No, I’m not a Human Review — Visitors

No, I’m Not a Human is perhaps one of the most anticipated indie horror games of the year. Its demo caught the attention of fans on social media with its uniquely creepy art style, anxiety-inducing premise, and the promise of a gameplay loop that demanded careful investigation of a cast of characters one could never trust. While the demo was promising, the game itself in execution is disappointingly shallow, adding very little to the foundation the demo set and introducing mechanics in the name of “replayability” that ultimately kill the game, which is not really set up to be replayable anyway.

For more context, No, I’m Not a Human is a game in which you must survive an impending apocalypse while giving shelter to your fellow man. An explosion on the sun has caused the day to become deadly hot, forcing residents to find shelter from the scorching heat and only come out at night. The night itself is no less dangerous, however, as murderous creatures known as “Visitors,” who possess the ability to mimic the appearance of humans, have crawled out from the dirt en masse. Many of your neighbors, as well as anyone else who has wandered into the area, will want to take shelter in your home, and the deadly Visitors will do anything to fool you into opening the door for them.

Essentially, it’s a game of trying to collect as many humans as possible without letting any Visitors in. Visitors will kill one of your survivors each night, and as the game progresses, you can learn new ways of identifying them. When you do, you can blast them with your firearm and move on with your life.

While the safest bet would be to let nobody in or to keep a small group of people you know are human, the game presents a series of checks that prevent this. For example, a pale man will often show up and ask if you are alone. If he cannot hear the sounds of other humans inside, he will enter the home and it is game over. To prevent you from hoarding a small group of safe picks, FEMA will occasionally stop by and take away your house guests, dwindling your numbers and putting you at risk of being alone when the pale man visits. Other such events exist, but these two were generally the most relevant in my playthroughs.

While No, I’m Not a Human is built on a strong premise of paranoia-inducing horror, there are a few issues that can ruin the experience beyond your first playthrough. If you have yet to play the game and are still interested, I suggest you stop reading here, as I am about to spoil how the mechanics work. You can still get a good hour or two of fun from No, I’m Not a Human if you do not know this.

That being said, the Visitors in No, I’m Not a Human are completely randomized each playthrough. This is done to make the game more appealing to replay, but when you combine this with the way humans can show signs of being Visitors, it makes things unpredictable and narrows the investigation down to more of a guessing game. The actual things the guests say do not matter at all, as they remain unchanging between playthroughs, with their status as a monster determined randomly at the start.

Because of this unreliability in determining who is a Visitor and who isn’t, and because having a Visitor in the house doesn’t actually put you in danger, the best way to play the game is actually to just let everybody in. The Visitor who slips past your door will kill each night, and you can try to identify them if you’d like, but you most certainly will die if you’re left with nobody else in your house. Simply allowing everyone in and picking off the Visitors as you see fit is actually a pretty viable way to stay alive.

If there was anything that really disappointed me in No, I’m Not a Human, it would have been the writing. The game reads in a way that is unique to poorly localized titles—sentences that are not necessarily gibberish but leave you a bit confused or feeling like something is off after reading them. Unnatural manners of speaking, but in the most unintentional of ways. Some endings and many character moments feel forced or unearned, as characters suddenly start acting differently, probably an issue with the poor localization that makes it harder to fully grasp a character’s personality.

Outside of seeing the different endings, you really don’t have a reason to play the game multiple times, as the dialogue on all characters is the same, despite mechanics that insist on it being played multiple times.

Overall, I think No, I’m Not a Human might be a game that got too caught up in its own hype. The demo brought in a lot of eager fans, but it was just a demo after all; players expect that to be an early representation of what your game will be, not the finished product. The finished product in this case does not expand much on the demo, and what it does add undermines the tension. If you go in blind, you will enjoy the game for your first playthrough, but beyond that it falls apart, and I imagine not many players will keep their interest to the end of a second run.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of No, I’m Not a Human. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! No, I’m Not a Human is available on Steam.