{"id":593572,"date":"2026-04-09T23:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T23:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/593572\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T23:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T23:55:10","slug":"1000xresist-devs-talk-about-their-next-game-prove-youre-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/593572\/","title":{"rendered":"1000XResist devs talk about their next game, Prove You’re Human"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunset Visitor got off to a mesmerizing start with its 2024 debut, 1000XResist,<\/a>\u00a0a sci-fi game that paired personal storytelling about being a first-generation immigrant with commentary on, well, basically everything: pandemic politics, religion, the ever-present threat of fascism, prejudice, aliens, cloning, the fact that high school sucks eggs, and more. They even made time for some Neon Genesis Evangelion<\/a> references<\/a>, which is always a good sign. Despite having so much going on, the game tied these ideas into a thematically cohesive whole, which won it critical acclaim and a Peabody Award to boot. That\u2019s more than enough reason to be excited for the team\u2019s recently announced sophomore title, Prove You\u2019re Human, another speculative story at least partially inspired by the present. As the tagline puts it, \u201cAn AI dares to dream she is human. You\u2019ve been hired to put her in her place.\u201d <\/p>\n

The game is being bankrolled by the newly founded Black Tabby Publishing, an offshoot of Black Tabby Games, which developed the similarly acclaimed Slay The Princess<\/a> and <\/a>Scarlet Hollow<\/a>. We got a chance to speak with Remy Siu, the Creative Director at Sunset Visitor, alongside Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias of Black Tabby Publishing about their recently announced game, how Sunset Visitor draws on the present to tell stories set in the future, and what it means to work with a dev team turned publisher.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The AV Club: What can you tell us about Prove You\u2019re Human \u2018s premise, both in its narrative setup and how the game plays?<\/p>\n

Remy Siu: Prove You\u2019re Human is a first-person narrative adventure game where an AI dares to dream that she\u2019s human, and you have been hired to put her in her place. As the player, you are embodying a virtual copy of the main character named Santana. You have been split from your corporeal other, as we call it, but really it\u2019s your meat body in meat space. And in the game, you still communicate with your outside, corporeal other. You get this communication through these live-action, full-motion video segments. So a lot of it is still very much rooted in being a narrative game first, and it\u2019s really about exploring your environment, understanding the circumstances that you are in, and having conversations with the AI \u200b\u200bnamed Mesa through different types of CAPTCHAs. So there we have 2D CAPTCHAs, and then also environmental 3D CAPTCHAs, which is your way of interfacing and understanding the virtual world that you\u2019re in.<\/p>\n

RS: So we always say that 1000XResist is very much a 2020-coded game. We were making it sequentially throughout 2020 to 2024, and as things in the real world unfolded, we were always very porous with it, and allowed that into the studio and writers\u2019 room, and let it affect how we would approach things as we were making it. In general, I think as artists, even before starting the studio, our interest was always being very porous with things around us, both from a thematic place, from a coping place, and then also from a material place. And with this game, I think, at the end of 1000XResist in 2024 we looked up at the world and were like: \u201cOkay, what\u2019s going on? What are new things to cope about and to think about?\u201d And you know, I don\u2019t need to explain what has happened. So that is something we very much wanted to engage in.<\/p>\n

But I think specifically as a studio that makes speculative fiction and sci-fi games, we already know that there\u2019s a long tradition of artificial intelligence in the genre, going back to something like Frankenstein, and then all the classic Asimov stuff. Artificial intelligence has been a part of science fiction for a very long time. And then it became to interesting us to ask the question: \u201cWhat is an artificial intelligence science fiction story being made in the year 2026?\u201d There was a driving force of trying to understand tradition and how the real world has kind of subverted that tradition, and how we as artists can intervene and take that tradition and flip it around and play with it.<\/p>\n

AVC: Something notable about 1000XResist is how the game is clearly inspired by recent events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, but avoids coming across as too cloying, cute, or direct in referencing what it was like to live through that period. How do you go about telling a story in that way?<\/p>\n

RS: I think it\u2019s important to always be very sincere about the actual experience, and I think that\u2019s how we approached it when it came to things around the pandemic and how different aspects of it can bleed into the world-building. For example, in 1000XResist, they all wear masks, but then we\u2019re spinning out world-building that\u2019s really about them wearing masks in very functional, kind of mundane, \u201cboring\u201d ways as well. So I think it\u2019s always a tightrope. But really, I think our approach is always to be sincerely approaching the actual experience, as opposed to saying, for lack of a better term, addressing what is so obviously in the air. We want to engage with these things not because we want to repeat what is so obviously in the air, but to transform, reverse it, transpose it, and play with the gesture to discover new things about it.<\/p>\n

AVC: 1000XResist was very well-received. Going into your sophomore game, do you folks feel any pressure to live up to that reception? Is that something you think about at all?<\/p>\n

Tony Howard-Arias (from Black Tabby Publishing): You\u2019d better! [Laughter]<\/p>\n

RS: At the beginning of last year, I was like, \u201cOh yeah, the pressure doesn\u2019t feel that intense.\u201d But then, of course, as things unfolded, there\u2019s mounting pressure. I remember it was at the Peabody Ceremony, and afterwards I was talking to Nhi [Do], who\u2019s the voice of Watcher. And I was like, \u201cOh, man, how are we gonna live this up?\u201d But I think usually my way around this is to put on the artist\u2019s hat again, and be like, \u201cOkay, what are continuations of practice? What did we discover in the last work? What are some openings and things left on the table that can kind of rupture and provide new spaces for us to explore as artists?\u201d<\/p>\n

And 1000XResist was that, coming from working on stage and in galleries and all that stuff, other mediums. What are continuations of practice of what we\u2019ve discovered and explored? How can we go deeper in some aspects? I think a good example of that is the use of full motion video in Prove You\u2019re Human. I guess it\u2019s known because I\u2019ve spoken about this before, where so much of the full motion video used in 1000XResist was a desperate move on my part artistically at that point, because we were so tired at the end of that specific chapter. And we also had the coincidence of having shot a film in Hong Kong in the year 2017, and so we\u2019re working with the same group of filmmakers who shot that film for Prove You\u2019re Human.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s like, how can we take this thing that we have experience and are comfortable doing and really extend this into the diegesis of Prove You\u2019re Human. So in this game, the virtual world is diegetically represented as real-time 3D, and things that are happening outside of the virtual world are represented with film and full motion video, so incorporating that from the very beginning of the fiction as a way of depicting diegesis. So to answer that question, we do feel pressure, of course. You know, you try to turn it off and you get into the weeds of thinking like an artist again.<\/p>\n

AVC: A clear genre thread between 1000XResist and Prove You\u2019re Human is that they\u2019re both sci-fi stories. What makes you interested in sci-fi as a storytelling tool?<\/p>\n

RS: All fiction allows you to do this to a certain degree, but sci-fi, from its very bare building blocks, lets you craft a space. You\u2019re really an architect of this abstract space that you\u2019re building and sculpting so that players or audiences or whoever can enter it and then reverberate their own thoughts and feelings inside of it. And I think, especially with science fiction and speculative storytelling, you really get to tell interesting lies. And those interesting lies are kind of my way into a lot of this. What kind of interesting lie can we engage with that breaks open thoughts and feelings that we wouldn\u2019t be able to break open if we weren\u2019t to tell such an interesting lie? And so that\u2019s always my draw to that. Additionally, for us so many of the people at the studio are people of color, and so I think the future is a setting where we can perhaps see ourselves existing. As opposed to, it\u2019d be hard for us to 100% look deep into the deep past.<\/p>\n

AVC: There\u2019s a very deeply personal element to 1000XResist and how it explores themes around the immigrant experience and so on. Do you think of Prove You\u2019re Human as similarly personal, or is it maybe more abstract in its scope?<\/p>\n

RS: It\u2019s personal, perhaps in a different way than 1000XResist, and part of it is working with our main actor, who\u2019s playing Santana, because in this way, her whole body is represented in the game in ways that we\u2019ve never done before. And part of that is that there\u2019s a photogrammetry-scanned model of her as the player character. She appears in these full motion videos, and so there\u2019s a longer ongoing collaboration with her to understand how to build this character and how that becomes more personal over time. I think for us, there\u2019s always an angle in which we want to make all of the works that we do extremely personal. And that\u2019s part of being porous, you know, one with the world, and then also with ourselves. It\u2019ll be very hard to say exactly how that will play out, but perhaps when it\u2019s done, it\u2019ll be easier to enumerate \u201cOkay, these are the ways we found our way into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

AVC: Abby and Tony, what made you interested in creating Black Tabby Publishing?<\/p>\n

Tony Howard-Arias: I think that a lot of it is wanting to contribute, in a small way, to a better publishing landscape, just providing extra options to people. I think that there are some things that are unique to our approach that we\u2019ve talked about with each other, or with friends in the industry like Remy, that we felt like we had an opportunity here to put into practice. So, one of the things that I think is worth highlighting is that for the two games we\u2019ve signed so far, we\u2019ve taken both of them just on paper pitches. So they\u2019re both vetted teams that have finished projects under their belts, who we felt like we could trust with funding and resources from the very beginning of the development process, and that saves them a huge hassle of wondering, \u201cWell, are we going to sign something for this project. Do we have to pitch something else? How long is it going to take for us to be able to get started?\u201d<\/p>\n

And it also means that we\u2019re able to come in at the very beginning of the process as partners and sort of work on the concepting of a project from that ideation phase. The term that Remy has used to describe what we\u2019ve been doing is dramaturgy. I also like to talk about the role of editors in a traditional book publishing house, where we\u2019re not making the project, but we know about it from the very beginning, and we are having regular conversations where we can offer an outside perspective that\u2019s still rooted in the fact that we\u2019re artists, at our core.<\/p>\n

Abby Howard: We\u2019re a small team that, because of how small we are, have had to see every piece of a project come together. So we\u2019re people who have an understanding of how a game gets made, and pitfalls that games can fall into, and directions where you can see something veering off course, and being able to then see that before it happens, and correcting it to help guide something to its conclusion.<\/p>\n

TH: Yeah, and for this early stage partnership that we\u2019re exploring, like this concept, it\u2019s something that\u2019s easy to talk up, just in private or on social media. Like to say \u201cPeople with money should come in and fund these proven artists immediately,\u201d without something very concrete to go off.<\/p>\n

AH: Yeah, \u201cWhy are they holding back from doing this?\u201d And so maybe in however long it takes for Prove You\u2019re Human to finish, we will be eating these words. But for now, we are happy to indulge in this experiment, and we\u2019re very happy to be in a place where we can do that.<\/p>\n

TH: And I think that the nature of this relationship has already shaped the game in interesting ways, where the conversations we\u2019ve had carried into the writers\u2019 room, and they have transformed the project from that initial paper pitch into something that I think a lot of people are really going to resonate with. And if we weren\u2019t having this dialog from the very beginning, would the project have, you know, gone along that same course of transformation? Probably not. Would it have still been a very good game, given Remi\u2019s track record? I would say probably yes. But I\u2019m excited.<\/p>\n

AVC: You mentioned that having game dev experience really changes the relationship between publisher and developer. How would you say it contrasts with the more traditional publishers you folks have worked with?<\/p>\n

TH: I would say the most important aspect of this is actually a fiscal aspect, which is we\u2019re still primarily a development house. Our revenue comes from internal projects that we develop, that\u2019s where the majority of our time and effort goes. But that also means that we\u2019re not beholden to a lot of the necessities of a traditional publishing model, right? There\u2019s a lot of publishers out there where, you know, maybe one out of every 10 to 20 games they sign is a huge hit, and then that sort of carries everything else. But that also means they need to sign a lot of titles.<\/p>\n

AH: They have a full staff of employees who are dedicated to various different aspects of publishing, because it is a massive undertaking, which is also why we\u2019re taking on very small, kind of manageable amounts of projects, and the scope is also smaller for them.<\/p>\n

TH: Right, with this smaller scope and without the pressure of \u201cWe need to find the next hit,\u201d and \u201cWe need to keep signing,\u201d we can really sit down and focus on the small number of titles in our roster and give them our full attention. Then beyond that, it\u2019s just the conversations about art that we can have and pulling from our own experience. We\u2019re not just developers. We self-published Scarlet Hollow. We self-published the PC version of Slay The Princess. So we have, we\u2019ve had to very directly interface with both the creation process and the process of putting things out in the world. And I think that these sales numbers for the titles that we\u2019ve made in-house demonstrate that we, at least with those two, knew what we were doing, eventually for Scarlet Hollow.<\/p>\n

AH: Let\u2019s see if we can carry that over.<\/p>\n

TH: And I think there\u2019s this aspect of creation, and especially the modern era, where any art you make is creating a dialogue between you and your audience. Art is a form of communication, and marketing becomes an extension of that. So I think we\u2019re in a unique position where we\u2019ve already had to develop and refine the interplay of creation and communication with our own work, and that\u2019s something that we can bring into the early conversations we\u2019re having with the studios we\u2019ve signed.<\/p>\n

AVC: Remy, what would you say are the benefits of working with a publisher that\u2019s made up of developers?<\/p>\n

RS: I think that something we perhaps don\u2019t think about a lot is that developing a game is a very embodied experience. And there\u2019s a lot of strange order of operations that you have to undertake that allows development to go smoothly. Marketing often does not really 100% consider what that is. And so you get a lot of crossed wires sometimes. So I think what\u2019s been really nice and interesting is that working with Tony and Abby, who are developers themselves, they\u2019ve had the embodied experience of making a game and releasing it and launching it, and understanding what it feels like to be in the early phase, what it feels like to be in the end phases. And so when it comes to actually doing some of the publishing side of it, I think it becomes very organic because of that.<\/p>\n

And that seems to be what\u2019s emerging to be one of the most interesting differences, kind of where developers are on the other side. But specifically, I should not just say developers, but the developers of the very specific type of game that you make as well, right? So it\u2019s not Tony and Abby make roguelike card games. For example, if you were making a roguelike card game, and you have a publisher that also made roguelike anything, there\u2019s a lot of things that I\u2019m sure would emerge there, as well as you come to making and publishing ads. But our area is very specifically narrative driven games, which has so many interesting development challenges that I think you really have to go through it to understand what those are.<\/p>\n

TH: Yeah, and that\u2019s something I would also stress. A unique aspect of our publisher, we\u2019re almost looking at it as building a label. So, the games we\u2019ve signed are kind of in our area of \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bexpertise; they\u2019re narrative-forward. They\u2019re funny. There\u2019s a darkness at their heart sometimes\u2014I would say that\u2019s maybe a little more true for Prove You\u2019re Human than the one we\u2019ve signed with SmallBu [ The studio behind Later Alligator \u2014 Ed ]. But it\u2019s something we feel like we can actually contribute personal expertise to discussions about the work. And at the same time, we think that they\u2019re a strong fit for the audience we\u2019ve already built with our previous projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunset Visitor got off to a mesmerizing start with its 2024 debut, 1000XResist,\u00a0a sci-fi game that paired personal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-593572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}