A Place for the Unwilling
- July 25, 2019
- ALPixel Games
- 12h median play time
Get on Steam"A Place For The Unwilling" is a narrative-driven adventure game set in a dying city with 21 days left until its demise. Every decision made shapes the surroundings and the city's fate, with a diverse cast of characters to interact with. The game features a rich, immersive world that combines elements of Sunless Sea, Majora's Mask, and Lovecraftian horror, offering a unique and thought-provoking experience.
Mac OS
Nintendo Switch
PC
Playstation 4
Playstation 5
Windows
Xbox One
Xbox Series X|S
PlayStation
Xbox
Reviews
- The game features a unique and immersive world with a compelling story and rich character interactions, making it engaging for players who enjoy narrative-driven experiences.
- The art style is beautifully crafted, enhancing the overall atmosphere of the game and contributing to its Lovecraftian themes.
- Player choices significantly impact the story and character relationships, providing a high replay value with multiple endings to explore.
- The game suffers from numerous bugs and glitches, including quest-breaking issues and frustrating control schemes that hinder gameplay.
- The pacing is slow, with a lack of clear guidance on objectives, leading to confusion and a feeling of aimlessness during exploration.
- The user interface is unintuitive, with awkward key bindings and navigation that detracts from the overall experience.
- story64 mentions
- 22 % positive mentions
- 73 % neutral mentions
- 5 % negative mentions
The game's story is described as intriguing and beautifully illustrated, with a compelling overarching plot and rich character interactions; however, many players find the pacing slow and the quest structure frustrating, often feeling disconnected from the main narrative due to irrelevant side quests and quest-breaking bugs. While some appreciate the depth and emotional impact of the storytelling, others criticize the convoluted progression and vague quest instructions, leading to a mixed reception overall. Despite its flaws, the game offers replay potential with multiple story paths influenced by player choices.
“The storytelling is amazing.”
“It's an intriguing story, beautifully illustrated.”
“The second best thing about this game, and let me be clear it’s a very close second, is the story, and when I say 'story' I mean both the overarching plot as well as the small side-quests and conversations.”
“The quests that the NPCs ask you to do are irrelevant to the main plot, so it mostly feels like it's all pointless. Personally, this is the reason why I never felt attached or motivated to move forward in it.”
“I got to day 6 of the game's 21-day span, approximately 1/4 of the way through, and I still didn't feel like I'd taken a single step further into the game's actual story.”
“There seems to be a story, but you just never quite grasp it.”
- gameplay11 mentions
- 27 % positive mentions
- 45 % neutral mentions
- 27 % negative mentions
The gameplay is characterized by a slow-paced narrative and a reliance on fetch-quests, which can feel tedious and frustrating due to clunky movement mechanics and a lack of engaging challenges. While the central mechanic of choice and exploration offers some depth, the overall experience is marred by a mechanical disarray that detracts from the enjoyment, making it feel more like a dialogue-driven simulation than a traditional game. Despite some solid conceptual elements, many players find the gameplay more frustrating than fun, reminiscent of a Lovecraftian story without the combat or RPG elements.
“While the gameplay consists largely of fetch-quests, the challenge is how to manage your finite time (and to a lesser extent, money) as you set out each day into this 'dying' city juggling relationships with a cast of flawed, quirky, and mostly corrupt citizens.”
“Overall a good experience; my first 10 or 12 hours of gameplay I was high as a duck and played non-stop, enjoying every single second.”
“The most impressive thing about A Place for the Unwilling is its central mechanic: choice.”
“Incredibly slow story and no engaging gameplay to help with the slowness.”
“Walking around is a chore as you seem to snag on every available piece of scenery, and the game's secondary 'mechanic' after the exploration, buying and selling goods between the game's handful of shops, seems totally tacked on.”
“Oddly enough, this game reminds me of Elder Scrolls if you removed all combat and RPG elements from it, leaving just the dialogue-based gameplay where you have to utilize the clock to visit certain locations, not to mention the fast-travel.”
- graphics11 mentions
- 45 % positive mentions
- 27 % neutral mentions
- 27 % negative mentions
The game's graphics are widely praised for their charming art style, beautiful animations, and immersive world design, drawing comparisons to "Over the Garden Wall." However, some players express frustration over the lack of graphic quality settings and the mechanical issues that detract from the overall experience. While the visuals are a standout feature, the execution of gameplay elements and tutorials leaves room for improvement.
“Super charming game, it has an interesting and very organic world, and a lovely art style with fantastic animations.”
“The game’s aesthetics is absolutely delicious in its dark simplicity of the features, but lots of moving elements.”
“Very unique experience so far, the art style is beautiful and the story, while still a bit scattered around at this stage of the game, has already lots of interesting little details that make the world very immersive and alive.”
“There is only one minor issue I have with this: why are there no graphic quality settings?”
“The game’s aesthetics are absolutely delicious in their dark simplicity of the features, but there are lots of moving elements.”
“I feel like this could be fixed by putting in more button graphics/prompts because I still don't even know how to flip pages in the newspaper and thought the newspaper was one page until I saw the dev flip the page.”
- stability6 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
The game's stability has been widely criticized, with many users reporting numerous bugs and glitches that contribute to a feeling of an unfinished product. While some players find the experience engaging despite these issues, the overall consensus suggests that the game requires significant patience and may not be worth the price due to its unstable performance.
“It's also buggy, incredibly buggy. To be honest, it looks like a polished unfinished beta - a really cool one, but a beta nonetheless.”
“However, from actually playing the game and investing around 6 hours in it, I had to request a refund; not only because the game itself was disappointing, but because it feels buggy and unfinished in almost every aspect.”
“However, I would not recommend it to others because it's buggy and frustrating to play.”
- atmosphere4 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 50 % negative mentions
The atmosphere of the game is characterized by a beautifully designed Victorian city that invites exploration and discovery, yet it struggles to evoke a consistent sense of unease. While some elements successfully create an immersive experience, others detract from it, leaving players feeling more like observers than active participants in the unfolding mysteries. Overall, the atmosphere is praised for its aesthetic appeal but criticized for lacking a deeper, more unsettling tension.
“Beautiful world design, really nice atmosphere.”
“The quality of the writing is all over the place; some parts feel atmospheric and immersive, while others took me out of the experience.”
“The atmosphere in this Victorian city can drive you to discover the truths beneath the mysteries.”
“The atmosphere has the right tone, but it never quite gives you that unsettling sensation. The underlying sinister feeling that is barely scratching the surface could have been greatly expanded to create a full-blown slow dread, but it never gets there. You end up an observer instead of a participant.”
- emotional3 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The game effectively combines bleak humor with poignant themes of mortality, class struggle, and the supernatural, creating an emotionally engaging experience. Players find the emotional depth compelling, especially in the context of the character drama, making it a standout choice compared to more expensive titles that lack similar emotional resonance.
“The writing drips with bleak humor, deftly touching upon themes of mortality, class struggle, and the supernatural.”
“They are emotional and sometimes frightful if you are already engaged with the drama going on between these two.”
“We have all played $60 big studio games that had the emotional appeal of a wet napkin, so for $15, I implore you to experience this wonderful game.”
- music3 mentions
- 67 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 33 % negative mentions
The music in the game is generally well-received, with users noting its quality and decent sound effects. However, some players express a desire for more atmospheric and menacing tunes to enhance the overall mood, especially given the game's quirky characters. Additionally, the absence of voice acting is mentioned as a missed opportunity.
“The music is really quite good.”
“There is no voice acting (unfortunately – it would have been especially awesome in a game with so many quirky personalities), just occasional music and plenty of sound effects. Both are very decent, but I’d prefer much more of some menacing tunes to build up the mood.”
“There is no voice acting (unfortunately – it would have been especially awesome in a game with so many quirky personalities). There is just occasional music and plenty of sound effects; both are very decent, but I’d prefer much more menacing tunes to build up the mood.”
- replayability2 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The game offers a significant amount of content that enhances its replayability, making it appealing for dedicated RPG fans. However, it may not be very welcoming for newcomers, potentially limiting their enjoyment of multiple playthroughs.
“+ a lot of content, high replay value”
“I feel this game has great replay value for true RPG fans, although it may not be very newcomer friendly.”
