No, I’m not a Human Review
This psychological horror game cleverly mixes climate disaster with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the vampire mythos.
No, I’m not a Human. Credit: Trioskaz / Critical Reflex
Developer Trioskaz has crafted something genuinely unsettling with No, I'm not a Human, a single-player social deduction game full of paranoia and impossible moral choices. Set in a world scorched by catastrophic solar flares, humanity has been forced into nocturnal existence while mysterious entities called Visitors disguise themselves as people and prey on survivors. This is another fantastic release from publisher Critical Reflex.
The apocalyptic premise is scary and relevant, building on fears of catastrophic climate change. The intense heat makes it impossible to go outside in the daytime, and society quickly begins to collapse. As a recluse, you’re alone in your house when desperate people start knocking on your door each night, begging for shelter. Some are genuine survivors; others are Visitors, inhuman predators who will murder your houseguests before dawn. Your survival depends on deciding who to trust with nothing but gut instinct and vague information that will only make you more paranoid. To make things worse, you can’t just stay alone, for reasons that quickly become frighteningly clear.
No, I’m not a Human. Credit: Trioskaz / Critical Reflex
During daylight hours, you and your guests are stuck indoors. You examine your guests for telltale—yet unreliable—signs of being Visitors. Unnaturally white teeth. Bloodshot eyes. Hairless armpits. Each day brings news broadcasts revealing new symptoms, but crucially, not every Visitor displays every sign, and results can be false positives. A tired human survivor might have bloodshot eyes from exhaustion, while someone who's been scavenging could have dirty nails from digging through rubble. Or maybe a Visitor was clever enough to wash their hands. Get things wrong, and someone innocent will likely be dead the next morning.
The game forces you to take risks, not letting you sit comfortably with guests you know to be human. You're warned that a deadly killer, a tall, shirtless figure wearing human skin, is hunting for people who are alone. Meanwhile, FEMA agents periodically arrive to take guests away for "testing," creating constant pressure to let new people in. Balancing your safety with the need to let strangers in is nerve-wracking.
No, I’m not a Human. Credit: Trioskaz / Critical Reflex
Meanwhile, others can mistake you for a Visitor, and you must regularly check yourself for symptoms. Coffee, cigarettes, and energy drinks that boost your energy, letting you take more actions during a day, but can, in turn, cause symptoms that mirror Visitor traits. The game forces you to use these items strategically, hiding evidence that paranoid survivors might use to identify you as a threat. Sometimes, it’s better to use them; for example, teeth that are too white should be avoided.
The visual design perfectly captures the game's oppressive mood. You wander your 3D home while guests appear as unsettling, distorted 2D illustrated sprites. The strange color palette and deliberately unsettling character portraits create constant unease, making you doubt everyone's humanity. Even clearly human characters look off-putting enough to second-guess your instincts.
No, I’m not a Human. Credit: Trioskaz / Critical Reflex
A very rare item, kombucha, allows you to save. Saves will carry over after a playthrough is done, but any other save will overwrite the existing one. It's not practical to savescum, but it does give you limited opportunities to try for one of the game’s ten endings without replaying the whole thing. The varied endings provide substantial replay value, with randomized character appearances each time you play. Each person’s identity is also randomized; people who were human in one playthrough might be Visitors in the next. In the 5 hours I played, I found four endings.
No, I’m not a Human. Credit: Trioskaz / Critical Reflex
No, I'm not a Human draws heavily from other horror, particularly Invasion of the Body Snatchers and vampire mythology, to create its atmosphere of creeping dread. Like the paranoia masterpiece of Body Snatchers, the game transforms the fundamental act of human recognition into a source of horror. Anyone could be the enemy wearing a familiar face. The Visitors echo the pod people's perfect mimicry, humans without humanity, right down to the subtle wrongness that only careful observation can detect.
But where Body Snatchers focused on ideological conformity, No, I'm not a Human adds vampire-like predation. The Visitors consume humans. They must be invited in. They’re out at night, though interestingly, in this world, humans must also avoid daylight. Finally, they display physical traits, like their perfect teeth, akin to vampire character tropes. The game's central mechanic of offering shelter to strangers directly parallels the vampire invitation trope, turning every knock on your door into a source of dread. Most cleverly, the serial killer described as wearing human skin evokes both the Body Snatchers' stolen identities and the vampire's parasitic nature, creating a monster that combines the psychological horror of infiltration with the visceral terror of predation, with a touch of Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill.
No, I’m not a Human. Credit: Trioskaz / Critical Reflex
No, I'm not a Human succeeds brilliantly at synthesizing tropes of classic horror into a new terrifying mythos that feels original. Its surreal yet tangible setting heightens the experience, and I won’t soon forget it. The Visitors look just like us, and maybe the game has a point when it tells us that anyone is capable of being a monster.
No, I’m not a Human is available now on Steam.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: Steam Deck
