The latest ugly-cool immersive sim is scratching my itch for new Deus Ex
Banana Hardsoft’s Parkside: Decayed Soul Manipulation arrives July 31st as the latest entry in the emerging trend of deliberately aesthetically simple immersive simulations. The game, playable via demo now, casts players as Alexander, a hacker navigating a rundown world with mechanics inspired by System Shock and Deus Ex—offering a spiritual successor to the latter franchise that remains dormant.
The game embodies a deliberate design philosophy: mechanics are paramount, visual beauty is secondary. Rather than pursuing graphical fidelity, Parkside adopts a PlayStation 1–era aesthetic, presenting deliberately crude visuals as a statement prioritizing gameplay systems and player agency over technical polish. This reflects a broader movement among indie developers rejecting the visual arms race in favor of focused, mechanical depth.
A distinguishing feature is the inclusion of driving mechanics—described as unusually momentous within the immersive sim formula. This expands environmental interaction and player agency in approaching the game world and its challenges. The game’s design philosophy appeals particularly to players seeking complex systems and meaningful choices rather than cutting-edge graphics, addressing a gap left by the absence of new mainline Deus Ex titles.