right, next time... we get to see that teens are the real monsters. Chinely fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 28, 2020 17:15
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Sorry, Abby. Try to soothe your soul with Granny Cream's Hot Butter Ice Cream. I hear it's very tasty, and healthy too. (That 22 second jingle is far and away my favorite track in the game.)
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Apr 28, 2020 18:52
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Ha! I didn't know that these were Hot Dad tunes. That rocks!
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Apr 28, 2020 18:59
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Hot Butter is absolutely one of the peak songs, but there's two unseen yet that truly brought joy to me
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Apr 28, 2020 20:57
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Update 6 - Scaries! Hello lovely people. I hope you're ready to talk to some teens because our next drop is Teentopia!   Uh, well, it's trendy.  Got to love that the first result on Teentopia is an advert.   Here we are! April the Angelic Hamster. She's a virtual desktop pet you can get that I'll hold off on for now because they're SUPER annoying. You have to constantly spend Hypnocoin on them to keep them fed in a way that's clearly supposed to be predatory on kids scared that their pet will die. Merchantsoft is kind of gross, if you weren't getting that. And, if you're wondering what that shape is...  Chowder Man - SquisherZ Anthem SQUISHERZ!  You remember the Pokemon craze of the 90s? It's SquisherZ, baby! Gotta rescue them all!   I will naturally be posting the rap once we get it. It's... well, it exists.  Back to some virtual pets tips. There is a specific thing we'll need them for, and I could use one right now to get something you're not supposed to have until much later early, but I won't for the sake of narrative. I'll point it out when we get to it, though!   Hm... this alert is suspicious...  Hm... (this icon is the SamWich encryption file, by the way)  Hello Ashley! If you can't tell, Teentopia might be poorly moderated. Ashley here is around 8 years old, despite the minimum age for Hypnospace being 13.   Her page is straight up adorable, but it is a bit worrying. I don't know, I was on the internet doing things when I was far too young but now I'm older it definitely worries me!  Good thing we have Counselor Ronnie!  He's got a couple of SquisherZ for us to pick up around his page.  And is, uh, still advertising to the kids. The 90s sure were shameless huh!  His play button just links back to the SquisherZ quest.  A lot of stuff will eventually have some content on it once we progress through the story enough.  His learning page is, er, just misinformation. But it's funny I suppose? Birthstones This song is actually painful. Counselor Ronnie manages to pronounce almost every gem incorrectly, including (amazingly!) ruby as rube-why. I feel like this page might be a bit of a mockery!  If you're wondering, every single SquisherZ does still fly at me and go SQUISHERZ! Waking Up - The Truth (my favourite of the background tracks, if you were wondering!) Here we've got Tiff, who has a page all based around 'Scaries'. They're I suppose the hypnospace version of Creepypastas, but they're usually intended to be goofy horror themed stories instead of something to genuinely induce anxiety.  We'll check out T1MAGEDDON's story in a bit, first we'll just see the rest of Tiffs.   We'll also check out some of the stories by Linda as well!  But first, I tried searching her username for her old scaries. This looks promising!  Here we are. Her interactive poem scary.    Gasp! (the game does genuinely gasp here)   Crickets  I'm going to add some marshmellows.  No!  Let's pick it up.   The paths between picking up the potato or ignoring it come back together here.  Ahrghhh!! Turn off the light!  Let's open that door!  Let's close that door!  Dr. Smoulder Boulder doesn't have hands or feet. He's smooth and tall and distorded like a babie's foggy dream. Like the first fear you ever had when you were a kid. H-how does he exist? Wait waht is he doing o h n o what -- -.- do >WHAT'S HAPPENING??!? Ok this is kind of cool actually   Rad! Let's see what other endings I can get.   Let's try the 'I ignore everything and sip marshmallows' route.   This hot chocolate is apparently really mediocre!  Hot chocolate!  Same as if we'd opened the door, just a text change.  Back to Dr. Smoulder Boulder. Hm.  Let's try having no marshmallows.  If you notice, the path we're on is dictated in the webpage address as either "M" or "NM". It seems Tiff made some mistakes somewhere and what drink you choose puts you on to the wrong path. So now we have marshmallows.  thanks for the marshmallows  Nice! I think that's all we've got here. Let's see what Linda has.  WoooOOo!  Linda is also on Starport Castle Dreamstation, so we can only reach her page through Tiff currently.  She's mourning the loss of one of the 5 zones that used to make up Starport Castle Dreamstation. The zones were Sci-fi Starport, Gamerz Only, The Comic Shop, The Dream Castle and Cybercog (this universes version of Steampunk) Station, if you were wondering.   I would be doing her a disservice if I didn't capture her beautiful animations.     Love it.  Linda is a classic B-movie horror buff, and has reviewed a few.   WILL IT BLEND?  Hypnospace Outlaw... gotta love it.  Let's check out DIGITAL PARASITE: REBORN by T1MAGEDDON.   T1M is apparently 999 years old, although I'm fairly sure he's around 16.  Let's go through the Rockstar first, who if you can't guess if supposed to be Chowder Man.  Just remember that these are all after Tiffany made them less mean.   Hm, I'll pass.  Oh, yes then?   I've signed worse terms and conditions!  Let's uh  Oh, sorry.  Oh, uh...    This is actually pretty funny and probably something I would do.  Anyway, let's accept.    (this screen flashes constantly, which seems a little weird considering it was made with his epileptic friend Tiff, but still!)   Let's do this one, which is supposed to be Arlan, the nice warlock fella who makes graphic art.    Minor differences, including calling Arlan a leech which. Bit cruel!  Ending is the same. I'll just shoot through the other cards.  This is a fella we won't meet yet as we don't have access to his zone.  It's a spirituality zone, if you couldn't guess.   And finally, we have our last card,  The guy with the rad as heck motorcyclist page.    And here we are! These are actually quite impressive, the 'installing' page gets more corrupted as it loads in and the music is pretty good, but T1M if you can't tell is... well, a bit cruel and mocking in the way teens often are. I'd never actually clicked the buttons before and the goofy text calling me a dummy actually warmed me up a bit and reminded me that, well, he is still a teenager after all.  We've still got a few to go but I reckon the scaries were good enough on their own. Come back next time for: teens making fun of each other!
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Apr 29, 2020 22:23
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It's going to be weird and wild, this hypnospace.
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Apr 30, 2020 04:49
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