PROVE YOU’RE HUMAN is a clever indie that blurs the Turing test boundaries… questioning the nature of what it means to be human
An AI dares to dream she is human. And you? You’ve been hired to put her in her place.
Revealed during the Triple-I Showcase earlier today, Prove You’re Human is the latest debut from studio Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客. Known for its post-apocalypse horror game 1000xResist, which was so good that it won one of the highest honors for storytelling with a Peabody award, if you like story, and strangely… if you like comic books and story, this is probably 1000% up your alley.
The best way to describe this new indie video game is that it’s a narrative horror/sci-fi that’s like the movies Ex Machina meets the TV Show Severance.
What do I mean by that? Well, here’s the premise:
An AI dares to dream she is human. And you? You’ve been hired to put her in her place. Prove You’re Human splits the main character in two: you’re the digital copy of a person who was paid to test a corporate product…but the product, Mesa, is convinced it’s as human as you are. Maybe even more.
Take breaks from work to roam an idyllic landscape and CAPTCHA surrounding environments. Spend your days in a comfortable virtual world, learn how to break down Mesa’s defenses, and eliminate her delusions. Maintain your own humanity as you eventually decide if you’d like to re-merge your two selves or discard your work self.
And here’s the gorgeous preview.
No but really, Check this out because these are the best video game storytellers today people are really only learning about now
1001x Resist is highly considered by indie tastemakers and underground reviewers like myself, as one of the greatest commentaries ever made about our recent times. It follows a tiny society of human clones living on the fringe of a post-apocalypse having been almost been wiped out by an alien pandemic virus.
This game was a direct commentary about the past few years rife with existential thematic takes about the pandemic, societal collapse, and Asian diaspora; plus, was a metaphor regarding a whole lot of destruction caused by unaddressed intergenerational trauma.
Which, in my opinion, is kind of the root of most of our problems today (I’d argue most wars and the overall terribleness of the things happening right now, are the direct result of the unaddressed sins of our past across the board, which is why I stress about the importance of stories).
Anyway, not only is this amazing studio a proven hit maker in terms of storytelling but this new game is being published by Black Tabby Publishing—the new arm of the Slay the Princess team, co-founded by comics indie darling Abby Howard, who made the jump from comics into games and clearly hasn’t lost her taste for the uncomfortable.
Abby Howard was also, a short decade ago, one of the coolest indie comics creators of the 2010s and someone that never gets enough credit, who then choose to leave it all behind to start a gaming company with her husband Tony Arias.
So you’ve got two amazing dev studios with a publishing arm and a hell of a reputation as everyone involved are considered the best-of-the-best writers in the indie space for narrative video games; with Black Tabby making the fan-fucking-tastic existential horror games like Scarlett Hollow & Slay The Princess. Which I reviewed before.
I don’t really know how else to say this but…
Be hyped. These are people making real art and great art, without the giant AAA budgets and away from the toxicity of the big sides of the gaming and comics industry.
And they’re doing this great story about AI without AI.