A minimalist abstraction of how a riot, maybe a revolution takes place, everything is blocky, faceless, and textureless. The gameplay involves kicking, the ability to throw blunt objects, throwing molotov cocktails with which you can destroy private property, this serving as some sort of “point” system which helps to make the story progress.

I understand that they were working with some limitations when it comes to the representation. Maybe the idea behind it was to create an experience that deals with a specific situation in a class struggle scenario. Nevertheless, what I get from it, is the praxis of an uneducated person when it comes to revolutionary theory.

If I had to say I learnt something from it, is that the destruction of private property is the main accelerating force in a revolutionary process, while it couldn’t be further from the truth, and all this permeates a very Western communist outlook. Educating the masses, political organization, the formation of a people’s vanguard party, etc, would have been much better plot points as a way to develop to the final riot sequence. Instead we begin with very brief walking simulator exploration of our apartment where we see how we’re getting fired, bills accumulate, food runs low, and so on. This leads our character, after the arrival of a messianic alien force to decide they must partake in the event. A very individualistic cause and effect, it’s as if the player wouldn’t care about the rest of the proletariat but instead decided to join by some revelation, and the same happened with everyone else. Indeed, the idea of an “insurrection”, where everyone relates to the feelings of class struggle, regardless of the superstructure, the material reality, and everything that could be against it, is very present, which shows a lack of understanding of past revolutionary processes.


I mention that the game is trying to isolate a very specific SCENARIO because I’ve also played A Bewitching Revolution and in that game you do interact with other people, since the game focuses on direct action, but I still don’t think that excuses it of the poor job it did in the process of ludification of the current game. The end result is, that this work is targeted to a very specific audience in the spectre of moderate left within first world countries, and it shows. It contains all of the checklists in anarchist delusional attempts at praxis, and reinforces certain ideas that are, if not considered thoughtfully, detrimental to revolutionary movements. It’s not that the gameplay loop was boring or that the story was poorly written, it does a good job with what they had, but the ideas behind it are mostly idealist in characteristic. We end up with a mediocre gameplay and storytelling that does it trick, and a political message that’s confusing and poor at best, and negative and harmful at worst.

They want to be Unturned so bad.

Whole thing is less than 20 minutes of playtime. Also I'm pretty sure riot police don't have health bars in real communist riots, so this isn't very realistic.

The steam reviews are all written by people who think they will lead humanity into a bright future