Unovowed (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Sunday, November 18, 2018, 09:54 (1986 days ago)

You all might get the impression I think all indie games are garbage. Not true. While I think nearly every indie game would be better if it weren't indie, there is one indie studio whose games I will always buy sight unseen: WadjetEye.

WadjetEye consistently makes wonderful adventure games. Sure the resolution is low and the mechanics are very traditional, but all of them manage to be engaging and worth my time. Their latest is the most ambitious yet: Unavowed.

The game is set in New York city, and after having a demon removed by exorcism, your main character joins a group who hunts the paranormal and demonic who call themselves the Unavowed. Paranormal things are popping up around the city, and you and the Unavowed have to find out why in a series of investigations for each event, which build into something deeper.

The ambitiousness of the games is obvious: the resolution is doubled over other other AGS games, there are moral choices that effect the outcome, and you can choose your team for each segment of the game. Each person has their own special abilities and skills, so your team composition will change how you have to solve each mystery, with there being multiple ways. You can select between 3 different backgrounds for your main character and their gender, which alters the opening and various parts of the game for each.

At first I was put off by the lack of voice acting for the main character. You would select a dialogue response and the other characters would just start talking without your line being spoken. However, later on there is a story reason for this which is fact very very cool.

The game is not hard. If you do ever get stuck, you can just change your team and try a different approach, but pretty much every combination will be doable even if you have minimal experience with adventure games. There aren't a lot of inventory items to worry about.

For all the cool choices and different ways you can unravel the story, the game gives up at the end with all four endings being possible no matter what choices you made along the way. Save a game at the climax, and you can see everything. Why do games do this? We've moved beyond making merely the final choice the one that counts.

Pick it up if you even remotely like adventure games. It's PC/Mac only, with no plans yet for iOS / Android.

I would highly recommend their back catalog though:

Shardlight - Post Apocalyptic story with heart and excellent world building. Female lead.
Technobabylon- Sci-fi cyberpunk mystery that manages to avoid a few tropes when you think you know where it's going.
A Golden Wake- A bit dull, but an interesting historical tale.
Blackwell Games- Very very good. The first finds its footing but the rest step it up, with the last one being superb.
Shivah- Very short and easy but a nice little story
Resonance- Mechanically there are some improvements and innovations, however the story is pretty standard.
Gemini Rue- Very good story and atmosphere.
Primordia- Probably the hardest of the bunch, a moody futuristic sci fi tale that delivers better on the multiple endings thing than Unavowed.