Best Of: Immersive Sim

As always, it’s indies carrying the torch for the more niche genres. Despite Arkane’s admirable entries, ImSims kind of suffer as AAA budgets continue to rise. Lucky there are some absolutely stellar indie games doing fantastic work in this space.

Ctrl Alt Ego

An incredibly open 1st person ImSim where you play as a disembodied “ego”, controlling robots and other devices in various ways to achieve your goals. 99% positive review score on Steam.

Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum

Early Access, has demo

Don’t let the graphics fool you, DDS is one of the deepest, “play your way” games I’ve ever seen, and it’s still adding more every month. Despite its Early Access status, the game can already be played all the way through, with extra side content / skills / items / play styles being added frequently. Easily a true GOTY that earns it’s 100% positive steam review rating.

Gloomwood

Early Access

Taking queues from the Thief lineage and building on all the best parts, New Blood’s highly anticipated stealth focused ImSim only has a small amount of content available in its current EA build, but what’s there is already a top entry for the genre.

Weird West

Has demo / free prologue

An ImSim ARPG with a top down camera from the makers of Dishonored and Prey sounds like an absolute dream. It had a few issues at launch that have since been ironed out, but what really makes this one shine is its more recent addition - mod support. Already, there’s a first person mod that changes the game completely.