wow lois! this is just like the time the Y2K crash killed 5-6 people!
careful sweetie! spoilers!
It's almost like a point and click adventure game. You explore a fake OS with a fake web browser with fake people and fake things on it, and yet i am immersed almost entirely. How is this possible? it's called making a decent game you numbskull
You're an (unpaid) moderator for an online service called "hypnospace". have you ever had that experience of finding something and then accidentally finding yourself 3 hours later with 20 wikipedia tabs open looking up what seed oils are made of? if so, this may be the game for you. there's an insane amount of rabbitholes to get lost in, and even though i technically beat it, i didn't see the half of it before i cheated to get 100% completion because there's no way im going to explore literally every single page legit, who do you think i am
oh yeah the whole "moderator" thing. You're supposed to go around enforcing the C.H.I.M.E rules: Copyright infringement, Harrassment and/or bullying, Illegal content, Malicious software, and Extralegal commerce. basically it boils down to "you go around hitting elementary school teacher's pages with a mallet because they drew mickey mouse and the corps didn't like it". oh yeah and then there's the other 4 things too.
time to talk about the operating system! it's very much a riff on old internet culture and old computers in general: there's tons of viruses, people have no idea how to act on the internet, wiggling your mouse makes the pages load faster, the works. the OS is a very convincing facsimile of an old computer, including updates that break everything! wait we're not in the story section yet
good gravy where do i even begin. the vibes here are imacculate. the music is all essentially midi files(they have a custom sequencer you can use to make your own songs! how crazy is that?!) and the graphics in general have that "computers for the regular joe dont need to be good" look. the sound design in this game is absolutely top tier, i would kill to be that good at making noises. when webpages load they sound like you're wobbling a sheet of metal and i wouldn't have it any other way.
did i mention the entire game fits into one color palette?? yeah they have images and videos from The Real Life and they're all compressed and paletted to high heaven and it Just Works. jay tholen if you're reading this please teach me how you did the sound design for this game. i'll have what he's having, please
the art in general is hilarious. you have the really awkward 3d renders from the late 90s, you have the actually cool stuff drawn by talented people, and it's all just barely cohesive enough to trick you into thinking that squisherz are real and that chowderman really fell off after the helicopter incident
congratulations! you're now an unpaid intern working for a dot com company, merchantsoft, in the late 1990s; where underpaid staff and ego-inflated ceos reign supreme. but you're stuck trying to make kids not bully each other on the crappy and kinda sketchy web browser. the game takes place during 3 times: november 6th, sometime around novemeber 20th, and january 1st, midnight. things predictably go awry on the last one, with A Bad Event Happening. the Bad Event is kinda hilarious until you quickly learn that people died due to it and a child was charged with their deaths Even Though he was innocent(because you fixed the thing that everyone blamed him for right before the Bad Event Happened). rest in peace zane you were taken from my save too soon because i had no idea that my actions had consequences
boom! it's now the modern day and it turns out that your headband was a very convenient backup server because merchantsoft was skeezy and had to cheap out on serverhosting software for some reason. here you get to go back through all 3 times as they were archived and find stuff. im not gonna spoil what happens though, you need to experience that for yourself
very good game. you couldve told me that i would've gotten a page builder and a music synth for free with my purchase and i would've bought it day one
you should play it, it's a very good game. its certainly not for everyone, but if you're gen z and have manufactured nostalgia for a time you didn't exist, this is a great game for you. also you get a free operating system to play with and what's not to like about filling it full of every virus the game has to offer