misterhaan
  • Unavowed

    34 hours playtime

    56 of 56 achievements

i love adventure games, especially the ones put out by wadjet eye games. when i first heard about unavowed i knew i’d buy it and play it as soon as i could, and i’m glad i did: it’s now my favorite adventure game!

most of the characters on your team were surprisingly deep and well-defined. while i’m not an addict myself, i do read and listen to a lot about addiction and the character who’s an addict fit amazingly well into my understanding of addiction. i’m also a father and my family is the most important thing in my life, so another character’s struggles with being apart from his family really resonated with me.

each chapter of the game presents a moral choice to resolve the chapter, but it doesn’t set it up as a clear good and a clear bad choice. what you choose has consequences later, and while i was happy with the choices i made my first time through i also enjoyed playing again and choosing the other way.

you get to set your character’s name, sex, and choose from three professions. your profession affects how you can progress through some of the chapters as well as setting your origin story. eventually you choose 2 teammates to take on missions, and depending who’s with you there are different solutions available. when playing again to get achievements for bringing certain characters along i got to solve the same puzzles different ways, which kept it feeling new.

since i was playing so soon after the game came out, i didn’t have much opportunity to look up solutions when i got stuck, but i think that only happened twice. both times were because i hadn’t noticed something i could interact with (a manhole cover, and then later a book on a table). the puzzles are logical and the missions are confined to a smallish area so you don’t have to worry about maybe running all the way across the map to get something you need.

the only thing i noticed that i didn’t like was that sometimes the story seemed to contradict what it had set up previously. the most obvious case is a character says “i will not allow that” but totally goes along with it if that’s what you choose.

i heartily recommend unavowed to anyone who appreciates adventure games or games with great story.

tsupertsundere

Yesssss I am SO glad. I follow Dave Gilbert on Twitter and the reception of Unavowed has been amazing - it’s great that it stands up to all of that praise!

Thank you so much for this thorough but non-spoilery review - this makes me even more eager to play!

misterhaan

i’m rarely a launch-day purchaser, but i got the first 4 blackwell games plus many other wadjet eye games from bundles (indie royale, maybe) and to me if i end up not really liking his latest game i still have a good deal when you count that price with all the other games i’ve enjoyed from wadjet eye.

i see you have unavowed in your backlog — i hope to see what you think of it after you’ve had a chance to play!

JaffaCaffa

That’s cool that it’s a little customisable. I’ve had my eye on this, but you’re the first person I’ve seen playing it. Really glad it lived up to expectations! Wadjet Eye Games has had quite the run of games, glad to hear this is another great one. :)