Unreal People

What is more appealing, a hot mess or a cold clockwork? Ok, I’m a former engineer so it kind of depends on the heat of the mess, and the majesty of the clockwork. I don’t have a strawman clockwork to put up on that side of the equation, but for its part, Unreal People is just blazing, rock-melting lava. In the words of Eddie Murphy as James Brown: “Can’t stand the HEAT, oooh, gebback hunh in the hottub, OW!”

At its opening words, this work had my full attention: “You piddle into being” I WHAT, NOW?? That opening shot across my bow introduced a psychedelic ‘coming into existence sequence’ that paced itself from “Uh WOT?” to “Oh I see!” pretty effectively. From there, the gameplay is to link-select hop from host to host, all in the service of a gossip-hungry master. Why not? The setup is a medieval Indian kingdom and you work your way up from rocks and leaves to cows and people. If you get too greedy too fast, you might be somewhat arbitrarily discovered and dispatched. It’s fine, you can UNDO out of it.

The bananas writing is far and away the hottest part of this mess. It is wryly humorous and surprising in the best way possible. Some examples, among a wealth of possible choices:

“That revelation has shattered my knee caps.”
"You have become bag. "

The non-drunk princess’ internal monologues versus response choices are always fun, but occasionally the turns of phrase hit a lot higher:
"The last man saw of god was man unseen by god. "

At every turn, NPCs surprised and delighted with off-kilter voices, viewpoints and motivations. Unfortunately, gameplay was a lot messier. For one, while your mission is clear - collect gossip - you don’t have much control over how. You just jump around, basically at random, until you accumulate enough. There is nominally a timer, but as far as I can tell the game is more event driven. Its pacing is also a bit weird. The midgame went on for so long, it felt like the entire game, but no, there was a more abbreviated final section still left to navigate, then a truly surprising and well-conceived final FINAL bit. All these artifacts prevented me from truly engaging the work, but wow, the fun writing brought white hot Sparks of Joy to this mess.

Even messier was its technical implementation. Over and over, coding artifacts showed up in the work, from seeming placeholder comments, internal code artifacts and in one case an entire page of resource text displayed for FUTURE choices the player had not made yet (this last in the cat and Gaury scene). Elsewhere, a link to investigate Mazboot led to a completely blank page that needed UNDO to escape. In its endgame showpiece, you have finally taken (Spoiler - click to show)everything(!) as a host, but the input handling is jumbled, repeated, or confused, ultimately defusing that really nifty conceit.

So yeah, a notably messy gameplay with messier implementation issues married to white hot Sparks of Joyful writing. It would take quite a towering clockwork to eclipse that.

Played: 10/3/24
Playtime: 1hr, captured x6, became [blank]
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Notable bugs/text artifacts
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless