The creators of 1000xResist are making a game about convincing an AI she's not a real person

Ursula K. Le Guin once said, "Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive." Sci-fi is about today as much as it's about tomorrow, and behind all its clones and aliens and time machines are metaphors for the times those stories were written in. Looking back at 1000xResist, the first game from indie studio Sunset Visitor, it's easy to see its story about the sole survivor of an epidemic cloning an entire society as being about Covid isolation. Sunset Visitor announced its latest game at the Triple-i Initiative showcase, and the contemporary issue it's grappling with is AI.

Now is an interesting time to be writing about the imaginary artificial intelligence of the future, when the people trying to sell us on AI are relying on the version of AI we're familiar with from science fiction to paper over the reality they're actually hawking. Which is mostly just chatbots who can help you summarize your reports or video calls.

"There's a very long tradition of science fiction storytelling that engages with artificial intelligence," says Remy Sui, creative director of Sunset Visitor, whose next game, Prove You're Human, is set to join their ranks. "All of that tradition is something that we want to contribute to—but specifically in this time, when working in that space crashes right into the very real and dank experience of some of these things actualizing in 2026 in one way or another."

In Prove You're Human, you're hired by a corporation working on artificial general intelligence, because they have a problem. Their groundbreaking new artificial intelligence called Mesa thinks she's human. It's your job to convince her she's not.

"This exact pitch, this exact game presented 10 years ago, reads very differently as the same thing presented now," says Tony Howard-Arias of Black Tabby, which is publishing Prove You're Human. "I think there's this instinct before this current era of generative AI being shoved down everyone's throats, of sympathies, right?"

The example he gives is of the 2013 Spike Jonze movie Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an AI operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. "If you watch it when it first releases there is an immediate compassion and empathy for the humanity of this fictional character," Howard-Arias says. "The entire language of the film changes in the present moment. I rewatched it a year ago, just in the context of current events, and my reaction the whole time was, 'Oh, my God, this guy is in love with a fake chatbot that's mirroring things back at him.'"

Black Tabby Games is an indie studio as well, having released the narrative games Slay the Princess and Scarlet Hollow. They're careful to clarify that generative AI wasn't used to make Prove You're Human, and that as publishers they wouldn't work with a developer that used it. "Tony and I, we have a very hard line about AI that's for sure," says Abby Howard, the other half of Black Tabby. "But I also think that talking about it should not be forbidden."

1000xResist left plenty of room for its audience to interpret things, and Prove You're Human will likewise explore its theme as a conversation with its players. "For us, it really was just to look at labor, the way in which nuance and ambiguity and continuity can be lost, the way in which we're asked to make choices that we don't always want to make," Siu says. "Yeah, all of these things. I guess just being alive in 2026, you know?"

Prove You're Human will be available on Steam.