Steam's Autumn Sale offers the chance to catch up on some of the best immersive games ever made. You can do this for less than the cost of a new game.

Few people are making immersive sims anymore, despite the fact that they are a god-given genre. It's only Raphael Colantonio, the imsim Hiroo onoda, and the half of Arkane Microsoft didn't kill. Even then, Microsoft is still making a Blade-branded game rather than a game based on the original worlds. It seems that people don't like games that allow for a wide range of approaches and player creativity, nor the jank that is often associated with them.

It seems unlikely that we'll be able to get a big budget immersive sim in the near future. But who needs them anyway? Steam's Autumn Sale is on and you can get some of the best games of all time (and the best examples of this genre) for a small price. I'll start with the obvious, but I will also include some games you may not have heard of even if you are an imsim fanatic.

Deus Ex, and its unfairly malignedsequel Invisible War are both available for less than $1 each. If you want the whole series, you can get all the games, including the very good Eidos Montreal Prequels and the truly awful The Fall, for just $9.55 on PS8.

Deus Ex 1 is a game I play quite often. Install the community patch if you want it to work on modern machines. But it still does many things better than anything else. The politics are also buckwild and that is just fun.

You should also play System Shock. All of them. It's the Nightdive remake, which was good enough to replace System Shock 2 in our top 100 despite me protesting. You can get it for just $16 (PS14). It includes the originals which are still great. System Shock 1 & System Shock 2 both cost $2 (PS1.39) and are great games.

You can probably ignore 1 if you plan to buy the remake, but 2 is my favourite 'Shocks' game, BioShocks and all. It has a great story, an intriguing character building system, and the MedSci soundtrack is a ripper. You'll also want to check out the PCGamingWiki before you start it.

Nightdive is currently cooking up a System Shock 2 enhanced edition, which is a touch-up and not a complete remake. If you don't want to play Shock right away, you might want to wait until Nightdive releases the System Shock 2 Enhanced Edition. This is a touch-up and not a full remake.

Here's where I tell you to Play Prey. You should play Prey. It's only $3 (PS2.50), and I think it's Arkane’s best game. You're given a large, unwelcoming space station that has been overrun by aliens, and you're allowed to explore it.

The excellent roguelike Mooncrash DLC is also on sale. However, the best way to get it is as part of the Digital Deluxe Collection, which includes both the base game AND DLC for only $8 (PS7).

After you've purchased that, you should buy Dishonored (2.50$ / PS2) and Dishonored 2.50 ($3 / ps2.50) as well as Dishonored Death of the Outsider (6$ / ps5). They have the same systemic creativity as Prey, but they are more level-based fantasy than open sci-fi. If you can only choose one, it would be 2 which Fraser Brown described as "freakishly versatile, devilishly clever, and goddamn is it a beautiful game, with a bold, art direction that refuses to age".

My maths tells me that if you bought all of these classics, you'd end up with $52.05 in total. This means you can get some of greatest games ever created for less than a single new release. If you ask me, that's not too bad. You did, because you're here.

You've probably already played them all if you are an immersive sim addict. So let me throw in a few curveballs for Black Friday to tempt you. You can get Hexcraft: Harlequin Fair for $8.50, a rambling, aimless lo-fi game set in a demon haunted Toronto, which I enjoyed when I reviewed it last weekend.

For $5.60 (PS4.68), you can also get Brigand: Oaxaca. This game is a little baffling and almost obnoxiously ugly, but I've fallen in love with it this week. It's a difficult game that lets you do anything you want. You can befriend, destroy, or ignore factions. You can build your character into a gunslinger, businessman, or voodoo Priest. In general, it's a little like an imsim Kenshi.

Ctrl Alt Ego is available for just $11 (PS8.80). I confess that I haven't played this game myself. However, Dominic Tarason praised it as "one of the most immersive sims" he'd ever played. It's a bit like Prey 2017 spliced together with '80s Puzzler Paradroid. You play as a disembodied, deathless mind in an incredibly retro-British future. You can freely jump between robot bodies, and anything else mechanical, which allows for some mind-bendingly inventive solutions to problems. It sounds good to me.