This game ended up being far, far more than I'd imagined it would be. I thought it would be a vaporwave retro-spoof made by people who maybe didn't really know what the 90s web was about.

Instead, it was both the worst and the best of AOL-era web executed perfectly. I'm always on the lookout for video games as works of art, but rarely do the ones that try to be art end up being worth much. This, on the other hand, is incredibly artistic. I don't know if they were trying to be artsy, but the way they capture the joys of re-theming your OS, the vain community peevishness, the scams, the trolls... Just a masterpiece.

The music is incredible. The story made me want to find everything. I'm almost there. I did complete the game, and I'm only missing 4 out of the hundreds of pages, but I will find them without looking anything up.

Anyway, if you want to relive the 90s Web days, especially the kitsch of Windows 95/98 and AOL, but more importantly the people and communities that often had no idea why they were there, but collided into each other inf joyous and awkward ways. I cared enough about the characters that I cried real tears at one point. It moved me long after stopping playing. These devs have that rare ability to make fun of the inconsistencies, pretensions, illusions, and sometimes downright rotten motives and actions we all have, and yet without being cynical and hopeless.

I can't believe how they are able to create convincing fictional visual and musical artists in the game of various abilities. There's the laughable attempts at computer graphics and 3-D. There's the almost ear-injuring attempts by amateurs. There's plenty of music that would have been considered pretty good back then. There's even music that's high quality and great to listen to without a hint of irony. And of course lots and lots of parody of the style of the 90s.

I wish I had paid full price for this game and bought it when it came out instead of waiting until it went on sale. I made up for it some by buying a Gumshoe Gooper plushie (even though I don't exactly like Gumshoe Gooper. I'll give it to one of my kids).

I rate it:
- Music: 10/10
- Humor: 10/10
- UI: 10/10 (it is painful at times, but true to the experience of 90s computing--if you didn't live through it yourself, yes, it really was this bad)
- Story: 10/10
- Difficulty: Pretty hard and frustrating at times, but then you hit on some tiny clue and finally things start to unlock in an incredibly rewarding way.
- Overall: 10/10

One of the most immersive, beautiful, hilarious adventure/mystery games I've ever played.

If there was a game that perfectly captures the vibe of what it was like on the internet in the 90s/00s this would be it. Was more focused on being immersed by the web pages than doing my job as an internet enforcer. 10/10 recommend

This game is good I wanna cry

This is less of a game and more of just a cool world building text with puzzle elements, the Hypnospace feels like such a real forum that would totally leave tons of people with heaps of nostalgia, I genuinely almost cried reading some of the post-game bits (not gonna spoil)

Highly recommend