Don’t worry, you’re not going to get charged by the minute this time.
Remember the excitement of logging into a BBS? What if you’d found something more than just files and chatter and naked pictures of assorted Star Trek actresses? To explain Digital: A Love Story would be giving away too much, so let’s just say that it’s a great nostalgic trip with a bit of future-gazing thrown in for free.
Played out entirely on 1988 style bulletin boards, it starts when you respond to an e-mail from a lonely sounding girl called Emilia. The relationship plays out as a hacker’s romance, as you jump between BBS systems to uncover a conspiracy, mostly interacting by firing off e-mails to the characters. You never get to see what you’ve said, only the responses – adding an unusual but effective disconnect to the conversations. It’s not a long game, an hour or so of action at most, but it’s a testament to the writing that you quickly get sucked into what is basically just typing in a lot of phone numbers. The authentic music and sound effects definitely help, especially in full-screen mode.
Ah, the sweet sound of dialling modems… Nostalgic as any music…
Download Digital here. It’s a great way to spend an evening.
(One quick possibly-useful tip: To a computer, the number after 9 is 0. I say no more.)
