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pyroary
Apr 29, 2014

Official Website --- Steam page --- GoG page

What is Unrest?
Unrest is a 2D adventure RPG focused on story and choices. Play as five ordinary people who are struggling to get by in the in the famine-stricken city-state of Bhimra.
Basically, imagine Planescape Torment, but with less combat, more agency, and a hell of a lot more reactivity to your choices, set in ancient, fantasy India.

Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqzRExDkRAA



Reviews
IndieGames.com --- Edge --- Softpedia --- Big List here

Full disclosure
I'm the programmer of this game. I've been lurking here since forever, and thought it would be interesting to see if anyone was playing the game. I hope that's not a problem, would love to hear what you think of the game.

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Karpaw
Oct 29, 2011

by Cyrano4747
It's certainly novel but the narrative is all over the place. First you're a princess for all of two conversations. Then you're suddenly a giant snake meeting with her family. Then you're a farm girl removed from all that. Does the player perspective shift this rapidly and jarringly through the whole game?

Old Thrashbarg
Dec 18, 2003
I bought this after playing and enjoying the demo. I've just started, and I'm past the first two sections and on to the village girl section.

I do have two concerns so far:
* It's not clear what sorts of dialogue options get what responses. Characters seem to arbitrarily like or dislike me, and I can't really determine why. For reference, Alpha Protocol relies on giving the player "character dossiers" beforehand so there's some basis to make choices. I'm hoping that something like this emerges later on.
* I'm not sure that the game will react to my choices all that much. The Walking Dead became much less enjoyable for me once I realized how insignificant pretty much all of the decisions were. I'm hoping Unrest doesn't follow the same path!

That said, the game has lots of promise too. I particularly like the writing and the realistic tone. Looking forward to digging deeper.

pyroary
Apr 29, 2014

Karpaw posted:

It's certainly novel but the narrative is all over the place. First you're a princess for all of two conversations. Then you're suddenly a giant snake meeting with her family. Then you're a farm girl removed from all that. Does the player perspective shift this rapidly and jarringly through the whole game?

What you described was pretty much the opening hour. After this, the chapters are a bit longer - though the perspective will change a few times after this too.

pyroary
Apr 29, 2014

Old Thrashbarg posted:

I bought this after playing and enjoying the demo. I've just started, and I'm past the first two sections and on to the village girl section.

I do have two concerns so far:
* It's not clear what sorts of dialogue options get what responses. Characters seem to arbitrarily like or dislike me, and I can't really determine why. For reference, Alpha Protocol relies on giving the player "character dossiers" beforehand so there's some basis to make choices. I'm hoping that something like this emerges later on.
* I'm not sure that the game will react to my choices all that much. The Walking Dead became much less enjoyable for me once I realized how insignificant pretty much all of the decisions were. I'm hoping Unrest doesn't follow the same path!

That said, the game has lots of promise too. I particularly like the writing and the realistic tone. Looking forward to digging deeper.

There are journal entries for most of the important characters in the game, which give you a brief summary of a character.
I will say that there are definitely more branches to the plot than TWD ;)

Looking forward to hearing more!

Old Thrashbarg
Dec 18, 2003
Finished a playthrough! Then reloaded a couple of chapters earlier and finished another one to see what changed. I might do one or two more. With some big caveats, I like the game a lot and it's very much worth playing.

Things I loved:
* The writing/dialogue. It's unrelentingly bleak, consistently intelligent, and packed with interesting moral ambiguity.
* The character development. Lots of Game of Thrones-style grey characters. Some black and white characters, too, that interact with the world in realistic, interesting ways.
* The setting. The Ancient Indian setting permeates everything and makes you consider a very different morality than is typical in Western (or even Japanese) games. More than any other game I've played, Unrest made me question some of my ingrained cultural assumptions. Like, for example, I now get why arranged marriage is a thing. If anyone's interested, the demo does a good job of showing this aspect off.

Things I hated:
* Big chunks of the game felt unfinished, unresolved, or underdeveloped. Seemingly momentous choices were never mentioned again (or barely mentioned). Major characters (like Tanya) almost completely disappeared from the narrative. Unrest is a very ambitious game, but in my opinion, it would have been better to focus on half of the number of characters with a lot more narrative development for each. Heck, a game completely focused on a single character could even work. Later, episodic games for each character could be made.
* The character opinion meters. As far as I can tell, they never had much impact on anything. If they did, the game didn't communicate that to me. This is another ambitious, potentially interesting feature that should have either been fleshed out or just dropped entirely.
* The interface was awkward. If I click on a person, my character should go up and talk to the person. I shouldn't have to walk up, then click again to talk. I also never figured out what the different chimes meant when talking to people.

Things I was mixed on:
* The conversations were generally great, but sometimes it felt like every option was always "wrong". Each character would point out why your logic was flawed and dumb. This was fine 90% of the time, but occasionally, the player should have been able to do the "right thing" and genuinely solve a problem. This would have made for a less frustrating and more realistic experience.
* The graphics. They looked kind of unique at first, then became ugly to me, then grew on me again by the end. I don't know if there's a solution here, just wanted to relay my experience.
* I thought I remember reading the game was going to be more "RPG" (with combat, resource management, etc.) and less visual novel/adventure game. This isn't a complaint, exactly, but I do wonder how interesting the game could have been with more non-conversation gameplay meat. Like, for example, Asha's struggle to get food would have been potentially more impactful if there were more game mechanics around survival, and if she could have died.

My overall verdict? A truly unique core experience that doesn't yet feel fully fleshed-out. There's an amazing kernel here that needs to be developed further (incidentally, Age of Decadence does a lot of similar stuff and seems much better-developed at the moment). As it is, I still recommend the game, but not until it gets a significant Steam sale. At $5 or less, buy it. Above that, play the demo first and see if it resonates with you.

pyroary
Apr 29, 2014
Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. I am looking into ways to improve the ending sequence (and to be honest, a lot of the abruptness was down to me not having enough money to afford adding more stuff). That isn't an excuse though, so I hope this game does well enough to let me do that soon.

Old Thrashbarg
Dec 18, 2003
No problem, hope it helps. And good luck with the sales...I'd definitely like to see more.

DNA Cowboys
Feb 22, 2012

BOYS I KNOW

Old Thrashbarg posted:

My overall verdict? A truly unique core experience that doesn't yet feel fully fleshed-out. There's an amazing kernel here that needs to be developed further (incidentally, Age of Decadence does a lot of similar stuff and seems much better-developed at the moment). As it is, I still recommend the game, but not until it gets a significant Steam sale. At $5 or less, buy it. Above that, play the demo first and see if it resonates with you.

I agree. I was looking forward to having my traits influence the story in a lot of ways. As it was, they only came up once or twice in three plays. The writing is top-notch, but I wanted to dig into it more and see how I could shape it.

Karpaw
Oct 29, 2011

by Cyrano4747

pyroary posted:

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback. I am looking into ways to improve the ending sequence (and to be honest, a lot of the abruptness was down to me not having enough money to afford adding more stuff). That isn't an excuse though, so I hope this game does well enough to let me do that soon.

Shame about the stretch goals you didn't reach. You'd think that with all the griping people do about stale settings/protagonists and games that emphasize combat over other types of interaction, a project like this would get more support.

Sorry to say that apart from Asha's and Tanya's storylines, the game didn't really draw me in. The brief character segments didn't leave much time to form attachments. For example, it's hard to empathize with Bhagwan looking out for his family when you never get to meet them. Still, I don't regret backing the KS and hope you'll have the opportunity to do more with this game and others.

big duck equals goose
Nov 7, 2006

by XyloJW
India, huh? Do I get the rape the poo poo out of NPCS?

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unwantedplatypus
Sep 6, 2012

big duck equals goose posted:

India, huh? Do I get the rape the poo poo out of NPCS?

and then you can make an E/N thread about it when they don't contact you again.

unwantedplatypus fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jul 28, 2014

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