Return to the Early Days of the Internet 'Digital: A Love Story'

When I first played through Digital: A Love Story a few years ago, I was playing it purely to test the waters before diving into creator Christine Love's much-lauded Analogue: A Hate Story/ Naming conventions aside the two are connected more in theme and structure than in actual content, but what I was looking for at the time was a sign that what Love herself was doing with her visual novels was different than the (frankly) tired conventions that had all but driven me away from the genre. And on that front, Digital delivered.

These days the idea of imitating DOS and pre-Web 1.0 aesthetics isn't quite as novel as it was at the time, but Digital: A Love Story's near-reverence for the bygone age of the dial-up modem and the BBS still stands out. It offers a re-creation of that world so loving that, as my father observed me dialing into various boards using the numbers scattered like breadcrumbs across the other BBSes in the game, he told me with complete sincerity that he "better not see any extra charges on the phone bill". I assured him that it was just a game and had no way of accessing the phone line, almost but not quite managing to keep a straight face.

Digital isn't pure retro tech fetishism, though, and based on my own experience I can confidently say that a fondness for those old-fashioned BBSes is not a prerequisite for appreciating what it has to offer. It's fundamentally a story of romance and secrets, a social mystery to unlock through its many text-based boards and messages. Love's work has grown a lot in the intervening years (and grown up, given the more mature nature of her newly released game Ladykiller in a Bind) but Digital remains a game worthy of appreciation, a seminal example of the kind of intimate and people-driven stories that she's developed a reputation for telling.

You can download Digital: A Love Story free for Windows, Mac, and Linux on Love's website.