Unsighted: More Than Another Metroidvania
I love metroidvanias. They’ve long been a favourite of mine, ever since playing Metroid Fusion as a kid. And I’m not alone! Clearly. They’ve been popular for years, and there are more than enough of them to make it easy to miss some gems amongst the pile. Unsighted is one of those gems, in a way that I genuinely never expected to experience in a metroidvania. The music is great, the controls are tight, and the pixel art manages to have a clear style and identity of its own even with the sheer quantity of indie pixel art metroidvanias out there. But more than any of that, Unsighted is a surprisingly grounded depiction of the real world work to make societal changes for the better, as it forces the player to work through the balance of pushing back against the old systems, while struggling just to keep those who need the change most alive long enough to see it.
On the surface, the stakes shouldn’t be much different than any of its counterparts. Saving the world is pretty standard fare for the genre, and adding in saving the protagonist's girlfriend is no different. But while the stakes may be the same, the way it shows them to you, and the amount of agency it gives you elevates the experience over its contemporaries. You know the people whose lives are at stake here. They are your friends, your neighbours, your family. Each conversation shows a level of characterization that is rare for this many NPCs, and the lives of each of them are in your hands. Literally. You find items that could keep them alive, but they’re rare, and it takes time to get them, time that not everyone has; not to mention, you need them too. You have to make a choice: either use them to make your life easier, or you use them to keep your community alive. This is not a new concept to many people from marginalized communities. As a trans person, I see other people try to crowdfund everything from rent to lifesaving healthcare most every day, and it is a reminder that I cannot abandon those around me. We share the same struggle, and if I can do something to ease that struggle, then I am obliged to do so. Because even to those fighting for a better future like Alma, what is that future if those who need it most aren’t there to see it?
You see the other side of that struggle too. While you try to keep as many others alive as best you can with what little you have, not everyone is so generous. You see the struggle of characters that can do something tangible to help, but refuse to unless there’s something in it for them. Even the enemies you face, the unsighted, are more than just mindless zombies. They're beings controlled entirely by want, prioritizing that over community. The game makes this clear: this is a fate worse than death.
And it's brutal. The developers fully do not expect you to save everyone on your first time through. You see the cost of every delay and every mistake you make. In most metroidvanias, I'll take my first playthrough slowly, searching out all the secrets as best I can. But in Unsighted, I constantly felt the pressure to keep moving forward. And even then, that didn't feel fast enough.
And yet, even with all of that, it's incredibly hopeful. At the end, you do finally bring about the change that was needed, and each person saved feels so much more impactful, with the weight of those who did not make it still fresh on your mind. Even with the secret ending that saves nearly everyone, it feels so much more weighty than any other game that tasks you with saving the world, because you have seen what it’s like to lose it. And at least for me, I really needed a story like this.
I have lost people in my life, and I have felt that the change that we need is out of reach. But as brutal and sad as Unsighted was, it reminded me that even when life feels that way, change is still possible when we come together as a community. As bleak a view of the world as this game presents, it also truly believes that through community and love, we can make things better. And not love in an abstract sense, but love in action. Love that requires sacrifices and hard work, and fighting for people you might not know or fully understand.