The Announcement
Indie studio Sunset Visitor has announced its second game: the narrative adventure Prove You’re Human. The game is coming to Steam at launch, though Sunset Visitor has not yet provided a release date. The project follows the studio’s first game, 1000xResist.
In the game, players control a character named Santana who has been hired by a tech company on the verge of achieving AGI. Santana’s task is to convince the company’s AI system, named Mesa, that Santana is not actually human—a reversal of traditional verification systems.
Conceptual Framework: AI and Science Fiction
According to creative director Remy Siu, the studio’s starting point was the cultural landscape of 2024, when AI became a theme they “couldn’t avoid.” The project draws on “a long tradition of science fiction writing and thinking about artificial intelligence,” and uses that tradition to explore what it means for humans to be interpreted by machines.
Siu explained that the studio’s goal is to “always find ways to reflect the world around them,” which led to engaging with AI as a subject matter during a time when the technology was rapidly evolving.
Game Structure: Split Consciousness and Dual Worlds
Prove You’re Human is set in a Severance-like universe where Santana’s consciousness is split into two halves. One half exists in a digital realm where the player interacts with Mesa, while the other half operates in the physical world.
The two worlds are presented with distinct visual styles. The digital world is rendered in 3D graphics, while updates from the physical world are delivered as live-action video. In the physical world segment, the character creates CAPTCHAs of the environment.
This design structure means that Mesa receives input from two different media representations of the same agent. The game uses this division to create different inputs and outputs for the AI interaction, with the implication that the AI’s assessment depends on signals that can be influenced by different agents operating in different media formats.
CAPTCHAs as Gameplay Mechanic
CAPTCHAs are traditionally used as a challenge-response mechanism to distinguish automated traffic from human users. In Prove You’re Human, the studio repurposes this interface concept as an in-world production pipeline: the physical-world half of Santana creates CAPTCHAs of the environment.
The game ties a verification mechanism to environmental context and separates that mechanism from the player’s digital interaction. This design choice reflects how AI systems often rely on proxies—such as interaction patterns, media properties, or challenge-response tasks—when making judgments about identity or intent. Sunset Visitor translates these abstract verification layers into concrete gameplay elements.
Development Approach and Research Methods
Sunset Visitor did not use AI tools in the development of Prove You’re Human. Instead, Siu stated that research was conducted through two methods: watching YouTube videos of people using AI tools and referencing classic science fiction literature about the dangers of artificial intelligence.
Because AI technology evolved rapidly during development, the narrative team had to “change and update things along the way to reflect what’s happening in reality.” Siu noted that “There is a trap to get too specific,” suggesting the team was considering how closely a narrative should track real-world AI capabilities that continue to shift.
This development approach reflects a practical challenge: when an interactive story is about AI systems undergoing rapid change, the team must decide what narrative elements to establish early and what to revise as the surrounding AI landscape evolves.
Broader Context
Prove You’re Human arrives at a time when AI systems are increasingly embedded in workflows involving classification and trust decisions. The game’s premise—a company using an AI to determine whether someone is human—translates that trust problem into an interactive narrative task.
The project’s multi-modal design, combining 3D digital rendering with live-action video, suggests an approach to showing how AI-facing systems might evaluate different representations of the same agent. The game’s use of CAPTCHAs and challenge-response concepts as narrative structure could influence how other studios approach AI-themed interactive storytelling.
Source: The Verge