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In the infirmary of a high school, the first student is showing symptoms. Signs in the corridor say that those feeling unwell should go home. Some pupils are frightened, others continue with their lives: homework, acting classes, stealing kisses in the art supply room. This set-up was inspired by the outbreak of Covid, but in the world of narrative game 1000xResist, it’s given a sci-fi twist: the tell-tale symptom is that people cry uncontrollably until all moisture is drained from their bodies. Then there is the mystery of the giant, watchful beings, known as Occupants, who have arrived on Earth.
The storyline of 1000xResist, the first release from Vancouver indie studio Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客, is high-concept stuff. Yet as with the very best sci-fi, it uses its conceit to probe complex issues facing us Earthlings today. It dives deep, exploring both existential themes and contemporary global politics with a sophistication and maturity that are still lamentably rare in gaming.
You play as Watcher, a clone living 1,000 years after that initial alien invasion, created from the genes of the only human who was immune to the annihilating virus. Your job is to observe: both the present lives of your fellow clones and the memories of the teenage girl, Iris, who had immunity — now a near-deity known as Allmother. As you dig deeper, Watcher will know revelation, betrayal and heartbreak.
There is no combat and little puzzle-solving; you spend most of the 12-hour playing time exploring and talking. The makers trust the dialogue to be the star of the show, and the writing is uniformly superb — by turns poetic, poignant and humorous. For all its far-out concepts and elliptical, almost poetic conversations, the story is grounded by more intimate details, such as the relatable scribble left by a pre-apocalypse teenager: “I tried dancing in front of the mirror to see what I look like from behind — hard to tell.”
The game’s writing team, who have East Asian heritage, use two teenage characters, Iris and Jiao, to offer insightful commentary on our world. Both are children of parents who protested in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement; they are now attending high school in Canada and navigating the painful realities of assimilation. When Iris hosts a birthday party for her friends, she asks her dad to get pizza rather than making noodles because “they don’t eat that stuff”. Themes of protest, belonging and belief echo through the game’s multiple timelines, as its adventurous, non-chronological narrative trusts the intelligence of players to keep up. Much of the fun comes from piecing together the fragments of its complex story, in which you are deposited in medias res.
While the game’s graphics underwhelm in terms of detail, this is compensated for by strong art direction, with clever use of colour, camera angles and shifts in perspective. These ensure that the game always looks stylish and even long conversations remain visually gripping. A memorable score of ambient and piano compositions helps to bring home its surprisingly emotional character beats.
As a technical exercise, 1000xResist is an impressive game made on a small budget by a small team. But as a feat of storytelling, with narrative tension, sophistication of themes and richness of world-building, it is among the very best that video games have to offer.
★★★★★
Out now on Nintendo Switch and PC
