Digital: A Love Story

Christine Love - 2010 - PC

Aaaaand we're back after a nice two month break. Strange to think that this is pretty much the first extended break I've taken from this since starting writing games reviews and criticism since like 2013. This week I want to talk about Christine Love's Digital: A Love Story. Yes, it's another visual novel. I know I've posted several of these recently, but if you're not into visual novels, check back soon for more reviews of "real games". But you should know that there will be a review up in the next few months for Zero Time Dilemma which is another visual novel and a game that I am highly anticipating since it will finally resolve the cliffhanger ending of Virtue's Last Reward. Anyway, back to being on topic...

Digital: A Love Story is developer/writer Christine Love's first successful game. It started picking up traction and gaining attention after being released on the internet for free in 2010. Digital is a mystery/romance story set in the late 80s where you, the player character, purchase a PC and connect it to the internet for the first time. The game can kind of be considered a desktop simulator as the entirety of the story is communicated to you by logging in to early era electronic bulletin board systems and reading message posts. The game clearly has a nostalgia for this early era of the internet and wants you to feel that nostalgia too as it plays the entirety of the old dial-up modem sound while you wait for your computer to connect to the message board. It even has you type out the entire phone number for your modem and makes you keep track of your logins and names of different bulletin boards. 

One of the most interesting creative choices Digital makes is that you only see the messages and replies of other people, but never what your character types. It's a neat way of engaging the player and your creativity when you read a response message and then try to infer what your character must have typed. In order to keep up with the story, you also need to pay close attention to the names of the people you're chatting with in various message board forums and any information they give you as you may need this to progress further in the game. Thankfully, the game keeps an archive of all messages you received so you can go back and re-read any important information if you find yourself stuck. And you WILL find yourself stuff in this game, which I feel was one of my biggest frustrations with Digital. It's an interesting story and I felt the pacing kept being slowed by repeated nostalgia trips which eventually become annoyances when listening to the modem connecting sound effect and typing out usernames and passwords to various forums over and over. The peak of my annoyance with this weird pacing came when I downloaded a virus in the game that obscured the text on my screen and made it nearly impossible to tell what I was doing. I couldn't really tell what the point of this part of the game was, it really just seemed like Digital was getting in the way of itself

Summary

Digital is a quirky visual novel with a lot of nostalgia for the late 80s. It has some self imposed pacing issues in an otherwise interesting and and novel form of story presentation. I'm not sure if this game really has a good soundtrack, but "Paper Dolls" is one of the most catchy tunes you will hear in a video game. I'm not even sure where this plays in game. Anyway, your mileage with Digital will likely depend on whether you find this game's constant throwbacks to the technology of the late 80s charming or tedious. I think I fall into the latter camp, but this is still worth a look if visual novels are your thing

You can download Digital: A Love Story for free here