Unavowed

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Unavowed is a Graphic Adventure released on PC in 2018 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021. In this game, you play someone freed from a demonic possession by agents of the titular agency whose job is to investigate and police the world of the paranormal. Your old life in ruins, you have little choice but to join the agency yourself and help them investigate supernatural events throughout the city, and in doing perhaps learn more about your own activities while you were possessed.

Graphically, Unavowed is a fantastic-looking game that feels very much like the classic LucasArts-style point-and-click games all grown up. Characters are rendered in a pixel art style with decent animation, but the backgrounds they walk on are gorgeous, often gruesome, hand-painted works brought alive by great animation. And everything is rendered in a style that does a great job balancing the otherworldly supernatural elements with the noir-style detective tone the game takes.

This game uses a subdued soundtrack that’s there more for building mood than for being memorable in its own right. However, the really standout element in this game’s sound is the voice acting, which is fantastic. This game’s characters are wonderfully well-written, and the voice acting here only further helps to give them all a distinct and lovable personality.

I have to be sure to stress how great the writing here is overall – the nature of the mysteries you’re investigating makes them get only more interesting the deeper you look into them, the writing here is reasonably grounded and full of character, and very little opportunity is wasted here to build the characters through dialogue – in fact, if you idle, your helper characters will chitchat among themselves, sometimes commenting on their surroundings or events that have happened. The dedication to worldbuilding here is absolutely commendable.

This game also brings back another element that reminds me of a classic LucasArts game – its character-based system seems inspired by Maniac Mansion, with players able to select from a growing cast of characters for their three-agent team, each with their own distinct abilities that they bring to the situation. What’s more, you get to choose one of multiple backgrounds for your character at the start of the game, and this too gives you unique ways to solve problems you run across.

When it comes to negatives, I will say there are times when the game can’t seem to interpret what you want to do. For one thing, when my partner can light stuff on fire, it’s frustrating how often he doesn’t seem to understand when I direct him to do something to an object that I want him to try to light it on fire. However, on the bright side, the game slyly sneaks in a “help” feature by letting you ask your helpers what they think you should do next whenever you want. And thankfully, this game doesn’t generally require you to use crazy “Sierra logic” to solve puzzles.

tl;dr – Unavowed is a Graphic Adventure about a new inductee into a paranormal investigation organization solving gruesome mysteries and finding answers about the demon who possessed you. The game looks great, the writing is sharp, the characters are fantastic, the voice acting is excellent, and the character-swapping mechanic gives players numerous ways to solve problems. The game doesn’t provide you quite as much freedom as one would hope, but overall this game should be considered a must-play for fans of Graphic Adventures and especially fans of classic LucasArts-style point-and-click games.

Grade: A-

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