Back in 2024, Sunset Visitor released its debut game, 1000xResist, to tremendous critical acclaim. Now, the studio is back with a new narrative-driven work of science-fiction: Prove You’re Human. But while the two might share the same genre and eagerness to explore the human condition, don’t expect more of the same.
“My real desire is to communicate to players who follow us over multiple games that the one thing we really like to do is to surprise people and turn things around on them,” Sunset Visitor founder Remy Siu told GameSpot. “I’m excited to see how the audience will discover all the ways in which this is not 1000xResist that we cannot talk about yet.”
In Prove You’re Human, players take on the role of Santana, a woman who has split her consciousness in two. Following the split, one version of Santana is tasked with entering a digital space and convincing the company’s AI system, Mesa, that she is not a human being; her corporeal form, however, continues to “spend her days living the life you’ve always dreamed of in the outside world.” Though the events that transpire throughout Prove You’re Human remain a mystery, Sunset Visitor has already posed one of the game’s biggest question: At the end of the program, will you decide to re-merge your two selves, or will you discard your work self?
Suffice to say, Prove You’re Human seeks to give players space to explore their own feelings on some contentious topics, the most notable being artificial intelligence and identity. To shed a bit more light on the game, GameSpot spoke with Siu, writer Natalie Checo, and the pair behind the game’s publisher (Black Tabby Publishing), Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias.
Can you tell me a little bit more about Prove Your Human in your own words?
Siu: The way that we’ve just begun to think about Prove Your Human is that it’s a possession story–one where an AI dares to dream that she’s human and you’ve been hired to put her in her place and train her out of her delusions. It’s a game that really engages with the year that we live in, or the kind of effectual experience of being a human right now, but also engages with a long tradition of artificial intelligence stories in science fiction and speculative fiction, and hopes to explore the tension of that tradition with what is happening and how it’s unfolding. It’s diving into that kind of uncomfortable space.
One thing that stuck out to me is the way [Prove You’re Human] is presented. It feels like a compassionate, human take on artificial intelligence. It’s a divisive topic with very strong reactions towards it, and I feel like you’re navigating it in a really interesting way, based on the trailer. Can you tell me a little bit about the approach you’re taking with the subject matter?
Siu: In the writer’s room, we understand that there are expectations or assumptions that are being made based on the context in which we live. And so one of the things that we’re inviting in is that kind of expectation and assumption. Everybody has lots of thoughts about this.
We know that this is a space right now that’s very fraught. People are asking us–and to an extent you are asking us–about [AI], and if 15 years ago, or even five years ago, we had an artificial intelligence character in our game, I don’t think that would be something that would be asked. We’re knowingly driving right into this and in that way, I think we’re trying to create a space we can throw impulses into and allow them resonate–to allow people to think about these things in all kinds of different ways. That’s generally how we think about making any kind of work. It’s about carving out the contours of that space and then throwing impulses into them; seeing how they resonate inside of that space and hopefully allowing a suspension for people to think about things in ways they may not have if they did not engage with it.
What is the relationship with artificial intelligence technology at the studio and has anything changed as you’ve worked on this game?
Siu: We don’t use artificial intelligence at the studio.
Howard: We have a clause in our contract that says people that we work with are not allowed to use it.
Howard-Arias: Not that they would use it if that clause wasn’t there, but we’re all pretty firmly committed.
Siu: We’re a very practice-forward studio. And it sounds trite to say it, but a people-forward studio. We have new people on the team this time around, Natalie is one of them, and they influence and shape the work with their particular interests and specialties. We invite that in the same way that we invite the world, the state of the world, into this.
We do watch YouTube videos about [AI] though. It’s a great space in which you get to see how people are reacting to it–how they’re interested in it and what their relationship is to these things. We take a very human-centric approach this way. The focus is on, “How are humans reacting to this? How are humans reacting to each other around this?”
It looks like you’re leaning a bit more into FMV use with this project. Can you tell me a little bit about why, or things its use has enabled you to do?
Siu: As you know, there were a couple of FMVs in 1000xResist, and that was something that, after finishing the game, I identified as special. We’re always looking at where we can make special contributions based on where we’re coming from as artists with our backgrounds, and that was something that we identified. We’re pretty comfortable doing them now, we have experience, and the filmmaker who shot those sections is now on the team, working with us on these FMV and live-action sequences.
It was really important to us because, in this game in particular, we wanted to draw a very clear line in the diegesis; the virtual world is being represented by real-time 3D graphics, and the real-world is being represented by these film sequences. That was a part of the fiction.
Something I really love about 1000xResist are the performances so I wanted to ask: Is anybody returning from the last project for this one? Can you share some of the talent you have on board?
Siu: We will have some returning voice actors–and I won’t say who because those will be left to surprises–and we do have some amazing new actors. It’s been really interesting because, for example, one of them who plays the main character, Santana, her name is EaeMya [ThynGi]. She is both appearing on camera and voicing the actor, and then also her body has been scanned to be the player character model in the virtual world. So there’s that new vector of performance that we’re thinking about in this game, and it’s a fun new thing we get to play with.
And the character of Mesa is voiced by an actor named Claire Osborn-Li, a young artist based in Australia who has never done any acting or voice-over for a game that I’m aware of. We discovered her on a podcast, actually, for her video game book club. She wanted us to come on and talk about 1000xResist, then when we heard her voice we were like, “Oh my God, let’s mentally bookmark that.” You can hear her voice in the trailer. She’s amazing.
As we discuss how the performances have evolved, are there any other things that you got to do this time around that maybe you wanted to do with 1000xResist but didn’t have the capacity or time to do? Or that now, with your knowledge and experience, you get to go all-in on?
Siu: It’s kind of hard for us to think about 1000xResist that way, only because … I think all of our works will always be shaped by these lines where we consciously draw a constraint and allow it to affect the work. It’s hard to say if there was anything that we really wanted to do that we get to do this time, beyond certain story things that I will not mention.
The one thing I will say is there were a lot of technical pain points on our end that we’ve taken into consideration as we rebuilt the system or reused some of the 1000xResist tools that we built for ourselves. That’s an ongoing thing that we want to keep doing–building up a core set of tools for ourselves to make things easier. If a tool is not easy to use, it won’t get used.
Are there any things about Prove Your Human or this journey that you feel like you haven’t gotten to talk about yet that you’re like, “I’ve been waiting for a journalist to ask me this?”
Siu: That’s a good question. It’s all spoilers, that’s the thing. I’m going through all this stuff and there’s so many things I want to talk about.
Checo: I’m interested in seeing how people react to the CAPTCHA mechanic. When I came on, I told Remy, “This all sounds fabulous, but I don’t think most people want to do CAPTCHAs as a hobby or as an experience. So how can we make that interesting? How can we get the player on board with it?”
Howard-Arias: I was also skeptical at first!
Checo: But I’ve been won over. When people look at the trailer and they see that, hopefully it’ll pay off. Because we have more programmers, we were able to do more things mechanically than 1000xResist and I’m curious as to how people will react to that, even though we are first and foremost a narrative studio.
Siu: I would say … I’m excited to see how the audience will discover all the ways in which this is not 1000xResist that we cannot talk about yet. But hopefully, in a way, that is exciting for the people who played it, right? My real desire is to communicate to players who follow us over multiple games that the one thing we really like to do is to surprise people and turn things around on them.
