Unrest

+ Fantastic writing—some of the best and most nuanced I've seen in a game. + Unique, well-developed fantasy setting. - The graphics and UI aren't particularly good, although I didn't find them distracting. - The background music is bland and has far too short of a loop - Walking mechanics are awkward. - It's harder to click on people to talk to them than it should be. * I personally found the ending satisfying. Your mileage may vary. Unrest is a series of vignettes about life in the rundown, increasingly fractured city-state of Bhimra. There is an overarching plot that loosely ties everyone's lives together, but there is no central protagonist. In fact, in keeping with the game's excellent sense of moral nuance, I was often astonished by how sympathetic I grew to characters that were antagonists in each other's stories. With most of the characters you're only getting a brief glimpse into their lives before moving on, so how their personal stories end varies wildly depending on your choices. That grants Unrest significantly more narrative freedom than, say, a TellTale game has. The dialogue system is almost ridiculously flexible. The three stats measured when speaking to someone, which relate to how much someone likes you, respects you, and fears you, are a genius way of adding weight to every choice. It gives you another way to read each social situation, and additionally serves as helpful shorthand for developing characters. For instance, you can track whether the person you're talking to respects you more for delivering hard truths or staying polite, and you can see the immediate turn from friendliness to contempt when, in an early chapter, you reveal to a bigot that you're a woman. The ending may seem abrupt, but I was warned in advance about that and honestly expected much worse. It ties up what happens to many of the major characters, but it's still open-ended enough that you can choose to believe whatever you like about what ultimately happens to the city. A tidier ending feels like it would betray Unrest's themes. Life doesn't stop just because you've hit a satisfactory end point, and neither do the city's conflicts just because you've completed the game. TL;DR: I came away from Unrest feeling like I'd read a great fantasy novel. The dialogue is fantastic. The characters are somehow sympathetic, complex, and flexibly written all at once, and the worldbuilding is paced almost perfectly. If you're a fan of good writing in video games and don't care if the game itself is mechanically rough around the edges, you should pick up a copy as soon as you get the chance.

i bought this game a little while ago, and recently found myself with some spare time to actually start to play it. i was not disappointed. although unrest is by no means a long game - i completed it in 3 hours, partially because i kept going back to replay certain scenes - it makes up for its shortness. in this game, you play as multiple characters, all of whom are involved with and affected by the events of the game and your choices within it; in other words, your choices matter, and affect your gameplay. your characters have traits, and these traits are added over the course of each section, depending on what choices you make. there are 2 game modes - one, in which you are allowed as many saves as you want, so that you may go back and replay certain sections as you desire and change your actions; and one, in which you have one save slot and thus must commit to every choice you make. the setup of the game seems straightforward, but you may find yourself making difficult decisions, compromising where you thought you wouldn't, and ending up with a completely different ending than you anticipated. because there are so many choices to make and consequences as a result of every choice, the game - though short - has significant replay value. i very much look forward to replaying this game and exploring every outcome. the graphics are just beautiful. the hand-painted feel of the game is charming and gives the game a more intimate feel. the music is beautiful and lends itself to the immersion of the game. the story, though not in and of itself unique, is set apart by the multiple PCs and narratives that can develop over the course of the game, and is richly told through each character's life and experience. overall, i would give this game 4/5 stars. the only reason i cannot give it a full 5 star rating is because for all that i thoroughly enjoyed it, i do wish it was longer and that you were able to play all characters more than once, and i also found it a little frustrating that even though NPCs you interact with have opinions about you and these opinions differ based on your choices, these opinion bars never really seem to affect the game. however, that does not negate my appreciation for this game. the developers worked hard to make a beautiful game with an immersive and captivating story, and they did that admirably, especially given that it was largely crowdfunded and not put on by a big name. i would definitely recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed story driven, choices-matter RPGs.

Just to hang the cards +1

I absolutely hated the game.. lack of choices, lack of results, lack of story and short. Don't buy this unless you're high and want something to piss you off.

Boring game maybe the devs are boring too

The game is marketed as one supporting Mac OSX, however it's been more than 2 years since it was released and I still cannot play it on my iMac without graphical glitches. I complained to the dev, but to no avail. He just does not care. So, unless you're on PC, don't buy this.

Flawed, but excellent. The biggest disappointment is the ending; we're not talking Mass Effect 3 here, but it sort of tapers off into nothing, and quite suddenly, too. If you're prepared for that, the game is an amazing ride, where you make difficult moral choices from the perspective of several different characters.

If you're a fan of worldbuilding, dialogue-driven gameplay, non-western fantasy settings, realistic moral choices outside of the facile "paragon/renegade" binary...I can't recommend Unrest enough. As a big old fantasy nerd, I haven't been this enamored with an original setting since Morrowind. Yes, there are issues that most likely stem from the game being a labor of love made on a shoestring budget. I can't deny that a number of story arcs end abruptly, and that there are occasional bugs (my copy refuses to register Steam achievements). But I'm a sucker for writing, and this is one of the best-written games I've played in a long while. I desperately want more stories set in this universe. Please, Pyrodactyl, make it happen.