Desktop Explorer

+ essentially Hypnospace Outlaw LiteTM, in a good way; Hypnospace is a beautiful game that unfortunately can be somewhat overly-sprawling for a lot of players simply due to its scope across an early internet, where Desktop Explorer takes the concepts Hypnospace used and condenses them into a story centered around a single computer. in my personal onion, while it loses out a little bit on some of the worldbuilding that Hypnospace had, it makes for a story that's comfortably digestible while still being great

+ the DE devs, for the most part, understand exactly how difficult to make their puzzles. almost nothing in the game save for a few choice spots was too overly-obtuse, but neither are they too easy besides the very first few designed to teach you the basic rules. even act 1's puzzles require some thinking outside the box.

overall, it has a few little hiccups here and there, but nothing that really detracts from the overall good experience of the game. it's a nicely-packaged story that hits a lot of similar beats to Hypnospace Outlaw and other games depicting the early internet era, only running you up about 6-8 hours of gameplay in total, but it's worth every minute and every penny.

The soundtrack is on point with each area having a unique track that plays depending on the theme, which are already very inspired by point-and-click adventure games of the era.

Halibut's graphics are reminiscent from point-and-click games with their black and white images with a tint based on the atmosphere in your exploration.

The retro-inspired interface feels authentic, capturing the look and feel of older computers while remaining easy to navigate.