Review: Unavowed

It’s the game of the month over at the Adventure Game Club. Since Avowed (which I’ve also played and probably will write a review for somewhere next week) came out this month, it seems only fitting to play Unavowed as well.

As the game starts you’re immediately pulled into the action, the story never misses a beat and I was engrossed from the start. Honestly, it was such a relief from the regular gentle introduction I didn’t know I needed. You find out that you’ve been possessed by a demon and spend the rest of the game undoing your former self’s evil deeds.

Your joined in your quest by the two veteran members of the Unavowed, Eli (a fire mage) and Mandana (a half-djinn). Later in the game, you pick up more members, each have their respective unique characteristics. For example, Mandana has a superhuman strength and has the ability to tell if people are telling the truth. Eli can set things on fire and can read burnt letters or books. At the start of each mission you get to pick two companions to bring along. You can’t change your choice, once you’ve committed to it. And every mission can be completed with any set of companions.

This was such a genius move, you always know you can complete the puzzles and don’t have to bother with backtracking or revisiting a mission with a different set of companions. It does somewhat take away the meaningfulness of choosing the companions you take with you. But I only discovered that it really didn’t matter after the first 4-5 missions, so the illusion does hold for a long time. What’s really great about it, though, is the level and game design it took to reach this point. Having 4 companions in total, means you have 6 different combinations of companions you can bring along on any given mission. That means 6 different sets of somewhat overlapping dialogues that have to make sense for the story to reach their possible conclusions.

All of the companion’s abilities fit well within the story and despite having several branching paths to completing puzzles it doesn’t ever feel forced. During the several missions you bring your companion’s along you also get to know them better. You get a peek into their minds and what they struggle with. Dialogue options usually have 3 different variations, sometimes worded in specific ways that even though the meaning behind the dialogue lines may vary wildly, the same response from an NPC can be used to answer all three dialogue options. I don’t think it happens that often, but was noticeable at some points.

The game’s puzzles aren’t very hard. I never got stuck, it was always pretty obvious what the next step should be. More often than not this involved revisiting NPC’s with new information you picked up from some other place. This is a tricky mechanic in point-and-click games. I usually think that talking to a person and going through all dialogue options marks the NPC as completed and they won’t ever have any new information for me. However, in Unavowed, new information is given frequently, usually hinted at by one of your companions mentioning you should go back to X or Y to ask them about it. Which is a great addition, since it makes sense for them to comment about it storywise, and directs the player on where to go next naturally.

Every line in the game (except for the players chosen dialogue options) are voiced, and the acting is done exceptionally well. I should mention though, that there was one character (Chipman, the owner of the doughnut shop) where the quality of the voice lines noticeably dropped. It’s as if they were recorded on a remote laptop. Which is a bit of a shame, as it stands out as a sore thumb amidst all the other voice acting. Luckily, he doesn’t have a lot of voice lines!

This game popped my Wadjet Eye cherry. And boy has it whet my appetite. Every other game in their catalog has just seen a bump in my backlog of games to get to. I mentioned at the start of this review that I also played Avowed this month. I liked that game, but I loved this one. It has grounded me that I much prefer the mix of narrative and puzzle genre, AAA titles are filled with so much faff. They have a much larger audience and need to cater to most of them. Unavowed is much more contained, there’s no deviating from the story, you can’t just decide to leave all these people who count on you to wait until you’ve looted the contents of their house. Unavowed sucks you in, and keeps you entertained. I completed the game in two sittings and found the length exactly long enough for my tastes.