Unbroken: The Awakening

I went in expecting a janky Early Access curio and came out genuinely unsettled in the best possible way. Unbroken: The Awakening is a solo-developer first-person action-RPG set in Crests Edge, a fractured realm where the class divide is so baked into the world that the technology, language, and even enemy behavior shift depending on which stratum of society you are currently moving through. You are hunting a traitor named Nielsen against the backdrop of an Earl's Rebellion and the looming Feast of the 3rd Moon, and the writing trusts you to piece the lore together from the environment rather than dumping it in cutscenes. That restraint is rare, and it works. The combat is where the handcraft really shows. The Resin system sits at the center of everything: collect potent oils, apply the right one at the right moment, and time slows, enemies launch skyward, or debris becomes improvised ammunition through the resin kick. It sounds chaotic and it is, but there is a satisfying rhythm underneath, the same fast-twitch combo chaining energy that fans of Neckbreak, the developer's previous game, will recognize immediately. Kills replenish stamina, a wall jump is unlockable for both combat and exploration, and faith devotion mechanics let you pledge to a local religion at Nelsons Crossing for shrine saves and health restoration, at a spiritual cost if you lean on them too hard. These systems are small individually, but stacked together they give the game a textured, deliberate feel that most Early Access titles never find. The Westfall Railways subway, the WRW tickets you need to ride it, the spleens you loot from enemies and sell to merchants, all of it builds a world that feels lived in rather than sketched out. Visually, the game commits fully to a sprite-based first-person aesthetic, modernized with real-time lighting, ragdoll physics, and destructible environments. It reads as a loving reconstruction of mid-90s titles like Witchhaven or Disruptor through a contemporary lens, and the result is something genuinely distinct on the Steam storefront right now. The dynamic jazzpunk OST composed by Roland Redwood deserves its own mention: it reacts to your environment and shifts with your story decisions in a way that most games twice the budget would not bother to attempt. When a track quietly mutates mid-corridor because you made a choice three areas back, you feel it before you consciously register what changed. The honest caveats matter here. This is Early Access, and the developer has been transparent that maps, collision geometry, and unpolished areas are ongoing targets. Community reports mention a shop interaction bug and some rough animation states, and there is a legitimate ongoing conversation in the forums about the use of AI-generated imagery in certain environments and cutscenes, which is worth knowing going in. The 3rd Moon content update, released in June 2025, is the most ambitious patch yet, adding the Krankenstieg route, new factions including the Swans and Slags, proximity mines, a grenade launcher called the Lobster, and an overhauled sanity meter that now functions as a dynamic gameplay element rather than a cosmetic filter. The game is moving forward, actively, with one person behind it. If you need a polished 1.0 release, wait. If you are the kind of player who finds something precious in a dense, weird, hand-built world still finding its final shape, Unbroken: The Awakening is already doing things no other game on the market is doing, and the trajectory is clearly upward.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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