The Day of the Devs pre-Game Awards digital showcase offered short looks at several promising projects, but one lingered with me long after the stream ended: UN:Me, a psychological horror title from Historia and Shueisha Games that feels like a cross between Silent Hill f and Among Us.
While numerous indie teams have borrowed and retooled the social-deception mechanics popularized by Among Us (see Eyes of Hellfire), UN:Me carves its own path by being explicitly single-player — and by forcing the protagonist to be both impostor and potential victim at the same time.
“It’s a unique game where a girl harboring multiple human souls within her must escape from a labyrinth of the mind,” producer Yasukazu Kawai says.
Players inhabit an unnamed teenage girl — her school uniform implies she’s high-school aged — who contains four distinct souls. Each soul has its own fears and drives, and any of them can seize control of the body, unleashing their phobias without warning. Footage from the showcase suggests much of the game unfolds inside a hospital, though other segments show exploration of a church and other unsettling spaces.
“What are you afraid of? What makes you uncomfortable?” game director Shun Sasaki asks during the UN:Me showcase. “Heights. Confined spaces. Authority figures. Things that seem trivial to others can trigger something primal within us. This game explores that concept — anxieties that are unique to each person. Four souls reside within the girl. You control whichever soul surfaces at any given moment, but they’ll switch involuntarily as you play. During exploration, each soul’s fears and anxieties become exaggerated and attack the girl one after another. When the soul changes, so does the fear you experience as a player.”
On first glance, the game evokes familiar Silent Hill motifs: a hospital staffed by nurses with identical faces and unnerving smiles, waiting rooms filled with patients whose heads have been replaced by oversized flowers, and a pervasive floral motif that contrasts beauty with dread. The protagonist even bears a visual resemblance to Hinako Shimizu from Silent Hill f. But UN:Me pivots away from imitation by making the core conflict psychological — you must figure out which of the four souls is truly “real.”
“Each of the four souls claims that the body belongs to them,” Historia representative Takuya Yamanaka explains in the trailer. As you gather clues, you must decide who is authentic — and when you’re convinced one is an impostor, you’re forced to eliminate it. Because souls can lie and misdirect, misjudgments are easy to make.
“Perhaps you’ve already eliminated the real [soul] with your own hands,” Yamanaka warns. “The last one standing might be a fake. Either way, your decisions are irreversible.”
No pressure.
UN:Me does not have an announced release date yet, but the game is currently available to wishlist on Steam.
Source: Polygon
