The visual novel genre is bursting with new content these days. Horror, Romance, Drama, Mystery; there’s something out there for everyone. One common criticism folks have for visual novels is how same-y they all feel. Many are made with Ren’Py and share a similar UI with others. Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination does things a bit differently, helping it to stand out in an increasingly oversaturated market.

Inhuman Resources is the first game from developers Finnegan Motors using their original engine built out from Unity. It stands out more as interactive fiction than a visual novel. I know, those terms are often interchangeable, but there are enough differences here to justify the distinct terminology.

Be forewarned: it will be difficult to talk about this game without some minor thematic spoilers. No story spoilers, but if you want to go in fresh I recommend playing it now and coming back when you’re done.

A Fresh Take

The first thing I noticed when I launched the game was the UI. Five screens are all you’ll be using on your journey through Inhuman Resources. The icons at the bottom of your screen navigate between the following five tabs. First is a Table of Contents allowing you to view the chapters you’ve completed and replay them at any time. Next is an inventory of both physical and metaphysical items. We’ll come back to that.

The third screen is where you’ll be spending most of your time. It’s where the text and dialogue is presented and where you’ll make the decisions that will shape your path. Fourth and fifth contain a map and a codex, respectively. While these two don’t add much to the gameplay elements, they do help to immerse you in the sickening world of Inhuman Resources.

A Diagnosis of Suffering

The set up begins: you don’t have a job. You’re living in an apartment thanks to the generosity of your aunt, but even her patience has limits. You’ll notice the voice acting immediately, which is stellar. The dialogue itself isn’t fully voiced, but when it’s a character’s turn to speak you’ll hear a snippet of their voice. Something sounds off about it, though. Each line spoken is a sort of gibberish that sounds just close enough to a real language to add to the uncanny feeling pervading the game.

When you begin, you’ll be given choices to determine your character’s starting inventory and traits. Three traits will determine certain specialized choices you’ll be able to make throughout the story. Physical faculty, social aptitude, and technological literacy. You’ll also choose a career specialization and a reason for your unemployment, which results in your first metaphysical inventory item.

For my playthrough, I opted to be a computer science graduate, giving me a boost to Technological Literacy at the start. When confronted by my aunt, I went the route of a full breakdown, sobbing over the phone that my character is never good enough for anything. This, in turn, gave me the ‘clinical depression’ metaphysical trait. Whichever trait and specialization you end up with will also influence your future dialogue options, but there are absolutely no wrong answers here, so go with your gut.

A Cog in the Machine

Thanks to your aunt’s help, you landed a job! Sure, it’s with Smyrnacorp; a massive, mysterious conglomerate with fingers in every pie imaginable. Hey, a job’s a job. There’s one thing you realize very quickly, arguably, before your first interview is over. At Smyrnacorp, you’re a resource to be used. Your autonomy gets left at the door. The smiles are fake, the management is ruthless, and something’s going on in the lower levels.

Inhuman Resources begins as a tale of dystopian drama that quickly spirals out of control. In your journey, you’ll face multiple ethical dilemmas with no real right answer. Sometimes, you won’t even have a choice in the matter. But in order to uncover the mystery under the surface, you’ll need to play along.

Throughout the game, certain dialogue options you take will give you access to notes in your codex. The notes are arguably my favorite part of the experience. None of them are important to the story. In fact, if you really wanted to, you could get through the whole game by never opening the notes tab and you wouldn’t be confused. Don’t do that, though.

The notes are a series of in-universe short stories that serve to further your immersion. Each of them are credited to various writers, some more than once, and they are a way to bring more creatives into the project without suffering from too many cooks syndrome. They are incredibly well written and I highly recommend you give them a read when you unlock them.

An End-Stage Capitalist Nightmare

So, what about the gameplay? The story’s fresh and engaging. But you want to hear how they gamified it. Unfortunately, that’s where my praise falls short. Don’t get me wrong, I had a phenomenal time with Inhuman Resources. However, it could be a choose-your-own-adventure novel, and you wouldn’t lose much in the way of content.

There are a few minigames sprinkled throughout. The one that stood out the most to me was a sequence in which you need to scrub through grainy footage and find the exact point a certain event occurred, mark it, and report to your supervisor. It was intriguing and thought-provoking, and you can count the number of times you do it on one hand.

There are also riddles to solve, computers to hack into, and safes to crack, but I felt that they mostly served to artificially lengthen the game without much substance behind them. That’s not to say they were frustrating, just that I wish there was more. More minigames or revisiting the ones you’ve done before rather than just acting as one time set pieces that happen to resemble gameplay.

The Cons

I do have a couple minor gripes that could easily be overlooked, but I’d be remiss to not mention them. One is that, despite the fresh engine, it still suffers from the visual novel problem of incorrect variables. At one point, I opted to talk to a coworker to gather information, and the game treated the selection as if I chose to dig around in their desk instead. At another, a different coworker referred to an event that I very specifically chose the other option for as having been the one that happened.

Second, and much less important, there are a few typos present in the text. However, the developers, as far as I can tell, are Québécois, so the errors could easily be attributed to the difficulty of developing a game in both English and French simultaneously. As I said, minor gripes, but worth mentioning.

Content Warning

Things get dark. Like, really, extraordinarily dark. I’m a lifelong fan of the horror genre and certain points in Inhuman Resources got me squeamish. The audio doesn’t help either, being that there are sound effects as well as dialogue. In a game so focused on mental and physical well-being, you know what that means.

Consider this your massive emetophobia warning. If you have physical reactions to the sound of vomiting, as I do, consider dropping the sound effect volume in the options. In my five-hour initial playthrough, there were at least three separate points where I had to listen to an upsettingly realistic audio depiction of someone hurling. I know this isn’t important to everyone, but it certainly served to detract from my experience when it caused nausea so bad I had to step away.

Aside from that, there are a number of violent sound effects and detailed written descriptions, all serving to immerse the reader in the anxiety ridden world presented to them. Nothing too outrageous, but it never hurts to be thorough.

The Bittersweet End

All things said, I had a good time with Inhuman Resources. It was a fascinating concept built upon a wholly unique engine with a story that hooks you immediately. While I wish there was more substance to the gameplay portions, I certainly enjoyed what is present. I’m excited to see what the future brings from Finnegan Motors and what some future projects look like.

Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination is developed by Finnegan Motors and published by Indie Asylum. It is available on Steam for $14.99 with a free demo.