03 Aug 2025
Taking a look at Deckerspace Archive by SysL, a jam-sized crawl around an old alternate internet made entirely in Decker.
If you’ve got fond memories of HyperCard then Decker will feel familiar. It’s a modern spiritual successor to the Macintosh program builder that allows for more functionality than its 1-bit predecessor. You can stick with the 1-bit aesthetics and use tasteful dithering to get those valuable shades of gray, or choose to use full-color imagery. There’s even a whole scripting language included so you can do fun little tools like a paint canvas or audio editor.
SysL takes the premise of a game like Hypnospace Outlaw where you’re exploring an alternate past internet, and reimplements it as if Macintosh had won the home computer wars. The charm of Decker with its lower-fidelity aesthetics pairs well with the alternate time period on display.
Deckerspace Archive keeps a smaller jam-focused scope compared to its peer, with the main goal being to locate the names of nine people within the archive on the WHO page. It won’t validate every name you find right away, instead it provides a more vague “Validate every 3 names” system so you’re never sure which of the three names you’re checking are correct. You’ll need to be confident in your sleuthing until you have three unconfirmed names to check as well.
Deckerspace Archive also provides a Bookmarks page, with a few default bookmarks helpfully included. These will go to various Deckerspace hub pages that are in various states of disarray. Any links inside them that aren’t broken pages give a few hints or hide clues to the names, but also extra clues on what to search.
Not all of the pages in Deckerspace are public-facing on the hubs, and searching by tags will let you find pages that are related to the people you need to find that are also private-facing. I was able to find three names before needing to resort to searching by related terms, so learn how to use that search well.
The small fictional universe detailed through Deckerspace is uniquely weird, and I don’t want to spoil too much before people play it. There’s a fun playing-it-straight humor all throughout that helps sell this being a gathering place. The scope was for a jam, but I selfishly wish it was larger because I could see way more of the BROKEN links becoming fun extras.
SysL also includes a link to their itch.io page in-game which is integrated very well. Find it and check out their other games!
