Despite them being god’s own genre by any objective metric, barely anyone makes immersive sims these days. That is, aside from Raphael Colantonio—the imsim Hiroo Onoda—and the half of Arkane that Microsoft didn’t kill. Even then, the latter is making a game with Blade brand on it rather than something based in the original worlds it’s known for. It just seems like people don’t want games that offer the wide flexibility of approach and player creativity (nor, admittedly, the often attendant jank) that comes with them.
So it seems unlikely we’re gonna get a big-budget immersive sim thing to write home about any time soon. But who needs them? The Steam Autumn Sale is currently underway and, by my counting, you can catch up on the greatest examples of the genre (and some of the greatest games ever made) for a pittance. I’ll start off with the obvious stuff, but I’ll tuck some games down below you might not have heard of, even if you’re an imsim stalwart.
You can pick up both Deus Ex and its unfairly maligned sequel, Invisible War, for under $1 each right now. You can even pick up every game in the series, including the actually very good Eidos Montreal prequels (and the truly terrible The Fall) for a mere $9.55 (£8), if you want to bag the lot.
People talk about older games being hard to go back to, but I replay Deus Ex 1 pretty regularly. You’ll want to install something like the community patch to make it play nice on modern machines, but you’ll still find that it does some things better than any game before or since. Plus, the politics are buckwild, and that’s just fun.
Also, you should play System Shock. All of them, I mean. That means the Nightdive remake of the first game—good enough to replace System Shock 2 on our top 100 despite my own protestations—which you can pick up for a trifling $16 (£14) right now. It also means the originals, which are still excellent. System Shock 1 and System Shock 2 are $2 (£1.39) each right now, and they’re both bangers.
Okay, you can probably skip 1 if you’re gonna pick up the remake (though I still think it’s a really interesting historical artefact in that context), but 2 is still my favourite ‘Shock’ game out there, BioShocks included. It’s got a great, creepy story, an interesting character build system, and the MedSci music rips. It’s another one you’ll want to check the PCGamingWiki page for before you launch it, though.
It is worth noting that Nightdive has a System Shock 2 Enhanced Edition—a touch-up, not a full remake—in the oven. You might want to wait for that if you’re not raring to get your Shock on right away.
Anyway, here’s the bit where I tell you to play Prey. You should play Prey. It’s $3 (£2.50) and it’s Arkane’s best game as far as I’m concerned, presenting you with a big, unpleasant space station that’s been overrun by aliens and letting you have the run of it—you can almost certainly come up with some creative, systems-driven way to access any part that seems locked off, which will make you feel like a genius.
Its excellent, roguelike DLC Mooncrash is also on sale, but the best way to pick it up is probably as part of the Digital Deluxe collection, which contains both the base game and DLC for $8 (£7).
Then once you’ve bought that, you should also buy Dishonored ($2.50 / £2), Dishonored 2 ($3 / £2.50), and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider ($6 / £5). They have all the systemic creativity of Prey but are level-based fantasy rather than open sci-fi. If you only grab one of them, it should probably be 2, which our Fraser Brown called “freakishly flexible, devilishly smart, and god damn is it a looker, with a bold art direction that’s refusing to age” in our top 100.
If you bought every single one of those classics, my maths says it’d bring you to $52.05 total, which means you get some of the greatest games ever made for less than the cost of a single new release. Which isn’t too bad, if you ask me. Which you did, since you’re here.
Thing is, of course, if you’re an immersive sim sicko you’ve probably played all of those already, so let me chuck in a few curveballs to tempt you during Black Friday season. For instance, you can pick up Hexcraft: Harlequin Fair, an aimless, rambling lo-fi thing set in a demon-haunted Toronto that I quite enjoyed when I wrote about it last weekend, for $8.50 (£6.68) right now.
You can also pick up Brigand: Oaxaca, a slightly baffling, almost obnoxiously unattractive game that I’ve fallen a bit in love with this week for $5.60 (£4.68). It’s a game whose entire reason to be is letting you do whatever you want: befriending, destroying, or ignoring factions, building your character to be a gunslinger or businessman or voodoo priest, and being incredibly difficult. In general, a bit like an imsim Kenshi.
Finally, you can check out Ctrl Alt Ego for $11 (£8.80) right now. Confession: I haven’t tried this one myself, but Dominic Tarason picked it out as a hidden gem of the Steam Winter Sale a year or two back, calling it “One of the most interesting immersive sims I’ve played, a bit like Prey (2017) spliced with ‘80s puzzler Paradroid. Playing as a disembodied and deathless mind in a very British retro future, you can freely hop between robot bodies and anything else mechanical in the area, opening up some mind-bendingly creative solutions to problems and giving it huge replay value.” Sounds good to me.