1000xResist’s Upcoming Game Challenges Players to Debate an AI That Believes It’s Human

Developer sunset visitor 斜陽過客 launched 1000xResist for Nintendo Switch and Windows PC in 2024, offering an experimental exploration of themes like diaspora and the pandemic. The game garnered multiple award nominations, including a Peabody, and made its debut on PlayStation and Xbox consoles last fall. Recently, the studio unveiled its next project at the Triple-i Initiative Showcase: Prove You’re Human, a narrative-driven game centered on convincing an AI that you are not a human.

Remy Siu, the founder of sunset visitor 斜陽過客, shared in a video call that the development of Prove You’re Human began after wrapping up work on 1000xResist two years ago. Observing the growing presence of generative AI in daily life, Siu and the team recognized a unique opportunity. “We wanted to dive into this tension of what was happening in 2024 and up until now, both about the state of work and labor and also the effectual experience of artificial intelligence, to a certain extent, actualizing, and the effect of that as a person.”

In Prove You’re Human, players take on the role of a digital copy of someone tasked with testing an AI named Mesa.

“We can use that marriage between the self and work to explore stories that we want to tell,” writer Natalie Checo explained. “This is a story where we’re exploring our own anxieties about AI, about work, about the world around us as it is right now in 2026.”

Mesa is depicted as a large face at the end of a robotic arm, yearning for a full body. The design aims to be “as uncanny as possible,” embracing an unsettling aesthetic, according to Siu.

Players will engage in conversations with Mesa, as well as debate her through CAPTCHA challenges.

“More traditional CAPTCHA feels like an act of violence, asking the player to distinguish whether something was something or not in a very binary way,” Siu noted. “Part of that is asking both the character of Mesa and the player to kind of enact some kind of violence.”

The game will be published by Black Tabby Publishing, a new label from the developers of Slay the Princess and Scarlet Hollow. Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias, the duo behind Black Tabby Games, had always intended to venture into publishing to help ease the challenges faced by indie developers. “Once we had hit that point where we were comfortable, the first thought was basically, how do we make sure that other developers get here too?” Howard said.

As of now, sunset visitor 斜陽過客 and Black Tabby Publishing have not announced a release window for Prove You’re Human, which is one of the advantages of being an indie studio. “We’ve learned the valuable lesson of not giving a sense of timing until you’re ready for it,” Howard-Arias remarked.

Prove You’re Human is currently in development for Windows PC.