Unrest is labeled a role-playing game by its developer Pterodactyl Games, and I can’t help but feel like that is a mistake. While you are a character and are playing a role, role-playing games and the acronym RPG carry certain connotations outside of the ethos of what it means to play a role. These terms carry with them an expectation of numbered stats, leveling up, and combat, which Unrest doesn’t satisfy. So much of a player’s understanding of what it means to role-play is seen through the lens of Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants, yet a more apt comparison would be those whodunit party games in which each person is given a character to embody along with some secrets and understandings of their place in a web of interconnected relationships and then set loose to mingle with the other guests.
There are no dice rolls in this game. There is no chance. There is what you will do, how you wish to represent the various characters that you steward through each act of the story as, and the consequences of those decisions. The game is almost wholly built on social cues between people and a system to inform the player of the details of how those social cues work, a system left out of other RPGs. Hover over each dialogue choice, and the game will tell you how your character will state a line: wry, blunt, open, concerned, cautious, etc. There are three bars at the top of the screen labeled Friendship, Respect, and Fear. They represent how the character talking to you feels towards you and will adjust based on your conversation. The only combat is itself a dialogue option that pops up occasionally and is an act of only nominal agency.
I can’t tell how any of these systems interface with the options that the game presents to the player. For all I know Unrest could use the same conversation trees that we’ve seen for over a decade and simply provides more details in its presentation. Regardless of how the game itself responds, the player is expected to respond. By adding information about not just what you say, but how you say it, Unrest creates a connection between the player’s role-playing and the characters that they are engaging with. The characters become more than mouthpieces for information, but instead become their own people through the mere addition of expression.
And these people have a lot to be expressive about. I didn’t want to invoke The Wire in comparison to this game, but I can’t help it. Unrest is so alike in its presentation of interconnected individuals from a variety of walks of life that contribute to and that survive in the crumbling structure of a city that it’s easier to say it’s The Wire, but set in an ancient, mythical India.
Bhimra is in trouble. A drought has been going on for years, making food scarce and leaving its hungry citizens agitated. The king and queen make a treaty with the nearby Naga empire to open trade routes in exchange for refugees to come and live there. However, a Naga, talking snake people, eat three times as much as a human and their presence causes racial tensions to ignite. Add to this mix a scheming political factions, a religious upheaval, and the stifling caste system, and the player finds themselves occupying a city that is at its breaking point.
All of this is seen from the points of view of individuals from various strata and circles of society: an ambassador, a mercenary, a princess, a peasant, and a priest. Each of these people will have an effect on the city in their own way that will send ripples through the situations effecting the life of the city. Some of these ripples are small, some are massively significant, and the effects of some remain imperceptible until later. Some of these character choices, on the surface, don’t seem like something that a western audience would be able to appreciate. For instance, as an American, I couldn’t care less about the duties necessary to support and maintain the caste system of ancient India, but the narrative is woven in a way that I am able to understand on a basic level what it means to go along with or to break with it. It allows me for just a fleeting moment to understand the burden of the system. The complexity of each situation is presented by offering so many varied pieces of information that are witnessed from many different points of view. The collective whole of talking with family members, soldiers, and people in the streets paints a more detailed picture from which to base one’s actions on. There are no right or wrong choices, only how different people deal with the situation, not how they solve it.
Unrest is able to achieve this level of narrative depth by sacrificing almost everything else. Bhimra is a sketch of a city, not an ancient bustling metropolis. Base animations, weak technical graphics, lack of looping music, and so many other things one doesn’t notice in a polished game are lacking here. The game looks grungy and unsophisticated, but it works. Should one of these technical elements have been much more proficiently executed, it would have stood out in contrast to the rest, making everything else feel cheap instead of garnering a consistent lo-fi feel. You’ll spend most of your time reading anyway, and the visual sketch works to the game’s advantage. Unrest allows the words people say and your own imagination to make up the difference, making this seed of Bhirma’s history take root in one’s mind.