HYPEGEEK VOL. 001: Blueprints, Biohazards, and Games That Hate You
Welcome to the first-ever Hypegeek newsletter, a monthly drop of gaming culture!
This month, we’re pulling together the blueprints, relics, heartbreaks, headlines, and survival stories that actually matter.
The PlayStation breakup that flipped the console war
A solo-dev beatdown from Bandung that stole the show at Summer Game Fest
Fan UX redesigns that go harder than official updates
Resident Evil promo kits lost to time
And a cursed indie game that doesn’t want you to win - it wants you to break
Thanks for being here at the start.
Now let’s get into it - here’s what made the cut.
📖 Gaming Facts, Cultural Moments & History
PlayStation: The Console With a Criminal Record - by Drawn Distant
Before the PlayStation became a household name, it was just a ghosted side project. Our good homie Drawn Distant breaks down the corporate betrayal that turned Sony from Nintendo’s plus-one into a console war supervillain.
👉 Read the full feature here.
📰 Video Game News
Raw Aura>AAA Polish
An army of one dev from Bandung taught himself Unreal via YouTube - and then dropped Acts of Blood, a beat-’em-up that hit Summer Game Fest recently like a roundhouse to the face. Think Sleeping Dogs meets Manhunt in a neon alleyway.
More carnage and the full interview here.
🎮 Video Game Art
UI/UX Ain’t What It Used to Be
Some folks mod textures. Some love that speedrunning angle to recreate weird glitches. And then…some go ahead and redesign the whole damn UI - and they’re kinda going off.
In the past few years, we’ve seen Halo Infinite menus rebuilt like a sleek new machine, Starfield’s awkward loadouts tightened up into what looks like a more efficient EVE online grid, and Hogwarts Legacy’s spell menu swapped up to actually be usable.
UX might be the most underrated aspect of modern gaming.
When I think about older games that I want updates for, it’s usually about gameplay, storytelling, replayability - but not UX. Almost feels like an afterthought sometimes. Great UX definitely ages like fine wine (looking at you Red Dead Redemption radial weapon dial)
Nowadays, we aren’t just consuming UX - we’re remixing, reimagining, and generally tweaking it to be more efficient.
And some of those best upgrades are already sitting on ArtStation + Behance.
🛍 Video Game Merch
Biohazard in a Box: RE5’s Wildest Press Drop
Back in 2009, when Resident Evil 5 released, it came with a wild looking replica Tricell biohazard detection kit. It was super hard to get, only for journalists and insiders at the time.
It came with latex gloves, a surgical mask, replica syringe, instructions on how to “suppress infection”, and even CD’s disguised as diagnostic discs.
As far as I can tell, there was never a public sale, no listing to purchase it - the only images that exist in official collections come from the press when invited to events, Capcom randomly featuring it in a promotion one whole year later after the release, and of course folks trying to sell this collector level grail on eBay.
I miss the days of insane press kit gear - this one is a perfect “weird artifact” category candidate and to me, really represents peak late 00s gaming merch.
🌱 Indie Games
No tutorials. Just consequences.
Indie horror isn’t new. RPG-styled horror isn’t new either.
But the way Fear & Hunger approaches survival? That’s pure insanity. Most games hand you systems and mechanics to move forward - some kind of instruction manual built into the design.
Fear & Hunger laughs at that. Here, survival isn't just hard - it feels like the game actively wants you deleted. Helpful items are nonexistent. Health is fragile. Sanity bleeds away in real time. And if your limbs get hacked off mid-fight? That's permanent. No healing spells. No rewinds. Just you, limping through to the end credits.
Making it through any single encounter with most of your squad intact feels like survival euphoria - that sick little dopamine hit you only get when you survive a game that’s trying to unmake you.
Every loss feels personal. Every win feels stolen. Every story it spits back at you feels cursed.
You really don’t ever beat Fear & Hunger. You just outlast the worst parts of yourself.
That’s Vol.001.
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See you next month.
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