Unavowed Review for Nintendo Switch

I love a good urban fantasy story. There’s something about the idea that the world you and I know and (mostly) understand being flipped on its head one day that really appeals to me. A world where the cities and towns we call home also secretly being home to creatures straight out of our worst nightmares, that hidden in every shadow is a gaping maw ready to swallow us whole, has the potential for fantastic storytelling. That’s why I was excited to review Unavowed: Wadjet Eye Games’ 2018 point-and-click adventure title, and I’m happy to say that it didn’t disappoint me. Unavowed is a wonderfully atmospheric adventure through the darkest alleyways of the City that Never Sleeps.

Unavowed opens with the player character being exorcised by a pair of paranormal investigators after having been possessed by a demon for the previous year. After the exorcism, the protagonist swears to undo the damage done while they were possessed and joins the Unavowed: an organization of paranormal investigators dedicated to protecting humanity from supernatural threats. From there, the game’s narrative takes on a sort of “monster-of-the-week” structure where each district you visit has its own unique story that builds into a larger narrative. It gives Unavowed a similar feeling to a really solid season of television, and I really enjoy that as a fan of similar pieces of media.

Unavowed’s writing is a strong point in general. Each case you take on is a neat mystery with a unique take on a classic mythological figure, and they all end with a genuinely interesting choice on how to handle that case’s monster. Though these choices do come down to a “kill or don’t kill binary” more often than not, Unavowed makes the smart choice to not tie this choice down to a moral binary. Each option has a genuine argument for and against it, and your choices don’t lock you out of the good or bad endings of the game (though they can influence how difficult the final segment is). I found that this gave me more pause in how my own personal morality affected my decisions. Unavowed isn’t a title that will have you debating complex philosophy and morality, but it does do more with the concept than most games, and I appreciate it for that.

I’m a bit torn on Unavowed’s cast, and that saddens me. Besides your player character, the Unavowed consists of four characters: Mandana, a half-jinn warrior; Eli, a fire mage; Logan, a medium and recovering alcoholic; and Vicki, a former cop. When I say I’m torn about them, I don’t mean that they’re bad characters. Far from it. They’re all great characters with stand-out personalities and interesting conflicts. My issues come from the game’s structure. The game allows you to take any two characters with you on a case to use their unique abilities however you see fit. It can be any combination of the four so long as the team includes either Eli or Mandana, and you can swap them out from case to case with no real consequence on the overall narrative. This mix-and-match approach to how the characters are handled means that the members of the Unavowed don’t have the room for complete character arcs. The members of the Unavowed can feel very static because of this. I should also point out that, while some cases feel very geared towards either Mandana or Eli, it is very easy to miss out on potential characterization for them based on team composition. I didn’t have this problem during my time with the game, but it’s something I can see happening to other players.

As for the gameplay, Unavowed follows the same trappings of the point-and-click adventure genre of collecting items and using them to solve puzzles. The RPG party mechanics allowing you to use party abilities is a neat wrinkle to that formula. Each character has their own unique skillset that they bring to cases. Eli has fire powers and can read burnt books and documents, Mandana is athletic and has a sword, Vicki can talk to police to get extra information, and Logan can talk to ghosts. They’re all very different and, because you can only bring two, cases are structured in a way that allows for multiple different solutions to puzzles. While this does make the cases easy to solve, the sheer variety in how you go about puzzle-solving more than makes up for the lack of difficulty. I never felt myself get frustrated or bored with the puzzles, and I found myself more impressed with the game’s cases than anything else.

All in all, Unavowed is a fantastic urban fantasy adventure title. The story is engaging, the characters are engaging, and the gameplay is incredibly well-designed. If you’ve ever wanted to play the role of a paranormal investigator in the rain-soaked streets of the Big Apple, then Unavowed is an easy recommendation. I give it a 9/10.

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Related: Reviews by Josh Freeman

Josh Freeman

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I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.

Tags: Unavowed Wadjet Eye Games