1000xResist: my 2024 Game Of The Year
Rhianne Ward
Where do I even start with 1000xResist? Have you ever played a game, or experienced any work of art so engaging, so utterly convincing in its craft, that coming out the other side feels like living through an entire lifetime? You roll credits, left with the lingering feeling that you are not - and will never be again - the same person you were before hitting play?
There's only a few games I can point to which have elicited this emotion in me. Outer Wilds is one, Celeste another. Bloodborne, Disco Elysium, NieR Automata... all incredible works that have played at least a small part in shaping who I am, and how I perceive the world around me. I can look back and identify specifics about why I connected with these games so much, and I often do in my writing, sometimes in vain, but nothing ever quite captures The Feeling. You know it when you feel it, and that's that.
1000xResist is, in some ways, a game about trying to explain the unexplainable thing that is our lives and our experiences. Our protagonist is Watcher, one of likely thousands of clones, all originating from one teenage girl, Iris, the sole survivor of a humanity-ending pandemic brought about by the arrival of an alien civilisation called the Occupants. The story follows Watcher as she navigates Iris’s collection of memories - set both before, during and a little after the pandemic - she has passed down to her clones, for the purposes of spreading her message and good word. At least, that's what we're told; the society of clones has become something of a religious cult, worshipping Iris as a god - the Allmother - and her words are treated as holy scripture, everything about her and produced by her subject to intense critical scrutiny by scholars hoping to eke out any and all meaning from it.
The destination this path leads us to should be obvious, right? Watcher finds out Iris isn't a god but instead just a person, then revolts against her and the lie built around her legacy. You'd be especially inclined to believe this since the game opens on an in-media-res scene of her skewering Iris through the heart, before jumping back in time to show us how she got to that point. However, you'd be wrong!
1000xResist is an incredibly complex, endlessly surprising experience that consistently threw me down rabbit holes of ever-increasing depth, and by the time I came out the other side, it was hard to remember how I got there. It's a game with things to say, not just about religion, but also memory, nostalgia, generational trauma, protest, mistakes and forgiveness, free will and humanity being trapped in cycles, and through all of that the game somehow remains not just readable, but deeply affecting.
And it just keeps going! Usually, that would be something I criticise. I hate it when games overstay their welcome by filling themselves with endless “““content””” - slop to be consumed, digested, and flushed away. But in 1000xResist, every beat, every surprise, that follows on from the last feels like a critical piece of the overall puzzle. To be honest, I was always glad to see the game keep going where I expected it to end, because I just wanted to spend more time in this world and pick apart its intricacies. The thematic elements this game continued to layer on top of the already great material never stopped being compelling, and ultimately I came away with… well… The Feeling.
I think that feeling of being overwhelmed, and having to juggle so many ideas and possibilities at once, is part of the intended emotional experience of 1000xResist. In lieu of spoilers, I'll say this game makes the case that human beings, by our nature, are vulnerable, limited creatures. There's only so much we can carry on our backs, emotionally, before we buckle under the weight. My journey through this game felt like a reckoning with that side of myself. I have a tendency to lump too much baggage onto myself. I try and maintain this impossible juggling act of being empathetic to everyone in my life, while also giving a lot of myself and my efforts to others - mainly work - and when something goes wrong, or I make a mistake and it affects another person, I let myself get completely wrapped up in self-loathing.
I dull the sensation with distractions - social media, video games, or old reliable dissociation - and by the time obligations catch up to me, I crash out. It feels like walking a narrow tightrope, where I'm always expecting the line to snap, even when I know how to cross it and have done so many times. No amount of practice ever makes the task feel completely safe. Not to mention, that line snapping might lead to a cascade of mishaps. Maybe the support on the other side collapses, knocking into a box of nails that spills out, and it shuts off the power somehow so the circus animals get scared and start attacking the audience, all because I couldn't keep my shit together, up on that tightrope.
I realise this metaphor is getting away from me, but I hope you understand my point. Of course, the circus is fake; a figment of my imagination I invented for this blog post, but also, things will never get as bad as I fear they will. The world doesn't rest upon my shoulders; there are other people around me, able and willing to help carry that weight. And even if there isn't, it's okay to recognise my limits. After all, we're only human. Fickle, fragile creatures with bigger egos than brains. We might think we're the hottest shit in the universe, but we can only take so much.
1000xResist frames all this within the context of generations, where every human living in the world must not only carry with them their own baggage, but also entire multiple millennia of lessons learned. Perhaps it's no wonder history repeats itself when there is so much history to consider in the first place. We are limited; our little hearts and souls can only take so much. Eventually, we need to admit that not everything can be remembered, and we have to make peace with that. The curse, but also the beauty, of humanity is that we get to decide what we bring with us into the rest of our lives. For a story showing how easy it is to feel trapped in a vortex of inevitability, this concluding note feels especially hopeful.
And I must admit, no game has ever made me feel quite like that. That's what makes 1000xResist so extraordinary, I suppose. It says something, if not new then, deeply poignant that will speak to anyone. Or, at the very least, it spoke to me.
Even now, having written this whole post out, it feels reductive, like I can never quite encapsulate my feelings on the work. Perhaps it's because I made a conscious effort to avoid spoilers, because I desperately want you to experience it. Or maybe I'm falling victim to the exact thing the game warns about. By making my game of the year its own post, I was hoping that I could make this a singular piece, a lengthy dissection of what makes this game so incredible. But then, sitting down to actually write it, the words simply weren't coming. This isn't my favourite piece of writing in the world, but I think it's okay, and I'm deciding to be okay with that. There's no sense in suffering over something like this, when I can just say with confidence that this game meant a lot to me, and leave it there. I'm choosing to let go, and move on to other things. A bit dramatic, I realise, but hey, what's life without a little self-important drama?
That being said, I still have things to say about some of the particulars of this game, I'm going to list some moments that left an impression on me. It will be Spoiler City, so if you haven't played this game, please do so, and then, if you feel like it, come back here and we can revel in the magic together. Anyway, here we go. This one is for me.
// spoilers ahead //
I love the way the "time travel" is conceptualised in this game. The light adventure game puzzling I can take or leave, but the way Watcher plays the role of Iris through all of these memories gives every conversation this deeply tragic feeling. Despite being present in these people's lives for this short moment, there is nothing you can do to change the course of history. It is deeply sad, and makes for an interesting vibe going into the rest of the game.
I adore everything going on with Iris's parents. For all intents and purposes, her mum is someone I would ordinarily hate, but her position in the narrative and her past as an attendee of the 2019 Hong Kong protests made her so compelling. She takes the easy route in many ways, ordering Iris to act a certain way rather than letting her learn things organically with a guiding hand, and Iris ends up doing the same thing later in time. Good shit, good shit.
Watcher's betrayal of Fixer was the moment I realised this game wasn't messing around, because the decision feels so unforgivable in the moment. Like, I understood that there would be a turnaround and the game would consider this to be an Uncool Move, but it's such a terrible thing to do to someone, especially one so close to you. That's when I knew this game had the sauce; it had its protagonist do something horrible and then keeps going after that. Hell yeah.
The Occupants are such a fascinating antagonist, because of how benevolent they are. They simply show up, bestow upon humanity this "gift", and this ends up destroying us when our brains can't handle the weight. They're basically gods in that sense; untouchable beings beyond reason, whose expectations are basically impossible to meet. Only one person in the whole world has the mental fortitude to withstand them, and she's still this deeply flawed emotional wreck of a woman. It feels like a nice touch that the most resilient human on the planet is just a teenage girl dealing with the everyday reality of being a high schooler and a child of immigrants.
The fact that the game doesn't end with Iris's death, but instead refuses to, jumping years into the future with a whole new character to control, is insane and I can't believe the audacity of it. And the way there's still multiple hours left beyond that point! Absolutely wild, I love this game.
There's a torture scene that goes on for about a hour, detailing what happens to Watcher immediately after her murder of Iris, and it is incredibly unpleasant to sit through. So, to wrap that up with a memory of Iris showing her first clones - her children - a look at the world before the collapse kind of devastated me? I think the moment is meant to be an escape of sorts for Iris. Nostalgia can be a tremendous comfort, especially in a dire situation like the one she's in, and the game has you experience that relief by placing a live-action montage of the real world, following something so deeply unpleasant. It's really clever structuring, and maybe my favourite moment in the whole game. Not to mention, the music that plays during this scene is my favourite track on the OST, so it makes me cry that I can't find it anywhere on Bandcamp! Sunset Visitor, you have 7 days to rectify this, or so help me God I WILL keep talking about how good your game is!
The ending stands out to me, obviously. In a story about how much emotional weight one person can truly carry, it feels right that you get to decide how the whole experience shakes out. Initially, I chose to keep everyone alive, and the game punished me for it by immediately killing me, and handing out a bad ending. It's like the writers are screaming at me, "have you not listened to a single thing we've said?? Be serious right now!" I felt bad though, as I have every time in my life I've made the active choice to let something, or someone, go. But it needs to happen sometimes, so I trusted my gut, made the choices that felt right, and I got an ending more fitting of my personal experience. I like personal freedom in games as much as the next girl, but I also appreciate when games strongarm the player when necessary. A story where everyone comes out happy, even the bad actors, just wouldn't feel honest. It's too easy.
I just love this game so much. Everyone should play it, because then everyone will understood how good it is! If someone from Sunset Visitor is somehow reading this, thank you so much for this gift you have given to the world. Your efforts were not in vain, and I hope you realise that I will be carrying this story and these characters with me for the rest of my life.