Unavowed was a very good surprise I’ve managed to stumble upon when I found myself in the mood for a nice story and a good pixel art game. The art was exactly what I expected but the story was much better than I could have anticipated. Add to that a very good and relaxing soundtrack, and you have got yourself a gem, but I’m going ahead of myself. Let’s talk about it in order.
Unavowed is your run of the mill point and click adventure game, very reminiscent of the classics by LucasArt, in terms of gameplay and presentation. However, as soon as you start the game, you can tell you’re set for a special story.
Story
As you start you realize you are in the middle of an exorcism. Upon waking up from it you discover your character has been possessed for an entire year and during this time he or she was committing numerous crimes, but not only crimes, your character was also meddling in the supernatural.
While you managed to get free from the possession, the entity possessing you managed to escape. Soon after, you are invited to be part of the Unavowed, a secret organization specialized in solving problems related to the supernatural.
So this is the premise of the game, but what makes it special?
I think the best part of this game is how it managed to put together many different aspects of the supernatural folklore combined and still delivered a compelling plot with memorable characters. For example, you will see things like djinns, fire mages, elementals, dryads, just to name a few.
Puzzles
We can’t talk about point and click adventure games without talking about the puzzles. I think I should say straight out that I do love puzzle games but I have come to despise solving puzzles in most point and click games. That is because they usually stat fun but it comes a time in that they get so convoluted they have stopped being fun, for me, a long time ago.
With this out of the way, I must admit I enjoyed the vast majority of the puzzles in Unavowed. Most of the were fun and intuitive, with the few exceptions being the ones in a specific area of the game in which you have to deal with a bunch of numbers.
All in all, they were fun and had a nice balance in creativity and challenge without being frustrating.
Choices
An interesting thing to talk about are the choices presented to you. There is a gender option for your character right at the beginning of the game which honestly changes nothing, but the actual choices I want to talk about are the ones you do at the end of each investigation. Without giving away any details, during certain moments of the game you can make some choices that can significantly alter the end of the story. Since I used a guide I managed to get a good ending with ease but bear in mind that if you go blind that may not happen since these choices aren’t the usual “black or white”, “good or bad” choices we usually see in games.
Music
Before ending this review there is another thing I have to mention about Unavowed, its music. I am someone who pays close attention to music when watching a movie or playing a game. Sometimes the music is outright great on its own, sometimes it has more of an ambience feel (which is good in its own right). In the case for Unavowed I think the the soundtrack strikes a nice middle ground. This isn’t the best or most memorable music you’ll listen in an adventure game but it is very good. It’s moody and relaxing, so calming I see myself getting the soundtrack sometime in the future and listen to it while reading or doing other stuff.
Conclusion
In the end, after about 10 hours of playtime I had a very good time with Unavowed. I was engaged all the way through with both the game’s story and characters. For fans of adventure games this is an easy recommendation but I would like to also recommend this game to those that like a nice story and some good ambience.
Mayonaka Reviews 