"This is almost 5 years here of my life": Sequel to early internet sim Hypnospace Outlaw, one of the best adventure games of the decade, has been cancelled

The follow-up to Hypnospace Outlaw, one of the best point-and-clickers of the last 10 years, has been cancelled.

Creator Jay Tholen today announced that his early internet sim Dreamsettler, set in the same funky world as Hypnospace Outlaw and spin-off FPS Slayers X, had been cancelled. "It's not happening." Tholen makes it clear that publisher No More Robots hadn't been the ones to pull the plug - instead, the developers made the decision themselves.

Tholen explains that he's never made games based on design documents. "I have to improvise, like in Hypnospace, like I'm pretending to be a character and making stuff... Things bloom from other things and then it becomes a big, holistic thing at the end... It just comes like a tree growing."

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"We just way over scoped," he adds. "Things were so complicated and so fancy... it's just incredible. It's like, you could use this as an operating system."

"I'm so sorry to everyone who's waiting for this game and expecting a big, great game. This is almost five years here of my life. This was the big one I had so many hopes [for]... Maybe I've been burnt out this whole time, I don't know."

For now, Tholen and the team are considering how to share material that they worked on, including releasing its soundtrack in some form. Tholen also says he'll probably write a blog post about it all at some point, and the team even "wanted to make a little tour game that let you see what we made, but... we just needed to stop this. Just because of money and practical concerns. Hopefully, we can do something like that and release some of it."

Hypnospace Outlaw was the brilliant alt-universe internet sim replicating what it felt like to surf around forums and blogs in the 1990s, with the player putting on the hat of an enforcer who investigates very serious online crimes, like stamping down on those who dare to use company mascots without permission. Dreamsettler was set to be a follow-up riffing on the internet of the early 2000s. You can see what it looked like on Steam.

In the meantime, here's some upcoming indie games of 2025 and beyond.