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Digiphile - Return of the immersive sim
After this Tildes post I was curious about the review scores, Steam Deck compatibility and ProtonDB ratings for the first Digiphile bundle and figured it's worth sharing. I've added two extra columns compared to the Humble Bundle posts:
- Early access because some of these games are "early access" releases.
- All Time Low sourced from isthereanydeal
Digiphile - Return of the Immersive Sim is now available with the following games, grouped by payment tier.
$9 Tier (aprox £6.85, €7.77)
| Steam Page | OpenCritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB | Early Access | All Time Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blood West | 81 | 89 / 89 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum | No | $9.37 |
| Ctrl Alt Ego | N/A | 93 / 93 | Win | ❓ Unknown | 🟨 Gold | No | $9.45 |
$13 Tier (aprox £9.89, €11.23)
Everything in the $9 tier and the following:
| Steam Page | OpenCritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB | Early Access | All Time Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shadows of Doubt | 68 | 67 / 82 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum | No | $9.24 |
| System Shock (2023) | 77 | 88 / 90 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🎖️ Platinum | No | $16.08 |
| Fallen Aces | N/A | 95 / 98 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🟨 Gold | ⏳ Yes | $10.83 |
$20 Tier (aprox £15.22, €17.27)
Everything in the $13 tier and the following:
| Steam Page | OpenCritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB | Early Access | All Time Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| System Shock 2 (Remaster) | 82 | 81 / 86 | Win | ✅ Verified | 🎖️ Platinum | No | $12.60 |
| Peripeteia | N/A | 72 / 88 | Win | 🟨 Playable | 🟨 Gold | ⏳ Yes | $20.80 |
$5 DLC add-on (aprox £3.80, €4.32)
They all sell this as a separate addon for an additional $5:
| Steam Page | OpenCritic | Steam Recent/All | Operating Systems | Steam Deck | ProtonDB | Early Access | All Time Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blood West: Dead Man’s Promise | N/A | 80 / 80 | Win | N/A | N/A | No | $5.58 |
Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play? Should we post other Digiphile bundles or is this a terrible selection compared to Humble Choice?
If this become a regular thing then it's probably worth me examining @talklittle's firefox extension to see if I can add support for the Digiphile pages as it takes a while to manually compile these things in Obsidian.
Thanks for putting this together! Appreciate the early access tags, I tend to avoid them.
System Shock is a classic, but I haven't actually heard of most of these. Blood West and CTRL ALT EGO look neat, might grab that $9 tier. Peripeteia also could be interesting, but also could be a bummer, and two tiers higher than the others. It is getting review bombed because one of the three devs is a bigot.
No clue what the exchange rate is, you're allowed to exchange up to 3 though. The current games on the exchange are:
Some real good grabs in there, though I'm not familiar with the non-Arcane games
Edit: someone said 10 credits per dollar of the tier. So System Shock (2023) would net you 130 credits for instance.
I'm a bit into Peripeteia so I can give a few impressions...
It's a very rough game. It's particularly buggy, and the combat is not great, mostly because the enemies lack in variety and have abysmal AI. Its writing is alright, at least I think : the dialogue has a brand of humour that speaks to me, but understanding what's going on in this universe seems to depend a lot on knowledge of Eastern European history and politics that I don't have, so it's hard to follow. This isn't a game the majority will enjoy.
I do enjoy it, though, for one reason in particular, which is ironically what people tend to point out as its main flaw: its map design, which is directly inspired by BLAME! and other sci-fi animanga adjacent to it. Every map is a giant atmospheric cityscape that feels almost megastructural ; immense brutalist structures in disrepair with scarce few citizens keeping some of the lights on. They're all absolutely frick-off massive and extremely empty. Like, extremely extremely empty. Think of whatever open-world that's ever struck you as empty and it's at least thrice as empty. You can walk in these places for ages sometimes without encountering a single enemy. There's entire areas of the maps that are as detailed as the places you meet NPCs for objectives if not more, and yet are completely empty ; no enemies, no NPCs, often not even an item. All this is a purposeful design choice.
A lot of negative reviews cite this as the game's main flaw, and why I understand that, it's actually the reason I bought it after playing the demo : there's a very unique feeling I get from walking and climbing and getting lost through these huge, barren, paradoxically beautiful places. A bit like walking through the district you've lived in your whole life at an hour where no one else is there and everything is silent. It's oddly soothing. The climbing system lets you go basically anywhere you want with enough dexterity, so with full freedom of movement and few enemies to stop you from going where you want, it feels liberating in a way. I've not felt this from any other game before. If it resonates with you at all, then maybe you'd enjoy Peripeteia, I think.
Although I feel the obligation to note : the game's lead dev is apparently a massive bigot
Thank you kindly for the extensive breakdown! Seems like something I want to enjoy but probably wouldn't, perhaps I'll see if my friend studied in the area would be interested.
The emptiness you describe reminds me of BABBDI, which is also coincidentally Eastern European. I haven't played it yet though I have played their other game, STRAFTAT, which is a real fun eurojank arena shooter. Highly recommend with some pals. Jacob Geller also covered BABBDI in his video about empty spaces. Both are free.
I had entirely forgotten the name, but BABBDI is an excellent comparison I was trying to remember as I wrote!
I think we'll have to see how often they launch bundles.
If they're spaced out and have consistently good quality games, then I'd say that posts like this are well worth it. However, if they start hitting the rate of, say, Fanatical or Humble Bundle's regular bundles, then I think putting them in Save Point would probably be best.
Also, as someone who knows how long it takes to hand-assemble those tables, kudos to you! Updating the extension might be the best path forward if you're planning to do those each time.