Unrest is an RPG that is vastly different than anything I would usually play. There’s no real combat in the game and there are no puzzles to solve. There’s no leveling up or experience gained. There’s not even one main character to play as.
Unrest is set in ancient India during a time of riots and general unrest (hence the name). You’ll play as several different characters throughout the game, each broken up into their own chapter(s).
You’ll move your character through the beautiful hand drawn world and talk to NPC’s and do simple quest. The bulk of game is reading and answering questions with some of the best written dialogue choices that I’ve seen in a game before. The choices you make when answering questions or responding to people have a direct impact on the rest of the story.
Your choices may result in one of your characters dying, but the game doesn’t end because it just becomes part of the story within the other characters chapters. This creates a unique play-style that truly has you role-playing the various characters however you see fit.
Should the princess be sassy and rude? Should the peasant girl be grateful that her parents have worked out a deal to get her a higher class husband, even though he’s apparently a slimebag? You’ll get to decide how you want to play those characters and more.
There’s not a whole lot left to say about the game, but I hate doing short reviews. In this case though, this is a game that doesn’t take a long time to play and is basically reading and choosing responses. I didn’t encounter any bugs with it, and there’s no gameplay control issues to talk about. It’s really best to play it rather that read what someone has to say about it. Luckily, there’s a demo on Steam.
If you just want to shoot things, Unrest isn’t for you. If you want an interesting story that gives you the opportunity to shape how the story unfolds throughout the entire campaign, and don’t mind a lot of reading in your gaming, then Unrest absolutely deserves your attention and its journey won’t take you more than a few hours to complete.
Unrest gets a three out of five: GOOD.
* A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review.
