Unspottable Review

First sampled in the Xbox Summer Indie Showcase in late 2020, Unspottable was a title that had immediate appeal in the simplicity of its setup. Can that appeal translate into this final release, or is there too little here to keep players interested?

As I mentioned, the premise of Unspottable is simple, yet engaging; up to four players battle it out across a dozen or so arenas in which they hide in plain sight while attempting to punch the others in order to score points. The playing field is full of identical looking characters all walking, running, turning and just generally making the scene look and feel busy. The first task for players is to figure out exactly who they are in the scene – any sort of prompt would make detection far too easy! This leads to us gently nudging the stick and trying to see which character reacts accordingly. Once that’s done we need to try and find the other players while also blending in with the erratic movement of the litany of AI bots. These bots move in a somewhat convincing fashion too, making gentle turns, following other bots (or players), randomly sprinting: it can make finding the fellow humans very tough indeed. More than once I got caught out following what I guessed to be a human, only to punch a bot and basically signal “Here I am!” to others playing.

Almost all of the levels on offer also have some alternate problems or ways to win; one sees us in a Sushi restaurant with a win coming from collecting four specific plates of food before walking out the door, while another has us talking to the four cool kids in the school playground before making our exit. Elsewhere there are spotlights that will expose us, teleporters to use for a quick escape and more. Some stages also feature distractions, with each player having two uses if they think they are about to be caught out.

Its simple then, but also a lot of fun. Even with just the wife and I playing it, games would become tense as we silently skulked about trying to detect each other, watching for the tell-tale signs of a human player or when their HUD showed they picked up some sushi, our eyes quickly glancing at whoever was near the conveyor belt. A false punch to one of the AI leaves us exposed for a couple of seconds, as does clearly chasing down someone directly. It’s all about using the subtle nuances of movement to blend in, and I can only imagine with four competitive gamers this would be an absolute riot – when we’re allowed to have such gaming nights again.

However, that really is all there is too it. We went through the stages in order, revisiting a handful, which took a little under an hour. It’s possible set the score limit up to 99 if we’re going for an all-nighter, though that will necessitate a lot of replays of stages to get there. There’s no online play at all which is a shame, though clearly the emphasis is on local play here. There’s also no solo component, so that is worth bearing in mind if you don’t have access to at least one other person to play with. If you do though, this is a very fun game to check out, and when we can get proper local game nights on the go again this will absolutely be on the playlist.

Conclusion

If you’ve got a few gamers in the house then I highly recommend picking Unspottable up. It’ll provide a good few laughs (and arguments) and is quite different to most of what is out there already. Hiding in plain sight while trying to suss out those around you is a lot of fun. Just bear in mind that this is a strictly local multiplayer title.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.