Going into No, I’m not a Human, I think I was expecting a quirky horror curio about identifying monsters in people-suits, which it sort of is – for a while. But slowly, it slips on a new face, and by the time things wrapped up several hours later in a smog of suffocating hopelessness and a smear of blood and bone, I was genuinely a little shellshocked by it all.
It’s clear from No, I’m not a Human’s strikingly assured opening moments that developer Trioskaz is completely in control of its vision. A lilting guitar strums over a photo montage of sunsets, swing sets, sleeping cats, and placid bays, while a muffled voice on the phone talks a little sadly about coming home. It’s an understated, unexpectedly melancholy start, but quickly its mood shifts again.
It’s night. You, whoever you are, stand in a sparsely decorated hallway, walls papered in disorientating swirls of lurid green. An upbeat melody plays insistently on the soundtrack, waning and warping in a way that immediately unnerves. Suddenly, a knock at the door; you peer through a peephole and a sullen face stares back – a concerned neighbour with news of a deadly heatwave, dangerous Visitors with human faces infiltrating homes, and a firm warning to stay indoors. (It’s a little weird my two favourite horror games this year, the other being Look Outside, involve people being trapped inside a building as meteorological calamity rages without, but that’s probably a story for another day). Then, bedtime.
Squint and there is, perhaps, a touch of PT here. As in Hideo Kojima’s oft-mimicked horror teaser, No, I’m not Human’s L-shaped hallway is your entire world. Sure, it has a couple of spartan rooms you can peer into either side, but for its duration this grim corridor – the game’s sole explorable 3D space – is pretty much everything you know. But unlike PT, which finds a kind of forward momentum in its endless loop, here you remain stuck – literally and thematically – in this stagnant hole. Even your limited means of interacting with the outside world – glimpses through peepholes and sealed windows, through TV broadcasts and muffled telephone calls – only serve to intensify No, I’m not Human’s sense of claustrophobic incarceration.
With the scene set, things soon settle into a distinct rhythm – a cycle of repetition that’s suffocating in its own way. You sleep by day, as the burning sun turns the world to ash, then wake at dusk, always to another knock-knock-knock at the door. Each night as the world cools, a ghoulish parade of loners and losers – drunks, wasters, conspiracy theorists, religious nuts – appears on your doorstep, each requesting sanctuary. And it’s for you to decide whether to welcome them in or send them on their way. Any of them might be a Visitor – othered creatures with human faces and unclear intentions – but companionship, you’re warned, is critical for your survival. A nightmarish end supposedly awaits if you’re visited by the Pale One when all alone.
Quickly, a problem arises; undetected Visitors will pick off your guests one-by-one in the dead of night if you inadvertently invite one into your home. And other complications force your hand in different ways, as events unfold. But the effect is the same: your days are spent in mounting paranoia, roaming your house and interrogating guests using information gleaned from TV broadcasts and scrambled radio signals – all in a bid to identify Visitors and eject them from your home, with brutal, ugly violence or otherwise. It’s a sort of highwire juggling act, where you’re attempting to manipulate events using extremely transient resources and limited tools, but the way you always seem to be playing catch-up with No, I’m not Human’s ever-evolving rules suggests Trioskaz is deliberately setting you up to fail.
No, I’m not Human might present itself as a sort of quirky deduction horror, but it feels equally haunted by the spirits of This War of Mine, Papers, Please, and Pathologic 2. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, its initial affectations slip away; the mood grows sombre and an overbearing sense of hopelessness settles in. As you spend more time with your oddball guests (assuming they survive each night) they’ll begin to open up, sharing humanising stories of their strange, sad lives. Each glimpse out the window paints an increasingly severe picture of the world beyond. Glib observations make way for genuine pathos as cities burn, ash-faced corpses hang from telephone poles, and children rot in the streets. By the time my playthrough ended with the protagonist pounding another man’s face to a liquefied pulp using his bare hands, it felt like we’d come a long, long way in a few short hours.
Curiously, though, No, I’m not Human isn’t exactly a one-and-done adventure, and is instead designed for repeated play. Guests are randomised, as are the symptoms you’ll need to identify Visitors each time, and there are hints of new narrative revelations to uncover, if only the incessantly shifting pieces would correctly align. Admittedly, my eventual ending – as vicious as it was – felt a little arbitrary, struggling to pull my playthrough’s unique story beats together in a narratively satisfying way. It’s hard to tell if this is an inherent design flaw based on a single playthrough, but even so, No, I’m not Human remains a fascinating thing.
It offers a slithering, deeply idiosyncratic slide into darkness, and a bleak vision of an uncomfortably close future (as masked government stooges begin moving from home to home disappearing ‘visitors’, it quietly invites obvious parallels). But for all its squalid discomfort and smothering despair, there’s an unmistakable sliver of light at its core: find connection and compassion when all hope seems lost, it suggests, and humanity might just endure. Not what I was expecting to be thinking about when I fired up this unassuming little horror game.
