Dropsy Dev Jacks Into Hypnospace For Kickstarter
Cheerygrim
"Uplinklikes" is the term our Adam suggests for games presented as another computer's desktop. "Uppies." Whatever you call them, Hypnospace Outlaw [official site] has one of the nicest I've seen. It's an AOL-y peek into a pastel-tinged, GeoCities-ish cyberspace with silly animated GIFs and plingy-plongy midi music. Lovely! Jay Tholen, creator of the clownventure Dropsy, wants to take us to the Hyponospace to cruise the dreamtime cyberspace as an Enforcer in search of outlaws. He'll need a little help on Kickstarter to get us there, though. Watch this aceness:
Hypnospace is a sort of Internet people enter in their sleep, thanks to natty pink technoheadbands. It's policed by Enforcers, volunteer moderators with powers to search through websites and chatlogs and report people breaking Hypnospace's rules. It's cheeriest grim cyberpunk cyberspace, an exaggeration of GeoCities style with awful homepages, exciting GIFs, midi music, adware, popups, viruses, and terrible spelling. The game will come with tools to create your own websites, users, and music too. And virtual pets.
It also features the Hypnospace Highway, an arcade-y minigame where you violently chase outlaws down and bring them in. You might remember this from Hypnospace Enforcer, Tholen's wee 2014 game which introduced this whole world.
I liked Hypnospace Enforcer, enjoying the cheery presentation smashing in a dystopian cyberpunk tale about moderators flexing their cybermuscle. The final level does something pretty great with that idea, very dramatically making me feel a heartless dick. Enforcer is pay-what-you-want on Itch if you fancy a crack.
As for Hypnospace Outlaw, that's on Kickstarter looking for $28,000 (£21k). Tholen says Dropsy has helped fund development but they need more cash, largely so codeman Mike Lasch can go part-time at his main job and work on Hypnospace. Pledging at least $12 (or $10 if you get in fast enough) would get you a copy of the finished game, which is expected on Windows, Mac, and Linux in January 2018. Considering the prototype looks so nice and that Tholen Kickstarted Dropsy too, yeah, I'll feel comfortable putting a couple squid towards this.
Oh! And Dropsy's promised free little add-on is now named The Yeti's Curse and coming in January.