Unrest

A short, low fantasy political drama with multiple point-of-view characters and no easy answers, Unrest is Game of Thrones condensed to a low-budget adventure game. The various conflicts present in the setting are well thought out, and the narrative pulls no punches when it comes to difficult personal and political choices. Its visuals are not particularly memorable, but the excellent writing and the evocative music manage to carry the presentation.

This game's a mixed bag, but a good one overall. Cons: - Choices matter less than they seem to. - Some leftover ideological views by the author, but not too many - easily 60% of the world-building literature you find in the game is utterly useless Pros: - Several choices do influence a lot of dialogue options, though it is spotty at times. - The player has a lot of choices to express their opinion on difficult subjects throughout the game; only a handful of these were very hackneyed (unfortunately, 1-2 important ones were though) - The game's writing is (mostly) fair to a lot of different views, and the writing is more capable than most triple A titles. It's nowhere near the best I've seen, but it was more interesting to read than most things I've played. ... Basically, if you are looking for a "choices matter" game, you will be disappointed; if you are looking for a rich world full of details, it will be too thinly laid out. But if you are looking for a lot of tiny details, dialogues with lots of people, and some engaging questions to think through and give answers to - or if you are interested in the game's subject specifically - then this is recommendable. Pick it up on a sale; it's flawed but worth it.

Unrest is a surprisingly well put together, narrative focussed game in which you control a number of characters during a trying time. You play as various sides of a conflict, that's brewing in a region, due to drout, fear of foreigners and the abscence of a legitimate ruler. This game looks nice, in it's simple, stylistic sort of way and offers an interesting story. There's little to no gameplay, to the point that it feels like an overglorified visual novel, so if you're the sort to say 'it's not a game if there's no fail state or if there isn't enough gameplay' or whatever, then you definitely will find it lacking. Though I did enjoy playing through this and did like the writing, I still felt that this was incredibly flawed. For a start, it's not very obvious who is important and who isn't. I spent the best part of an hour preparing for a character's journey, because I thought they would be a major character but then I never saw them again. They survived but their impact on the plot was minimal after that. Another issue I had was when a character was introduced and had yet to meet their destiny, only for me to turn a corner and find my destiny, less than ten minutes after starting. In short, it felt a bit weird, like an abridged Star Wars: New Hope, where it just skips to the bit where Luke Skywalker finds the Millenium Falcon. I do like how the factions in this are quite relatable and nobody seems completely unreasonable. You can also control how each character behaves, so it makes it quite interesting as you go along. You can even replay each segment, multiple times, replaying it in different ways. I look back on the time that I spent on this game fondly and would recommend it to anyone who likes Narrative driven games, like To the Moon. I'd even go as far as to call it a 'flawed gem.'

The writing was better than expected, and that's pretty much all that matters

this game is good for a few hours afterwards nothing is left to be enjoyed by this game it gets boring very fast i do not recommend this game

Short but a good narrative experience. I enjoyed it a lot.

I love this game-- the art is wonderful, the narration is wonderful, the world building is realistic and interesting. The only criticism I have is that it's too short. I would love to play a sequel.