It can make for something of an unsettling experience at first. It’s a fascinating window into an increasingly distant past. During the game, the player explores teenage messageboards, with posts dedicated to fawning over first boyfriends, or the new age, spiritual types finding a way to connect with one another like never before – all entirely separate communities before social media and Google united us all, for better and for worse. The player takes the role of an ‘enforcer’ for the Hypnospace, policing illegal content, copyright violations, viruses and cyber-bullying. It’s perhaps best compared to the works of Sam Barlow, of Her Story and Telling Lies fame – the player operates a 90s era OS and web browser, unravelling the story via emails and by trawling the overly-earnest blogs and disparate internet communities familiar to veterans of the era. Tender Shoot’s game, set in an alternate universe’s internet in the late 90s Y2K era, certainly doesn’t play like your standard video game. Hypnospace Outlaw is at once both unsettlingly strange and yet endearingly familiar. Xalavier Nelson Jr., freelance games contributor
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