I have no idea what you do in Hypnos, but its cosmic horror, megastructure world looks so pretty I'm not bothered

A position I take that is quite hard to explain in any way that is actually helpful is that for a game to catch someone’s attention it must have aesthetic sensibilities that no other game has. To truly get someone’s attention anyway, enough marketing budget can undo that, but for an indie game, a vibe (mysterious, unquantifiable) that I haven’t felt before will pull me in quicker than listing off genre conventions it follows. This is how Hypnos, a first-person adventure and exploration game “set in a lovecraftian megastructure fever dream,” got me to pay attention.

I cannot really tell you what Hypnos is about, the description for it is a touch too vague. You’re wandering around the “Nameless City at the edge of Dreams,” you gotta follow a trailer to a Holy Mountain embrace your destiny, yada, yada, yada, none of this tells me even what I’m doing mechanically. However! The world on display in its reveal trailer is enough to convince me. Jaggedy, mountainous dead landscapes, possible places of worship still active, but for what.

There’s a quality that feels like it belongs both in the past, and in the future. At one point a gothic streetlamp glows upon two pigs and a piglet just… hanging out. It feels like it draws upon the classics like Dark Souls and Ico, and the character art over on the Steam page tickles me just so too. There are apparently different endings to the game, different dialogue paths to go down and choices to make in its “semi-open world.” That use of semi has me curious too, as I like an open world that knows when to scale things down.

According to a press release the game is set in a world originally created for a TTRPG, so I wonder how that may come across too. A demo will also supposedly be coming in the next few weeks, so you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be checking that out whenever it arrives. In the meantime, you can wishlist it on Steam here.