A small-scale scifi story about coding errors and dialing numbers you shouldn't know about. I revisited this after being disappointed with Analogue: A Hate Story, and it's remarkable how similar and how much more successful Digital is despite (and perhaps because of) being a more straightforward project.

Out of all Christine Love's games I've played, Digital is the most sincere, concerned less with sweeping political allegories than with melancholic nostalgia and very deliberate interactions. Typing phone numbers and running down a list of free long distance codes is the most intense Digital ever gets, but wrapping these inputs in a blunt lo-fi interface causes them to wrap back around to feeling like each number is a bold step into the unknown.

I'm still very down on Christine Love's prose, but what's here benefits from fully obfuscating player responses (you see the reply to your reply but not what prompts it, providing some much needed ambiguity). The love story is by far the weakest part, due mostly to a lack of time to develop the romantic interest and the second half crashing into a pretty boring computer virus drama. It was surprising just how little the actual BBS interactions matter compared to the tactile experience of using them. It's a lonely game in that respect, but I'm happy to drift alone between boards when dialing in feels this good.