Monday, June 23, 2025

Demo Time: No, I'm Not A Human (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for No, I'm Not A Human through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

No, I'm Not A Human Demo
Systems: Windows, Steam OS, Linux
Release Date: June 8, 2025
Publisher: CRITICAL REFLEX
Developer: Trioskaz
Time Spent: 2 Hours 12 Minutes
Walkthrough Video on YouTube

The best way I can describe the demo for No, I'm Not A Human is that it's a mashup between The Twilight Zone episode "The Midnight Sun" and Papers, Please.  Kind of.  The plot is moderately simple.  You play as a person during a time when daytime temperatures reach unsafe levels for people to be outside.  There are characters called Visitors that the player is warned about as being dangerous, and who look like regular humans.  The player is told that Visitors will often ask if you're home alone, and you should always say that you aren't, otherwise bad things might? happen, and you validate your answer by allowing people whom you suspect to be real humans inside after they knock on your front door, and after you have a conversation with them.  At the start, you are given only one criterion for knowing that someone might be a Visitor, and that is that they have impeccable teeth, but as the demo progresses, more information comes out in the form of news broadcasts about the state of the world and on how to identify Visitors.

The game progresses through two cycles, day and night.  During the night, you answer your door when people knock, which feels like it happens too soon after you turn someone away or allow them inside.  As in literally seconds after you finish one conversation with someone, whether you let them inside or not, and someone else knocks on your door, like there's a literal line right outside your line of vision from your peephole.  This is likely the only negative aspect to the game that I can think of, and that was only since I started writing this article.  You're also able to look out your windows at your neighbors across the field, at the field behind your house, and at a path or street next to your house.

During the day, you're not able to look out of the windows or your front door because the sun is out, and in this world, it has reached dangerous temperatures due to what's described in-game as an explosion on the sun, reaching temperatures possibly 130°F / 54 °C or higher.  If you have people you've invited into your house the previous night, you can talk with them about their own personal stories, and this is where part of the paranoia comes in.  Using the growing information you receive from the news, you can interrogate people, using a finite amount of energy which is used up with each interrogation, and if you believe them to be a Visitor, you're able to pull a shotgun on them and decide whether or not to kill them.

This is where No, I Am Not A Human really shines, because for each accusation you lay against someone staying in your house, they will often have an explanation or an excuse as to why their teeth might be straight and white, or why their eyes are red, or why there's dirt under their nails.  The game does a great job of not specifically telling the player if a Visitor needs to have all of the known signs or if one sign is enough to kill someone because you believe them to be a Visitor.  There does seem to be a psychological effect when you kill someone, which I noticed in my first playthrough; in my second playthrough, I didn't kill anyone.  The long-term effect of killing people is unclear, but I am excited to find out in the full release of the game.

The demo for No, I'm Not A Human lasts only five full night/day cycles and from what I can tell, the people showing up at your door are all the same, although I filled out a survey from the developer that implied that either the order of the people showing up or the people themselves is supposed to be random or will be random at the time of the full release.  You also have a limited amount of space in your house and a limited amount of space in specific rooms, as it seems that specific characters will only stay in specific rooms; eg, the woman whose husband died will only stay in the bathroom.  I am very eager to see how the full game plays out and what the end game is, hopefully not being just a "How long can you stay alive?" mechanic, but I really don't get that impression from the demo.  And this is a really fun demo, it you already like games dealing with apocalyptic scenarios and paranoia about other people staying in your house.


~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And We Don't Have The Time

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