Hypnospace Outlaw - Game 20 of 2023

Hypnospace Outlaw

Developer: Tendershoot, Michael Lasch, ThatWhichIs Media
Publisher: No More Robots
Platform: PC
Genre: ...I'm not really sure. Puzzle? Adventure?

Difficulty: Some hard-ass puzzles
Hours: ~5

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 9.7/10

I'm not sure how to describe Hypnospace Outlaw other than FuCkInG aWeSoMe!!!!!

I choose T4b1l3sp00n as my handle, which was funny to listen to the AI pronounce

Dive back into the 90s internet as a HypnOS Enforcer. Your job is to moderate Hypnospace, a network that users log into while they sleep. Users access Hypnospace via a special headband that they wear while sleeping, allowing their subconscious to socialize and browse while their body rests.

As a volunteer Enforcer, you'll be tracking down cases of harassment, copyright infringement, illegal file sharing, and malware. You're not paid in real money but in Hypnocoin, which you can use to buy  things like music, desktop wallpapers, and virtual pets.

The hypnopages just scream 90s internet, complete with cringy boomers, conspiracy theories, edgy spinning graphics, and embedded music. There's even a collectible sticker game (SquisherZ) which has a theme song and it slaps! It's these details that really help make Hypnospace Outlaw something great.

Even Hypnospace isn't immune to bullshit moral panics.

Hypnospace Outlaw also gets fairly difficult later in the game. The first few cases you get can be solved by just browsing some webpages, but eventually you need to peace together clues yourself, using snippets of information you get from webpages along with the search function to find the information you need. A few of these puzzles are tricky, but so rewarding once you find the solution. 

The game also has a great, tense, story that's told through webpages, email threads, and cases, which kept me playing late at night. It's not a horror game, but there are moments that are truly unsettling.

Hypnospace Outlaw is absolutely worth your time. I feel guilty grabbing it for cheap during a Steam sale, as I would have gladly paid full price for this one.

Gamedec - Game 19 of 2023

Gamedec

Developer: Anshar Studios
Publisher: Anshar Publishing
Platform: PC
Genre: RPG

Difficulty: Easy
Hours: ~4

Finished: No
Final Rating: 6/10

In Gamedec, you take on the role of a... Gamedec. A Gamedec is short for Game Detective, someone who traverses the virtual worlds of the near future and solves crimes.

Fletcher Garrett, my Gamedec

Gamedec takes place in future Warsaw; it immediately throws a shitload of jargon and worldbuilding at you and never freaking stops. You have a journal where you can look this stuff up, but that doesn't really do you a lot of good when you're in dialog and one of the options is "Use Screen Jibba Jab Matrix" and you don't know what the fudge that is because it's never come up before.

Honestly, I wish we spent a little more time in future Warsaw because it seems like a really interesting place. Instead, we are originally thrust into an extreme S&M virtual game (it's not really racy or anything). Following that, we visit Harvest Time, the future's version of Farmville, I guess.

The areas you explore are rather small and self-contained. What you have is a very linear story; once you're done in Farmville Harvest Time, you won't be coming back. The story, at least what I experienced, seemed decent. Both meatspace and the virtual worlds you traverse are populated with some interesting folks. You'll come across characters that are exploiting children for cheap labor (and pumping them full of stims), the spoiled, psychopathic scion of a wealthy businessman, and some cross between Cthulu and uh, It?

Subtle.

All in all, Gamedec isn't bad, but I just couldn't make myself finish it. Awkward dialog, limited exploration, and what I felt was a clunky deduction system all kind of took away from the interesting world I felt was there, but just out of reach.

Book 7 of 2023 - Jewish Space Lasers - The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories

Jewish Space Lasers - The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories

Author: Mike Rothschild (no relation)
Genre: History/Politics

Pages: ~280

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 8.5/10

Do the Rothschilds have a combined net worth of 200 trillion dollars? 

No.

Did Nathan Rothschild make enough money after the Battle of Waterloo to literally buy the British government?

No. He made the modern equivalent of roughly 600 grand, no big deal to a fella like him.

Did the Rothschilds sacrifice goyim children to some dark money god for unlimited power?

No.

So why do people believe these things?

Antisemitism. The short answer is antisemitism, propagated by far right conspiracy theorists.

If you want a bit more than that, check out this book. Mike Rothschild (no relation) takes a deep dive into the history of the famous Rothschild clan in an attempt to understand how these tall tales even gained traction in the first place. (The answer is antisemitism).

Springblades - Game 18 of 2023

Springblades

Developer: Sokpop Collective
Publisher: Sokpop Collective
Platform: PC
Genre: RPG

Difficulty: Moderate
Hours: ~7

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 7.5/10

Springblades is a bite-sized, Paper Marioesque turn-based RPG rendered in a juvenile MSPaint art style, which I don't mean as an insult because it's awesome.

The story is simple: the princess needs you to collect three gems possessed by three strong bosses. Along the way, you'll meet all kinds of enemies, like rabbits, horses, deer, flop ghosts, pet rocks, farmers, chickens, you get the idea.

In addition to the three super bosses (indicated by a red skull on the map), there are a host of other bosses, usually guarding a town or some other location you can buy stuff at. The map is larger than I expected, and when you unlock a new location (usually by beating the boss) you can use it to warp to other locations you've unlocked.

Character progression is simple. With each level up, you can choose more HP, more energy points (so you can do more on your turn in combat), or more BP (badge points). Badges are one of the three equipment types you get, the others being weapons and armor. They usually give you some sort of perk or special ability, like the ability to bite or a bonus to accuracy.

The player's abilities are derived from their equipment; the right combo can make a super-difficult boss (dwarven prince lol) trivial. I had a lot of fun tweaking my equipment to certain encounters, as some combinations which seem amazing (badges that deal free damage when an enemy misses, for example) can absolutely screw you over in certain fights.

Good stuff.

Game 17 of 2023 - The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante

Developer: Sever
Publisher: 101xp
Platform: PC
Genre: Visual Novel/RPG

Difficulty: Surprisingly Difficult 
Hours: ~6

Finished: Yes, sorta
Final Rating: 8/10

I can't really say too much about my playthrough of The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante without spoiling the game. It's great, though, really.

TLASOSB is, if you can imagine, a hardcore RPG/visual novel mashup. As a kid I read Choose Your Own Adventure books religiously, and it's kinda like that plus you have stats that change with the choices you make.

You play Sir Brante from birth to death, and yeah, he often suffers. There are no 'good' or 'optimal' choices here; you can't please everyone. Someone is always going to mad at you. During my playthrough, I stood up to my asshole grandfather and he just fucking wasted me right in front of my parents with his cane, giving me my first death. You get up to five deaths before you experience 'true death' and face judgement from The Twins (the gods of Sir Brante's world).

TLASOSB is very well written and paced, with a compelling branching storyline and many complex characters. It comes to life in the pages of Brante's journal, complete with nice illustrations and character portraits. Brante's journal contains a map and pages that show your stats and relationship with the characters you've met so far.

Also, Sir Brante's voice actor sounds like a dude straight out of Baltimore.

Game 16 of 2023 - Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

Developer: Sundae Month
Publisher: Sundae Month
Platform: PC
Genre: Adventure (Anti-Adventure)

Difficulty: Easy
Hours: ~7

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 7.5/10

This game is so delightfully weird.

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor bills itself as an "anti-adventure" game, and it's not messing around. You mostly spend your days incinerating as much trash as you can before your incinerator runs out of batteries and finding the cheapest and safest (and sometimes not so safe) food you can sustain yourself on.

You also get cursed by some asshole skull that just follows you around and yells at you.

This dude is such a dick.

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is rendered in an old-school combination of pixel art and 3D, think the early Doom games or Daggerfall. The world is filled with all sorts of creative little details that give the feeling of depth; items have interested descriptions, the spaceport is filled with a variety of weird little guys, and spaceships land and take off.

It's kind of a shame you don't have the luxury of taking it all in, as you've got trash to burn. I guess that's kind of the point, though. You're barely scraping by in a dead end job, and then you get this dumb curse. Your dream of leaving the spaceport just got that much more difficult.

The game often feels like work, since you have a bunch of busy work to do in addition to your normal job. You need to find the fetishes of all nine goddesses (Sprense took FOREVER), save up enough money to buy some blob his weird porn, and run away from this creepy specter in a sewer of green goo.

Actually kind of terrifying.

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor feels like a labor of love from a small team, and while it overstays its' welcome by a couple hours, I feel like it made it's point. Great buy.

Game 15 of 2023 - Dave the Diver

 Dave the Diver

Developer: Mintrocket
Publisher: Mintrocket
Platform: PC
Genre: RPG, Sim, Casual

Difficulty: Easy, mostly
Hours: ~22

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 9/10

Picture this:

You're exploring the glacial depths of the Blue Hole where no man has gone, when you come across an ancient geothermal vent. 

That's when you see Dunkleosteus!

This ancient, armored fish lived during the Devonian period, thought to be extinct for like 300 million years, but here it is, right in front of you!

What do you do?

I'll tell you what you do; you bring your trusty rifle to bear, shoot the shit out of this living fossil, and make sushi from the corpse.

Bancho makes goddamn incredible sushi from anything you put in front of him.

Dave the Diver is awesome. It's a mostly lighthearted adventure where you dive into the depths of the Blue Hole during the day, and help your bud Bancho run his sushi restaurant at night. Bancho relies on you to bring him fresh ingredients from the Blue Hole, including, Vampire Squid, sharks, octopus, and sea urchin. You can also find stuff like mayonnaise and sesame oil during your dives.

Bancho often hosts cooking contests and VIP customers. Gather rare ingredients to impress!

The environment is beautiful and the aquatic denizens are colorful and varied. Dave always has his trusty harpoon while exploring, so he can gather tasty looking fish and defend himself from the Blue Hole's more aggressive denizens. You also get a rifle early in the game, and while it's powerful, ammo is limited. Don't worry, you can find more while diving.

No killing this guy, I'm afraid.

There's a few other distractions, like farming, phone minigames, and raising fish, but you'll spend most of your time diving for cool stuff and serving customers at Bancho's. You run yourself ragged waiting on the patrons, but luckily you can hire help as Bancho's makes more money.

I considered giving Dave the Diver a perfect score, but I had to dock for a particularly frustrating boss fight: the Helicoprion. You control two characters during the battle, but the camera doesn't seem to want to focus on either of them and Helicoprion hits like a friggin' Mac truck. Argh.

Otherwise, it's great and highly recommended!