Summary

1000xResist touched me in a way that I didn't expect out of a game; couldn't, even. It's a beautifully evocative, expressive, deeply written and filled with so many affirmations of life and love. It's cold, reaching into the darkest places of humanity and what it's capable of. It's a full spectrum work that thinks beyond conventions of games to tell something multi-disciplinary, painting its picture through striking cinematography, non-linear writing, the human form itself under the principles of something like interpretive dance, like theater. While it's so raw and creative, it's also tender, nuanced, alternating between gentleness and firmness, dullness and sharpness, recursively in a flowery dance.

It's not perfect, technically speaking at least; rather, has an amateurish edge with its rough movement systems, lower fidelity assets and environmental design. The creators all have backgrounds in things beyond games, more so the arts, which explains much of how it functions and presents itself. It's the imperfections, how it's so unrefined while uncompromising in its essence that inspires and motivates me. It compels me to work on my own games again, a hobby I'd basically abandoned in college. it lifts my spirits and drives me to express and create in these unashamed and earnest ways. To be messy and get my feelings and sentimentality out through my art. Kindling that lifts me through the cold air, letting me float above everything to really take in the beauty before me; showing me a perspective I thought I'd lost.

It's an easy game to play but a deeply difficult game for me to experience for a lot of reasons, which I feel a compulsion to go into personal detail on. it affected me, struck deep at my heart, many exposed nerves and woulds I'd been trying to brush past, cover, even ignore. It's a game filled with pain, angst, loss, resistance. It delves deep into the connection between mother and daughter, sisters, love in all of its forms, for all of its harmony and toxicity. A deep dive in the material relationship of power, control of narratives, authoritarianism, the true nature and worth of freedom and righteous struggle. The way it approaches mercy, forgiveness, understanding and the tragedy of misunderstanding, it gives the deeply compelling feel of a Greek tragedy with the grim hopeful forward looking perspective of something like Deep Space 9.

It's really difficult to talk about the way this game affected me without spoiling the story. I really want you to experience this story blindly if you're reading this, but there's things I need to say. You will not have appropriate context for all of what I'm saying and the experience will be beautiful regardless.

Childhood

Everything begins with the unrest, political turmoil. People living, fighting, shoulder to shoulder for the place they live in resistance to an authoritarian takeover of their nation. The sheer terror violence and suppression leaving deep scars on the psyche, of the victims of the state. Leaving the only home they knew behind, only to understand its transformation, that it won't be the same, when or if they ever return. They had different things on their mind. Survival, love, a child, a continuation in a place where they could be safer, where they could provide a better life for the ones they love most in a new place. One where they'll always be treated as foreign, suspected and mistrusted. A pining for home, and a sense of loss of identity, outsiders in the new culture. Still; they have families to raise, who won't see the terror.

The child grows with hopes and dreams, curiosity and love for the world around her, a passion and freedom of expression, an innocence. As she's shaped by her circumstances and expectations, her sense of unconditional love and trust in the world is betrayed. She's a circle getting forced into a square peg. She's a stranger to the world she's beginning to grow up in, and to the one she has a parental connection to. She lashes out in anger, doesn't truly know or understand what she does, only that it causes more grief. It causes reprisals, the world revealing itself to be harder, colder. All there is, is to endure a life of expectations, very little choice, very little to yearn and live for, adrift in a forlorn interior world, nobody to let in. There's a safety in isolation.

As the shape of time bends around the emotions of the story, things are launched into a desolate past. The girl has grown and truly been forced into her role through a long material sequence of violence and control. More trapped and alone than ever, she looks back at her time in high school to understand the nature of her predicament, of what went wrong, to say goodbye to everyone one last time. To project her memories into the future, for her descendants to eventually understand. Some kind of hollow justice for the people hurt in the process of growing pains. A broken passage of pain through years, days, leading up to the crisis where the world is pulled apart at the seams by a terror beyond comprehension. Change and leaving, death, distance, submission to authority, a greater plan and architecture for our part in a greater vision. Have you ever been in such close proximity to people, while feeling utterly alone?

In a position where someone loved her, when she was lashing out, powerless and denying her own fate, she dragged Jiao down with her. Made her suffer, made a fool of her, broke her heart.. They were both strangers, foreigners. She adored her, tried to be like her, spent time with her after school, but Iris was alone, wanted to stay this way. Rebuked. The Occupants came to claim Jiao along with everyone else, a world uprooted. Tearing in the eyes, suffocation, collapse.. Our atmosphere, our climate in ruin, effects of tear gas in the face of resistance, or a panic attack overwhelmed by the existential pain of life. It all blends together for me.. Iris leaves her parents behind to fall into the machinations of others, as she's immune to the effects of the Occupants. The memory plays out, the Watcher sees her story, is covertly warned, this Allmothers past is checkered with violence and betrayal we've yet to see. But she's so human. She was a victim of circumstance, she didn't choose her life.

Every single thing I've relayed struck a deep nerve with me. I grew up as a precocious and curious child with parents showing me a terrible kind of authoritarian control over my life. A distinct middle eastern quality to my appearance, to my speech, I couldn't hide it, especially living in a post-9/11 America, where people like me were treated with hatred and suspicion. My nose, my hair, my skin, the incorrect W and B/V sounds I learned from my mother. I would express myself, I would be forced into isolation, made to cry, suffer. I remember sobbing from the things people said about me, my mother offering not to help me love my body but to mask it, with bleach. My feminine truth, suppressed by my father outright.

I would learn to stop crying. I would grow into my adolescence entirely without grace, continuing in a feedback loop of lashing out. For everything I did to show my intelligence or creativity, it was encouraged up to a point where it began to hurt me, and so I lashed out more. Turmoil between the parents, a story as old as time, but they wouldn't keep it between each other but against me. Both of them, turning on me, dragging me, making me an effigy of what's wrong with them. I watched my mother try to kill herself in front of me. I couldn't cry anymore. How could I cry? Life became a paralyzing terror where there was no control, and where I had to embody a rejection of order just to find my breath. I had something of an immunity, but there's always a toll. Both Iris and her mother deal with extreme PTSD from their pasts, and in parallel, they are given their own immunity from the Occupants. It's like when you've been emotionally broken, you can reach an understanding or way of living nobody else can comprehend.

It hurts so much to see Iris struggling through the end of high school. I was that child. Disaffected and bitter loner. But I was also Jiao too. I've struggled both with the harsh rejection of others to even feel at home in a space, as well as never feeling at home in any of the spaces I've been assigned. I lashed out, hurt myself, drugs, alcohol. I made mistakes. I did bad things, some of them so bad I don't ever want to utter. Red ribbons wrapping tightly around my disaffected life, as my parents mistreat me, kick me out, weaponize authority against me in any ways they can. I continue to go along with their wishes into college, by some miracle they were not entirely sick of me. It doesn't end until they're completely cut off. They will always find a way to control.

Dystopia

Further in time, it's a compound full of clones living a perfectly stratified futuristic society. All clones of Iris, of the Allmother. Given a mythology, a narrative of her own past. Not even in her own words but carried down by others hoping to emulate her image. The threat of occupants is still alive, everyone is masked and safe, but they have forgotten themselves and where they come from. They're actively reinforced an illusion of what they should be, to conform to a life of absolute control. Their reward is to one day be sent away by train to meet the Allmother. The Watcher recalls the Allmother's past through Communions with her Secretary. Revelations about Iris being a a monster are revealed by her children, who lash out in resistance against the situation they've been forced into by her.. A recursive misery, a vicious cycle of control. Resistance, authority, violence without clarity of purpose. The truth is hidden, and they are like prisoners.

It's horrible. To have every little bad thing you ever did thrown back at you in a verbally abusive onslaught. A ritual to reaffirm your place, to make you submit, to be obedient, to tolerate the abuse. Every mistake you wish you could undo. It's always haunting you, it never goes away. I can never stop seeing those things, feeling an overwhelming sense of shame in myself. I can't handle it. I can't breathe. It's panic attacks all the way down. And they immortalize and broadcast these mistakes. They mythologize them. They become a sort of habitual game for these innocent shells.

Starting to get into the hair of the plot, I'll try to keep things minimal again. The real meat of the game, for you to explore and understand for yourself, unless you already have and are just interested in what I have to say.. If so, I appreciate you a lot.. It isn't easy for me to keep going. But I feel a compulsion to keep writing. Even so, everyone in the compound, their way of life is all they know and they try to make the best of it with the information they have. Many have diverging opinions about the Allmother, but nearly all live in fear of what she's capable of. That fear alone is wielded as a litany against disobedience, for a person who none of them have even seen, all according to the grand designs of the Principal, facilitating these Communions. These unveilings of the Allmothers past, of the nature of the compound. The Watcher watches.

Talk of original sin lays at the heart of why people stick to their programming. But it's no sin.. It's another burning memory. In the time between leaving her parents behind, and establishing her world of clones, Iris had lived alone, all other humans with her, dead and gone. They had tricked her, controlled her, violated, betrayed her trust, used and objectified her for dystopian ends. She made a prayer for their death, for her release. When you live a life of abuse and control, it's in your nature to lash out in self defense, to assert control over yourself again. Many will see a victim and say they're the real offender these days. But these dynamics change and evolve with the passage of time, and the capability of abuse lies in everyone; particularly in those who have only known it their whole lives.

She'd continue the project to clone herself. Still, the isolation, the fear, the loss of control all boiling back up to the surface. Expectations to implant on her children, the pain of the past wearing down on her as she struggles to move forward, just like her own mother. Then, a child innocent, without the context of the pain and misery, the pain and regret. Faces she never wanted to see again, the living dead before her very eyes opening and festering fresh wounds. A bottomless pit of despair to behold, cut down. The child cast out and punished, trapped to a lifetime of reliving the same cycles of growth, suffering and loss as the Principal of the compound. The daughter becomes the mother. The Youngest becomes the Principal, imprisoned by innocent mistakes.

In more memories throughout the story, Iris, her mother, the Principal, Watcher, all lose control of themselves in their sleep. Another sign of trauma. At my worse, I'd have a paralyzing fear of falling asleep in the company of others for what I might say or do in my sleep. It pushed me even deeper into an isolation, where there was nothing I could do. When all you know is control and punishment, the fear that hides behind the discipline slips out through the cracks of our subconscious. The violence of the police, of a parents reprisals, seeing something you shouldn't have, your own shameful mistakes.

In this time period, where I was with my friends, the people I was most close to in my life, who I'd eventually move away from to escape my own parents.. It was any other night where we'd get together and perform together, roleplaying, a bit of community theater and drama. I was still beginning my transition and hadn't come out to everyone or figured out how I wanted to present myself yet, but I was feeling good about myself. a little drunk. Still terrified of those friends seeing my insides on the outside. The main friend, he wanted to be a cop, a criminologist. We were pulled over. I almost saw my insides on the outside. My heart still pounds thinking about it; the terror of the moment never left me. He didn't look at me the same. He didn't look at the police the same.

Theater

In the aftermath of the murder of Iris, a righteous crime of passion done in resistance against the dystopia she'd build for her children. Condemned them to a life without immunity from the Keepers. To toil and struggle under a hierarchical system. Only this murder was orchestrated by a political opportunist using it to her own advantage. The would be liberators who could direct them all to a healthier way of life denied before they could ever get the chance, from the very beginning. A new world, one of roving death squads. Of even more authority, of newspeak and control, offering progress and destroying the tyranny of the past with the tyranny of the future. More atrocities we didn't know we could see done in the name of change and progress.

Since the beginning of resistance, there have been those resisting to seek new forms of abuse and control over others. To right a wrong with more wrongs, to take the place of power, not to radically alter for peoples benefits, but for the power in its own right. Or even people who don't consider the nature of the power to be so corruptive, the control over others, they see it as an affordable loss to make on behalf of their subjects. Authoritarians all with interest in reforming the language of liberation from systems to institute their own new forms of centralized violence. When the power pools into the hands of a selective few, people implicitly lose much of their agency in their own choices. It's the nature of hierarchy, of material power and class analysis. There are the people who control means, and the people at the mercy of this smaller group.

The truth of things hidden in the subconscious of the people, they don't know it but they can feel this isn't the way things should be. The capacity of what could be sustained in their compound is being stretched to its absolute limit. A more harsh stratification of haves and have nots. People from the past clinging to their old joys only to have them ripped away.. An image that once meant terror, death and pain of the past, revived and brought into this world as little more than slaves to serve the interests of a vain, panoptic despot. She calls her army the Red Guard, as if the parallels to Hong Kong and the duplicitousness of state capitalism utilizing the iconography of the people were not obvious enough already.

I've resisted everything from the beginning. The lashing out, feeling the hand of authority coming down and hurting me time and time again. Every strike against me, physical or emotional left a lesson, but not the one intended by the people with power over me. Parents, teachers, police, adults, cruel children who took different lessons from me. I've grown into an ideology born from the same sort of hurt they felt. A love of my fellow sisters, mutual aid and a desire for peace and freedom. To make my own choices and make my mistakes. To take this concentrated power and diffuse it among everyone into new structures, new rules where nobody is left behind. Where nobody could ever accumulate so much power as to keep people hurting for so long in so many ways. I believe in Communism. I believe in Anarchy. In the words of Kropotkin, "Anarchy leads to Communism, and Communism to Anarchy, both alike being expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the pursuit of equality."

Blue sees everything, Iris, her mother, the Watcher, the Principal, all in her dreams, living and toiling away at her empty life devoid of purpose only to survive. It is the world of the now that we're all trapped in. We are told that we've hit the apex of what is possible, that there are always good things on the horizon and fears of backsliding which we must be vigilant of, while those in charge of us always have the final say, and do the backsliding they warn of. We see the authoritarian violence up close.. How could we ever get that image out of our heads when it's been burned into our minds so brightly? We have to resist. We HAVE to resist. There is no choice but to resist. Something has to give, so we're brought to extremes.

Revolution isn't always built on noble ideals, but on the thin fabric of social contracts, the limits of enduring the suffering of living in a cruel society. People of disparate groups and ideas with their own goals come together in alliances of convenience. One's actions may interfere with another's, since we all have different visions of the future and mutually exclusive means of reaching this point. It takes looking past oneself and towards a plurality that can sustain the most people, rather than this exclusivity of ideology, of who gets to be free, who gets their needs met, who gets live for lack of want in the end. Everyone deserves a chance inherently, because we are inherently good. We are born innocent, transformed through the violence inherent to the system. Align your beliefs with the good of everyone, and not simply for the enlightened few. You'd be surprised at how many peoples lives and understanding of everything will change if you give them a chance to.

Forgiveness

Do you remember when you held your knife at me? Screaming red, I couldn't move, completely frozen in fear. Do you remember your hands on me? The way I would lose my breath, petrified as you'd walk through the front door. I would have nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. living in the most exposed room of the house, there was no space. A life of misery and no privacy, no control.

Attempts are made towards unity, through the circumstances and mechanics of the game, through the weaving and cyclical nature of the ways everyone is connected, you can find a way. We all have something in common with each other, there are ways we could understand, make each other understand. Through persistence, through a perpetual yearning to be free, we resist and assert that there could be a better way. Our undisturbed existence alone is proof that something is amiss, that something needs to change about the way we're stratified and organized. The way we treat each other. If everyone could really see and understand, live in the shoes of others, that information could let us move forward. Arms locked together, either side by side or in an embrace.

She used to tell me about the life she lived in her home country. Her own mother who hurt her worse than me. Who dismissed and hated every expression of her individuality. Still, she grew into a strong woman, made her own choices. Stood up for what she believed in in the face of authoritarianism and fascists targeting and killing people like her, her friends, my relatives. She left for a better world. She found love. She had me.

For all of the suffering and tragedy in the game done in the name of retaliation and justice, things never seem to get better. Things change, but vengeance does so well to hide it's true nature. It isn't justice, but an act of violence. The game spends a great deal of time expressing that violence isn't a delicate instrument. While necessary in many cases, it isn't the solution to everything, and can be used for its own sake. Many uses of it even enforce and necessitate its continued use. There's something greater, finer tools that need to be used to change things. Mercy, forgiveness, solidarity and awareness lay at the heart of the game. The entire impetus of the Keepers and their invasion is something of a connective tissue of the collective consciousness and art of communication. The keepers power is something we all have inside of us, and it's capable of horrible and beautiful things.

Every mother was a child once. She was a tomboy, a rebellious soul. Jumping from third story windows to sneak away, hurting herself horribly in the process and being nursed back to health by the very people she'd been trying to spite. She loves the beautiful Mediterranean Sea, discotheques, pomegranates, vivid artistic expression. She's a jovial and cheery person who always finds a way to blend her unique sense of humor into everything when things are going good. I love my mother so much. It makes it so heartbroken weaving through the fabric of my memory, feeling the gaps, scars, permanent marks where love should've been. I am like my mother, my mother is like me. Her mother was like her.

Its in me to forgive and show mercy, even if I'm weaker for it. I echo the sentiment of Watcher that nobody is beyond forgiveness. I don't believe in death, but life. I want everyone to live as long as possible. Even nazis. Even billionaires. But I'm depressed because they show a level of violence that necessitates more violence to preserve everyone else. I believe in care ethics on a hardcore level. I believe fully in restorative justice and rehabilitation. The tools of violence need to be dismantled and brought down to an even level among everyone.Its a difficult thing to believe; maybe the hardest thing when all of my emotions scream at how stupid I am. Still, I'm trying to look at a bigger picture. Subtraction is violence. Change itself is violence. If you take away the means to control and hurt people they will not control and hurt people.

I told her. I told her everything. I told her I was suicidal, and it was because of her. I told her that I can barely cling onto this life, for all of its beauty and that every day was a battle for me. That I'd hoped I could move on from these things and heal, in a time where I was so certain that healing would never come. Even now, I feel so damaged, an ashamed and broken whipping girl, even if the abuse has long ended. It plays back recursively in my head over and over, to the point where it becomes the very language of my mind and memory. She reflected on herself. She's sorry. She's sorry and I forgive her. I forgive her because nobody is beyond forgiveness, if they show they really care.. If they communicate, if they reach back out. I love you, mom. I mean it.

I find solace in the perennial suffering of resistance knowing I could help things even a little. Even for one person. We are individuals, and the collective of humanity is beyond our comprehension. Even so, the collective changes as people change.. As decisions are made, choices, even if those choices come from circumstances that are hamstrung, or where there is an illusion of choice. Everything we do for one another makes a difference, and solidarity together, organizing as one makes for a better world.. This is the true unifying power of the Keepers, of communication and the arts, humanities and relation of our inner worlds externalized so radiantly.

I'm sorry I haven't called. I'm just overwhelmed and terrified at the magnitude of life right now. I'm sure you understand. I'm starting to grow into responsibilities, feel frustrations you felt about being so alone with work and struggle with nobody to lean on. I want to be a mother. I even wrote a confessional about it. You will live to be a grandmother if I can help it. There is no chance you're ever going to see or understand the context of this. It's practice, I'll say it to you in person. The way Iris and her mother always avoided talking to each other, Iris and the Youngest. Distance and isolation made worse through a lack of communication. I don't want to keep making those mistakes again.

Sisterly love for one another. Motherly love for the child. Fatherly inspiration to be there for the next generation. Resisting when you are pressured to do something wrong. Resisting authority, asserting our own humanity and showing radical kindness and empathy in one another. There is something so astoundingly beautiful about the way the game approaches it. Yet it's tarnished by its own capacity for its inversions. When parents fail. When we aren't forgiven, or given patience, or understood. Where things divide us along ideological and circumstantial axes.. Abuse. Control. Violations. Misunderstandings. Death. It shows the full spectrum because there can be no light without darkness. There are reasons it matters. Things that are self evident and beautiful to behold. Life is fragile and terrifying and the totality of the beauty and goodness we will ever experience.

Hekki grace, sister.

Reviewed on Feb 20, 2025

1000xRESIST is a philosophical journey into the struggles of the Chinese diaspora masquerading as a Sci-Fi adventure game. It is a poignant work that showcases the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests and is obviously banned in China. While you don’t have to be part of the Chinese diaspora to play this game, there is a great deal of context lost due to the lack of lived experiences, such as: racism (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic), filial piety and tiger moms. The game was so impactful that after reaching credits, I immediately started a second playthrough knowing I will never play another game quite like this.

In the far flung future, most of humanity is extinct due to a disease brought by an alien life form known as the Occupants. Life thrives in a deep underground bunker known as the Orchard, populated by clones of a single woman. This individual known as the ALLMOTHER is treated like a deity due to her ageless appearance and her immunity to the disease. The clones do not have traditional names, but instead are referenced by their function, such as Healer, Fixer and Knower. You play as Watcher, and her role is to observe and report the other sisters (clones). Watcher also has the ability to commune with her sisters, transporting them into the ALLMOTHER’s memories to test their resolve and faithfulness. Watcher gradually learns that the ALLMOTHER is named Iris and may not be the saint as proclaimed to be.

1000xRESIST is a complicated game to understand. The story is not told in chronological order; There are in-universe sayings like “Hekki ALLMO” and “Hair to Hair”; And characters occasionally speak in riddles and metaphors. The game can feel like a confusing mess. One moment, Watcher could be witnessing a family eating noodles together and in the next moment they are arguing over a dead pet hamster. Stick with the game and eventually the pieces will start to come together in Chapter 4.

The gameplay in 1000xRESIST is not great, it’s a walking simulator with some traversal elements. When Watcher is in a communion, she can shift time leading to a few simple puzzles where the player has to shift time back and forth to navigate past obstacles. Watcher also has the ability to slingshot herself for long distances by targeting orange halos. The worst part of the game is when Watcher is out of the communions and is exploring the Orchard. The Orchard is a labyrinthine maze of stairs and escalators, filled with the empty hallways and rooms. It is easy to get lost and boring to traverse. A waypoint system would have been greatly appreciated.

Awareness of Chinese customs and culture will greatly benefit players’ enjoyment of 1000xRESIST. The Chinese language, more specifically the Cantonese dialect, is spoken prominently by Iris’s parents. Players don’t need to understand Cantonese to play the game, but knowing Cantonese adds an extra layer of immersion. As of this writing, Cantonese is a slowly dying dialect due to mainland China requiring Hong Kong kids to learn Mandarin in school. There is a subtle nod to this when Jiao, a recent immigrant from Hong Kong speaks Mandarin to Iris. Another cultural point that may be lost on some players is the concept of filial piety. Kids are punished for misbehaving in Asian cultures. It may sound cruel and unusual, but parents will hit their kids. I reflexively winced when Iris’s mother told her husband to “bring out the feather duster”.

The background of 1000xRESIST is interesting because the developers come from the dance and theater industry. In other words, 1000xRESIST doesn’t play like a typical video game. The game frequently changes perspective, lighting and camera effects. The art direction is more evocative of displays in a museum rather than in video games. This is sometimes overdone and it can be hard to tell what to do and where to go next. The somber piano music that accompanies the game is subtle, present, but never overpowering. The graphics are on the amateurish side, with basic textures, simple shadows and reused models and assets. The game will not win any awards for graphical excellence, but is crafted in an artistically pleasing manner.

1000xRESIST captures the generational trauma present among the Chinese diaspora. For players in this group, this game will be a revelatory experience, that finally, finally a game acknowledges the struggles of a long misunderstood populace, warts and all. For all other players, I beseech you, if you have friends or know anyone in the Chinese diaspora, speak to them about the themes in 1000xRESIST and I guarantee you it will evoke a powerful memorable response.

I came into this very excited about the game bc of all the hype. I left enjoying the end and moved by the story but unable to overlook a lot of aspects to the game. Here's a breakdown of my experience

Liked:

• Loved the story telling about hong kong, intimate look at family life / growing up, sci fi elements
• The memento style intro definitely got me hooked (and honestly extremely confused) to see whats going on

Not Liked:

• The pathfinding was SO BAD like UNFORGIVABLY BAD that it left the worst taste in my mouth. Might be the worst ive ever experienced in a game and its saying something. I spent way too much time lost in the main area unable to find where the hell i was supposed to go to talk to people, and not connecting more paths was so frustrating when you were close to a target but unable to get to them thru an unpassable wall
• The voice acting was cute but also laughably bad. Guessing friends and family helped?
• All the weird unnecessary tasks felt like a poor way to move the narrative along
• Too long for what it was (walking sim)

There's definitely a 4/5 game in here but it needed to be a shorter more cleaned up game, and for the hub exploration aspects to either be shortened and improved. I think

i forgot to log this when i finished, but it's easily one of the most interesting games i've played in the last few years. i am generally pretty down on visual novels, but 1000xresist isn't exactly a visual novel in the traditional sense, it's more like a game that succeeds because it succeeds in creating and drawing out an extremely limited scope of world in increasingly surprising ways.

i recently have been thinking about how TV in its most successful incarnations is all about harnessing the ritual of returning to the tv so that you can spend time basking in a place, in a flavor of story, in a vibe. sort of like that picard flute episode of star trek which is both an extremely-star trek episode, simultaneously, it's a story about star trek itself: we spend seven seasons watching a show like that, which translates to roughly 5 and a half 24 hour days days of tv, but anyone that's seen all seven seasons of tng (or voyager or ds9) will count that show as taking up its own lifetime in their memory. further, because the show does such a good job of establishing what it means to be part of that show's universe, we can immediately imagine season 8 or even hallucinate episodes or scenarios that never aired but should have.

the line for this game is that it's about people living in a post-pandemic space and dark secrets that are revealed, but i think that sort of does it a disservice because the game is so much about what this place is and how we can understand it through gameplay, which, fundamentally, is repetitive, but in this case, that repetition, that familiarity, is something that can draw you in to understanding the way of a place, or to understanding the story it wants to tell.

what's novel about 1000xresist is the way that it leverages that repetition, that familiarity, to let you as player understand that world, to feel agency over it and to ultimately feel a sense of responsibility over it and to feel a tangibility to the costs and sacrifices that it represents, to feel a sense of belonging, of placeness, to feel a sort of desperation and genuine loss through a narrative that lasts only about twelve hours or so. in fairness, this is longer than most prestige seasons these days.

why does it work? partly because the game chooses to be tactical in how much it wants of you and also how much of its story it hides from you. in both these ways, it is far from unfair, it doesn't dangle a carrot in front of you nor does it present a goal that feels so distant it might as well be unattainable. the devs want you to play it, they want you to finish it, and in focusing on this goal, they've trimmed a lot of the fat from this game that might otherwise detract from the experience they landeded on.

to friends i've described 1000xresist as basically serial experiments lain set in the world of nier automata. i don't think that's inaccurate, but it's also far from the whole story, which is both equal parts tragic and confounding. like nier, the gameplay is more a meditation on what games are than any specific fight or encounter. you don't play nier to fight shades, but you might get something out of it overall. same deal here.

i played this on switch which is great for portability and generally where i like more narrative games, but the perf is awkward and i can't believe i'm saying this, but the graphics feel a bit too rugged at times. beyond all that though, it runs pretty great.

highly recommended

1000xResist was a game that had been sitting in my mind ever since I completed it, subtly haunting me as I try to grapple and wrestle with my thoughts on it. I wanted my review to, initially, be more structured and thought out but.. It feels more right to stream of consciousness this thing.

Lightly, this review touches on spoilers.

Putting bluntly it is, in essence, a visual novel with extra steps. Gameplay consists of walking to one place to another, interacting with people in limited dialogue trees or learning more about the setting and people from commentary by accompanying characters or your own character's musing. But is through that simplicity, and perhaps even despite that simplicity, that allowed it to convey its narrative as it did.

Amongst the dozens, perhaps even dozens, of games I have played through my life up to this point, 1000xResist is only one of two games that touched me as deeply as it did. That moved me through such an array of emotions. From Watcher's matricide of Iris, Youngest/Principal's quiet manipulation and festering angst, Iris' misunderstanding and abuses, the struggle of Iris' parents in integrating into a foreign society in an alien land, to learning the secrets of the Occupants and how all these disparate elements all come in at the end- Echoing and relating to one another. The quiet beauty of being with someone you know that will always understand you. The horror and pain of when people grow to no longer recognize you.

Joy, sadness, alienation, despair, hope, adulation, admonishment.. All things I felt. My heart aching and moved and quieted through a disjointed story that spans much of the human experience. It is a game that, even right now as I am writing this review, I am having a hard time putting to words how much it is come to mean to me. How much it made me look into myself and my relationship with others, how I've conducted myself and how I may appear to others.

It would be simple to state the series of events of the narrative. To go in-depth on the themes of family, alienation, human connection as others have done but.. To me, all of that will still never do justice on just how beautiful and human this piece of media is.

Perhaps it won't resonate with everyone that plays it. And that is alright, art will always be subjective. But, for me at least, what technical flaws it may have do not out weigh the achievements. The boundaries it pushes, the truths it puts to power. It is rare pieces of art and media like this that reminds me just how important and relevant video games are an artform can and will be. This is a game that I firmly believe everyone should give an earnest try at least once in their life.

To me, a timeless masterpiece and a forever recommendation.. And if there is one or two things I can take away from my time with this title..

We are all misunderstood. But we all can be known, with time and effort. We're all hurting, but that doesn't mean that pain can't be shared. Be kind and forgive, even if you will never forget.

Thank you for reading my ramblings.

I don't think I know how to write about this game. I finished it around midnight last night and have been left to think. This game has become profoundly important to me and has touched me with how expertly it is executed and woven that it feels almost undefinable. I am not sure if I will be talking about spoilers in this so I will just say this right now. If narratives in games are something that matters to you, play this game. It is simply confident in its story and is executed flawlessly. Enjoy it and get lost in the world.

1000xResist is just one word: Human. The team at sunset visitor had clear inspirations in mind that they pulled from but were able to create a clear identity to separate it from its contemporaries and what came before. I am not sure how they managed to do that and it feels like a magic trick was pulled. I think it is just an achievement that the game gets to be about things both specific and multifaceted where a story about an Asian family's immigration from Hong Kong was able to reach and touch me, some white kid who lives in the States and could never know the specifics about what that must have been like. I do know what living up to family pressures is like, about how parental sacrifice can be damaging to children and the future. Even now after the 2024 election, a lot of my friends are talking about leaving for Canada. That was the part that really brought this game into the moment for me. I recall some of the conversations of the game and related them to how I felt about my friends wanting to leave. It was shocking to hear and feel that those conversations were so similar. It just spoke to me as a person versus making some grandiose statement.

This game also gets to be about revolution and change. There are a bunch of layers to their tale. It isn’t as easy as the government is bad and we are good. It goes into why people would accept something as corrupt as a government, how there are multiple perspectives involved trying to establish the same thing but have completely different ideas and ideologies. There is also the idea that true change cannot happen without hurting anyone. I again look to my country where we had the BLM protests after the George Floyd murder at the hands of police. People marched, were arrested and beaten in the name of change. Just like the parents of Iris, I wonder if we accomplished anything and if what we did truly mattered. One thing is for certain though, people were hurt. It leads me to the end of the game where I just think about making the ultimate choices involved and how none of them felt right or wrong but that they were balanced on a knife’s edge. Only a small breeze could make it fall to one side or the other. Again I am just pressed to think about the state of my country where it wasn’t one sweeping action that led us here but the slow waves of change eroding the shoreline until we became a cliff.

I do not think I could talk about this game if I didn’t mention the characters. All of the sisters feel like parts of myself. The emotional gambit of longing, revolution, regret, love, rage, hope, loss, sorrow, jealousy are just woven into fabric that blankets the player with the human experience. We are all of these things good and bad. Positive and negative. Hair to Hair. I took time to get to know the shells and was rewarded constantly for the investment. There is just something that feels so empathetic from a character like Blue. I just felt their lack of function as someone who struggled to figure out what they wanted to do as I watched my friends just instinctively know how their life was going to go. There are certain character interactions that also relate back to this game being human. Not everything is resolved, we don’t always get to say goodbye. Sometimes there is no way to fix things. Sometimes we hurt the ones we care about. The duality of humanity,helpful and hurtful.

This game was made by Sunset Visitor with a clear vision and they were uncompromising with it. There are so many moments from dialogue options to story choices and all the way up to the ending that many games would have buckled and folded under the pressure. The story never takes the easy way out and leaves the player to look out upon the decisions that they made and grapple with them. I think it takes so much confidence to create a game like this, keep it in an appropriate time frame and just walk off to leave you thinking about what the game was ever about. The answer to that question is that it is about everything. It is about us.

There is so much more that I want to talk about but I want to keep it as spoiler free as possible.

Hekki Almo Sisters.

There is a lot to unpack with 1000XResist. I applaud the development team at Sunset Visitor because despite my reservations with the game as a whole, they swung for the fences and told a poignant, unique story based on real life events that few try to accomplish in his medium. Some moments were breathtaking and brilliant, but I cannot shake how frustrated I felt at times playing the game. It was a rollercoaster for many, many reasons and I'll try to list them all here.

Pros:

• Incredible soundtrack. The ambient synth, the soft piano scores and other tunes meld a perfect mix of nostalgia, ennui, terror and hope throughout.
• Some of the visual narrative is shown in a brilliant way. Each chapter felt different, mixing first person movement, top down, third person action and even 2d. I'm not sure it was necessary, but it sure did keep me on my toes.
• The writing was very storng and solid through. It needed to be, as it's the majority of the game, but I always felt compelled to hear what characters said and the dialogue flowed very well.
• The communions were terrific, I loved switching back and forth through time to see various scenes develop. The chapter on the ship and the school were my favorites.
• Really clever way to allow the players to see the ending. Great way to capitalize on the story and forces the player to be thoughtful in their choices.
• Mixing in real-life footage ALWAYS works on me, always.
• There is a trick with the opening credits/load screen with the developer logo that had me gasping. I've never seen a game do this before. Excellent stuff.
• Very cool sci-fi story with some really compelling ideas.

Cons:

• There is so much "philoso-speak" that it drove me nuts. Virtually nobody talks like a real person in this. I don't mind dream-like states or narratives in doses, but it happens constantly that I felt like I was rolling my eyes at half the dialogue.
• Storytelling structure didn't work on me. I had a really hard time telling what was going on. A ton of shifts in perspective had me really confused.
• The main hub area is immensely frustrating to navigate, particularly without a map. I hated it. I got so turned around many times that when I got a clue saying "go check the cave with the waterfall" it would take me ten minutes to find it, despite the space not being overly big. Not a fan at all.
• Most of the characters look and sound the same. I had a really tricky time telling when another character would change costume or colors since they're all so closely designed (that's a challenge I find in most clone stories).
• It's too long. 9.5 hours for me when I think it should have been 7 or 8.

In conclusion, some parts were worthy of a 5 star rating, easily. Others made it delve into 2 star territory. I'll settle on 3 stars out of 5 but would go 3.5 if I could.