Steam’s got a really cool sale going on right now featuring a weird yet burgeoning genre: games that disguise themselves as bespoke interfaces or fake OSes. The sale is officially titled “InterfaceX26” and dang, this is really making me realize how many games there are now that are doing this conceit really, really well.
If you’re still not sure what this means, take 2019’s Hypnospace Outlaw as an example. It’s very clearly not a real internet browser, but the whole game is designed to look like a retro surf through the weirdest parts of the Web. It’s 75 percent off right now, only $4.99, and extremely excellent:
Or, for a more recent recommendation, there’s Blippo+, which looks like a TV interface complete with a built-in TV Guide. I loved playing this one on the Playdate last year, where it feels right at home as if I’m receiving signals from an alien planet, but Steam is a perfectly good way to play too while it’s 35 percent off…or you can bundle it with Hypnospace Outlaw right now and get both for $13.26, 58 percent off total.
There are loads of different permutations of this idea, from games that use phone OSes to simulate text messaging to games disguising themselves as other games. There are classics like Simulacra, a mystery game that takes on the form of a woman’s lost phone, which is a whopping $0.99 right now. There are plenty of horror games such as No Players Online, which simulates an abandoned MMORPG and is $11.99 right now, and Pony Island, which is $4.99 and is definitely just a normal game about arcade ponies. Sam Barlow’s interface games are all on sale too: Telling Lies, Immortality, and Her Story are all award-winning and marked down significantly.
There are also a number of demos and promotions for upcoming games. One that I was a bit confused about was Please, Watch the Artwork. A spookier follow-up to 2022’s Please, Touch the Artwork, this time you take the role of a night watchman at an art museum and must look at different pieces of art to determine what’s…off…about all these famous paintings. There doesn’t seem to be a free demo available for this one despite it being promoted on the main page, but you can Wishlist it, and there are a number of other free demos for games that I will probably be trying out like PhotoLoop (a game about looking through photos on a very old PC) and Miss Paint (a platformer that uses MS Paint-like tools).
You can check out the whole thing right here. Over 150 developers are featured in some way, the sale lasts for a week, and there’s even a video showcase of new games you can watch if this genre thrills you.
