AlPixel Games’ A Place For The Unwilling is an isometric adventure-thriller. The game sees Arthur venturing to a town after one of his friends, named Henry Allen, commits suicide and leaves all of his belongings to Arthur. When Arthur goes to the town to investigate Allen’s death, things aren’t quite as they seem.

The game has a bit of a point-and-click design where players move around, interact with the environment and talk to NPCs. The art-style is kind of a mix of comic clipart with Thurop Van Orman’s caricatured designs.

The developers recently demonstrated more than an hour’s worth of gameplay, even though A Place For The Unwilling is still an entire year off from release. You can check out the footage from the live-stream below.

A large portion of the beginning of the game centers around Arthur talking to the people around town. As he gets to know them they go from squiggly black shadows to their actual avatars, which means that players have to spend a bit of time getting to know everyone.

You’ll have a limited amount of time to explore the city, and it takes place in real-time similar to Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. This prompts for multiple playthroughs and different attempts to discover various aspects about the inhabitants and the city.

There’s a strong Lovecraftian vibe about the town, and I can’t help but feel as if there’s some hints that the game might turn out a bit like Dagon. The game will sport multiple endings, and depending on what choices you make will determine what ending you unlock. What’s more is that you can actually end the game early by simply leaving the city.

We don’t get many games like this… where there’s a focus on a more realized take on exploration and investigation. Most games go for either cheap jump-scares or over-the-top action survival. The upcoming Call of Cthulhu shows promise as being designed in a similar vein to A Place For The Unwilling, so at least there are options on the horizon.

AlPixel Games’ title was originally Kickstarted back in early 2016, and the team has been slowly toiling away on the game since then. They’re now gunning for a 2018 release and penny-pinching the €22,329 to bring it to life.

You can keep up to date with the game by visiting the official website or learn a bit more about the backstory and design by checking out the Kickstarter page.