Interdisciplinary collaboration between arts—poetry read over film, ballet set to improvisatory music—can push boundaries of expression and evoke powerful emotional nuance. It invites new voices and perspectives to existing conversations, which in turn lead toward ideas, works, and performances unique in ways that are simply impossible to achieve alone.
Although it is true that video games are cross-collaborative by design, too few embrace or extend those invitations. One reason for this, among many, is the overwhelmingly large development teams, in which each individual is expected to perform their work and only theirs, with all parts in assigned places and progress meticulously planned. This has proven to work, in a sense…but it is inflexible. The added wrinkles of production deadlines, financial incentives, and so on only increase rigidity. In the worst of cases, the result is an artistic myopathy bereft of personal expression. Inviting new voices becomes tricky indeed.
When a new game debuts from a freshman studio of industry outsiders—thespians, performers, students of expression—believe me when I say that I am in line. Will these new artists, free from the shadows of investors, Metacritic warriors, and Geoff Keighley, express their voices, having now joined the conversation?
My aim in this text is to explain why 1000xRESIST, the debut title from the Asian-Canadian studio named sunset visitor (stylised), is a game which answers “yes” to my question—and with fierce conviction. It is rare for nascent studios to immediately grab the attention of so many gamers, and doubly so with a video game whose sleeves wear influences from outside mediums occasionally deemed “pretentious”. Writing an explanation on why I believe sunset visitor accomplished this, I found myself unsure of where to begin: the cohesive thematic motifs, the sci-fi drama, or the ceaseless theatricality which may have captured your attention in the first place on the Steam store? Where to begin, indeed.
1000xRESIST is layered. It explores parts of the human condition through the lived experiences of their creative teams’ Asian diaspora and is framed in sometimes-vivid-sometimes-lurid imagery and a general lack of “videogamey-ness”. It is not lost on me that reading this may make you wonder whether this is “just another one of those ‘artsy, award bait’ games.” This is understandable. But in this abridged review, I wish to submit to you that this game (forgive me) resists this cliche.
Where a lesser work would meander and lose focus in its motifs or become inflated and turgid in prose, really wanting players to see just how clever it can be and how subversive its take on mechanics or lack thereof is, 1000xRESIST remains—“and remains, and remains”—cohesive, demonstrating an eager zeal to explore its thesis through real-world events, philosophy, and visual abstraction.
The setting of 1000xRESIST is a sci-fi, dystopian future. An alien race known as “Occupants” has invaded Earth, bringing a virus with them that causes humans to cry themselves to death. Literally crying every bit of moisture out of the body. Total cellular death, the stuff of nightmares. This disease has effectively ended the world as we know it. We play as Watcher, one of six sisters all serving on a sort of informal council, for lack of a better word, overseeing an area sequestered underground known as The Orchard.
They live here in relative peace alongside a modest village’s worth of other sisters. The Orchard is not dissimilar to a terrarium with a smattering of modern amenities (e.g., a bar; it is “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems,” after all), closed off from the outside world…and more importantly, from the Occupants’ virus. Every sister, our six sisters who oversee it all included, is an identical clone of a girl named “Iris”, whom they worship as the “ALLMOTHER”. She is the foundational and living deity from whom they were birthed and to whom they wish to one day return: on the surface, fighting the Occupants. Simple enough, or as simple as sci-fi generally is willing to be. Of course, an inciting incident: in medias res, the game opens as Watcher—the player character, mind—runs the ALLMOTHER through with a spike, seemingly in righteous fury. Cryptic phrases are used. Curiosity is piqued. God is dead.
“Killing God” is hardly new territory in video games. It’s where 1000xRESIST goes and the stylistic choices it uses to get there that set it apart. The narrative accelerates into dramatic momentum and, as alluded to before, contains multiplicities: how parents affect their children; feeling a sense of belonging, or a sense of othering; the 2019 Hong Kong protests; religion’s potential for fervour; Nietzsche’s “God is Dead” concept and how a society restructures itself without a pious lens. The list goes on. Although familiarity may enhance the experience, studious reading of these subjects is not required for understanding or enjoyment. It follows in the vein of games such as Planescape: Torment, Disco Elysium, or Pentiment, where informed context is supplemental but not critical to a meaningful or personal experience.
The reason 1000xRESIST succeeds here is simple: the ideas presented are rooted in feelings we have all felt in our contemporary societies. We have all felt othered. We have all questioned faith. We have all been shaped in some way by those who have come before. Each of these acts as a spoke on a thematic wheel, supporting and coalescing into the central thesis (as it seems to me) that 1000xRESIST invites players to consider: that the weight of the past has a considerable impact on our present and future. The way in which past teachings, dogmatic or familial, become a part of us for good or for ill. Whether it is better to know bitter truths or maintain comfort through ignorance. Whether future generations will believe us to have resisted with pride or acquiesced in fear to a brigading regime, a rapacious ideology. “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
But this is a video game, and it would be a disservice to only praise the narrative. Mechanically, the cynical might call this a “walking sim”, a term which I find holds little value. Nevertheless, you will do a lot of walking and exploring, speaking with your NPC sisters all the while. Through this, their perspectives on the virus, religion, and home life reveal themselves to you.
You may come to feel The Orchard as home yourself—though you may, like me, never quite learn your way around the three-tiered dome’s off-kilter placement of paths and escalators. It is a minor point of frustration which, to their credit, the developers addressed after launch. Notes were taken on player criticism, and navigational niceties were added in the form of a map and a “you are here” marker. They are welcome additions, even if you find yourself still getting turned around on which stairs go to which portion of the upper floor (as I did. Believe me). The atmosphere is serene and the architecture is pleasant, at least.
The two primary in-game locations (insofar as we can weave around spoilers) are The Orchard, where the sisters live and carry out their day-to-days, and Iris’s (aka the ALLMOTHER’s) apartment, seen only through physically entering her memories. This is called a “Communion”, disparate in presentation though not in symbolic importance to the Catholic ritual with which it shares a name. The memories are fascinating in that they are at times grounded in reality and at times abstract, hazy, and fragmented—the lack of clarity and structure one might find in the mind of a moody teenager like Iris.
Her memories are scattered across the years from her teens to her ascent into deification, and light puzzle elements will have you flip through time like chapters in a book to better understand her. A traversal mechanic, a Spiderman-esque ziplining that I do not believe exists in our world’s communions, allows you to catapult through space. It’s solely for style, but it works. It’s otherworldly, almost effervescent, that all-too-familiar sensation within a dream of unconscious propulsion through liminal space. It is disorienting and mesmerising, beautifully intertwined.
Unavoidably, the first impression of a game will always be in how it looks. The artists at sunset visitor understand the importance of presentation with identity. They understand it well; most on their team have backgrounds in the performing arts, a field where a lack of identity can mean artistic death. The visuals in 1000xRESIST are striking without crossing the line into ostentatious. Colours play a major role, five of which denote the various “camps” of sisters (and their “functions” in the world), with red reserved for Principal, the overseer at the top.
The visual style is adjacent to cel-shading and in this way will resist (ha) ageing poorly. It’s as close to understated as could be while still being bold. Bold too is the set composition; one needn’t be a dedicated theatregoer to see the influence of the stage superseding that of the screen, with shots being framed in subtle abstraction or mood being implied by lighting and shadow. These stage directions approach a supporting character status themselves, various scenes being commanded with a subtle yet hair-raising verve.
This is only the surface of 1000xRESIST and what it wishes to present to you—yet there’s more to be found for those who wish to look: vulnerability through musical scoring; commentary on COVID-19 through an Asiatic lens; even the fact that it is, at times, goofy in a way where you just can’t help but snort a little. It is a deeply moving and personal work that will reward your curiosity and your trust in its artistry.
Those looking for a gameplay-forward experience may dismiss the game as a bore or, in internet parlance, “mid”. My challenge to you is to embrace the deliberate pace, the evocative set design, and the reverence with which it explores that which is important to the artists comprising sunset visitor: a love for science fiction, theatre, and video games in matrimony; the global and personal impacts of COVID-19 and the Hong Kong protests; and the power that art has to move you.
I will end with this: this is a story centred around feelings we have all felt. This is a story on the balance of forgiveness and resistance. This is a story stressing the importance of confronting and embracing the past for a better future. This is 1000xRESIST. And I hope I have convinced you that it is special.
