Videoverse review: hold onto your heartstrings
As people of a certain age will know, the current, slow-moving death of Twitter is nothing we haven't seen before. Most of us who were knocking around the internet in the early 00s will have at least one online gravestone in the closet somewhere, whether it's a long abandoned LiveJournal or MySpace page, or an old internet forum that sadly doesn't exist anymore (RPS in peace). But for the citizens of Videoverse, an online community that's part and parcel of the soon to be defunct 1-bit video games console the Kinmoku Shark, this sense of an ending is something that many of them aren't equipped to deal with, least of all teenager Emmett, who's just discovered the fan page for his favourite video game, Feudal Fantasy.
As he deals with the prospect of having to bid farewell to friends old and new, including the mysterious but talented fan artist Vivi, Videoverse taps into a potent and nostalgic melancholy. It's a love letter to the early internet at its rose-tinted best, and to the lost, formative spaces that brought so many like-minded individuals together and gave them a sense of purpose. Yes, there are trolls spoiling everyone's fun, and yes, there's a hint of something more nefarious going on underneath Videoverse's source code. But another Hypnospace Outlaw this is not. Rather, this is a proto-internet tale that's all about the friendships we form online, and the bonds that carry us forward when real-life relationships just don't cut it anymore.