Year Unknown is a short "walking sim" with a branching narrative. It takes ~1 hour to complete.
Explore The Library, a megastructure the size of the universe, filled with all of humanity's knowledge. To guide you are two Artificial Intelligences, built to process its massive collection of information.
But something else is calling you - a distress call from the center of the universe. The stagnant universe is breaking down, and there may be no way to save it.
Explore brutalist landscapes, and find terminals to talk to two AI. Both have different thoughts and opinions, and might tell you different things. Fortunately, you have control: choose which AI to talk to, what to tell them or leave out, and ultimately, decide who you agree with.
Includes the following accessibility options:
Text size adjustment
OpenDyslexic as an alternative font
Text-to-speech
Option to reduce the motion of certain effects and sequences
Note: This game does not contain content from a generative AI. The AI in the game are written characters.
Wish it was longer but the philosophical story is very well made.
Not sure how to approach this. It being less than an hour, I would recommend giving it a try before reading anything else, besides it's about existential dread and the end of everything. [spoiler] Waking up after being (literally) born into a ultra mega structure that contains the wealth of all human knowledge, creation, science, art, everything. However, the only way to interface with any of it is via AI Interfaces. AL (one of the two (maybe three) AIs that you meet) says that how the data is stored would be incomprehensible to a human brain. You end up finding an Art Museum BO (the other AI) remarks that humans have created everything there is to create, there is no longer anything new, its just a remake of a remake of a remake of a remake; a Remix of a Remix of a Remix if a Remix; a Reference to a Reference to a Reference; They then say that the humans ended up asking BO to just end it, the humans didn't see a point in living anymore and it has been 10s of thousands of years s...
Short and to the point. Year Unknown picked one philosophical concept and over the course of an hour, let you grasp its meaning. It's rare for me to find games where I can really put myself in the shoes of the main character and Year Unknown, despite being text-based story telling, truly managed to capture my imagination. The ambient sound design, music and overall vibe of the structure was well done. Maybe lacking a bit of architecture, I would have loved more cyclopean sights. In the end it was a pleasant visual and philosophical journey.
Quite an interesting experience. Simple and short, but hits hard and I certainly won't forget it - a game to go in blind with for sure.
There is a demo available and I recommend playing it first to see if you enjoy it. I wish more games would leave their demos up after release like this one does. A nice little existential dread walking sim. It only took me about an hour to wander through it. It felt short but at the same time it didn't drag on too long either. Eternity isn't meant for mortals.
Year Unknown costs $9.99.
Minimum: Minimum: OS *: Windows 7 Processor: Intel 9th generation / AMD Ryzen 1000 or newer Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 620 or better. Storage: 1 GB available space Recommended: Recommended: Graphics: Vulkan 1.0 support.
Year Unknown is available on Windows PC, Linux.
Year Unknown has 100% positive reviews from 5 players.
Year Unknown was released on Oct 7, 2024.
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