Unity is probably the most popular game engine for indie game developers, especially when pursuing a more stylized aesthetic. Nevertheless, the ability to create photorealistic visuals remains the same, and one of the most popular examples today is the first-person extraction shooter Escape From Tarkov. It’s similar realism that indie studio Sunset Visitor is aiming to achieve with its next game, Prove You’re Human.
This is partly because the studio’s debut work, the incredible 1000xResist, was also made in Unity. But while that game had a striking anime-inspired art style depicting a post-apocalyptic far future in a clone society, Prove You’re Human takes a different direction and tackles our more current concerns.
find joy in imperfection
From what’s been revealed so far at the time of its Triple-i Initiative announcement, Prove You’re Human appears to be largely a two-person play (if it reminds you of a small theater play, that’s because one of the studio’s founders has a background in the performing arts, which Siu says means “the conversations between two people in a room are often very interesting”).
You play as Santana. Santana is controlled as a digital copy within a virtual environment in order to test a new company product, an AI named Mesa. The problem is, this AI is also convinced that she’s human, so your job is to put her in her place.
You can then see why Mesa was designed with a distinctly human-like face, and not just as a disembodied voice or floating cipher like Portal’s GLaDOS, as a way to make this premise feel real. Similarly, while playing as Santana in first person, her virtual body is actually a photogrammetry scan of the actor. But if this is the kind of technology that Unreal Engine 5 is better suited for, then there is creative intent behind a tool that is imperfect for the job.
“In the case of Mesa, there was a desire to lean into the uncanny valley side of things,” Siu says. “We’re not like those guys who do islet scans. We intentionally want to do scans that are a little bit more junky because they produce artifacts that are interesting to us.”
FMV realism
Prove You’re Human goes beyond photorealism to achieve full realism by using live-action FMV. The medium has enjoyed a resurgence over the past decade, particularly in Sam Barlow games such as Her Story and Immortality, but 1000xResist also features a key scene that uses video footage from Hong Kong, recycled from an unfinished documentary project Siu had previously worked on. This time, the studio hired filmmaker Seper Samimi, who shot previous documentary footage, to capture the original footage and process the photogrammetry scans of the game.
“As artists, we feel like we can contribute to the conversation about what FMV games are as they continue to evolve,” explains Siu. “The other thing we’ve identified is that in this story, you can make a very clear distinction in diegesis. There’s a virtual world, there’s a physical non-virtual world, and it’s depicting your physical other within the physical body.”
If some of the weird moments at the end of the trailer are any indication, I can imagine there will come a point where the lines between these worlds blur too, but of course Siu is keeping mum. But one area where real assets enter the virtual world is through image-based CAPTCHA tests, which are naturally tied to the game’s title.
Exploring AI themes
CAPTCHA tests are typically used online to stop bots and spam, but Prove You’re Human makes use of this feature in many of the game’s interactions, such as when talking to Mesa. “I felt it was a humorous way to [the AI themes]But it’s also violent in a way, in that you have to define what something is or isn’t,” says Siu.
Considering how prevalent CAPTCHA tests are in our everyday internet connections, this is certainly a way to make gaming accessible to more people. Conveniently, this also means that there is a public domain set of CAPTCHAs available for teams to use, some of which are original images created from “found” objects.
“For us, this is a really fun way to do it, and we’re thinking a lot about how we can use this not only as something interactive, but also as a way to compose the world around us, similar to taking a photo,” he concluded. “So it’s a way of seeing the world, composing it, and a lot of other things that are spoilers!”
Prove You’re Human is coming to PC soon. You can add it to your wishlist. steam.
