UnMetal

In UnMetal, the player controls Jesse Fox, a prisoner attempting to escape a maximum-security prison. While moving through each level, Fox must avoid visual contact and direct confrontation with patrolling guards; if he is detected, the alarm will be sounded, and Fox must hide from reinforcements until they lose track of where he is. To dispatch guards, Fox can hit them at close-range, or he can distract them by hitting objects or tossing a coin to sneak past or lure them. Unconscious enemies can be carried to hide their bodies, or they can be searched for items.

Different weapons are unlocked as the game progresses, including a slingshot firing "depleted uranium balls", chloroform, a pistol, a flamethrower, Molotov cocktails, grenades, electromagnetic grenades, and a rocket launcher; ranged weapons require limited ammunition that must be collected and stockpiled. If Fox is injured, he will begin to bleed and slowly lose health; players can use bandages to stop the bleeding, medkits to gradually replenish health, or blood bags to fully replenish health. As Fox refuses to kill people, any enemies incapacitated by lethal weapons such as the pistol must be healed using an available medkit before they bleed out, or the player will get a game over, though this is unnecessary for bosses and non-human enemies.

Some time after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a Soviet military helicopter treads into U.S.-allied airspace and is shot down. The pilot, Jesse Fox, is apprehended and transferred to the U.S. Army's custody for interrogation by an unnamed lieutenant. The game's frame story follows Fox as he explains his turn of events to the lieutenant, which is in turn recounted by Fox to his unnamed girlfriend on a drive through a savanna.

Fox was falsely imprisoned by the X Army, a mercenary unit led by General X, and held in a prison on their base. S. Army colonel believed dead in an ambush, and Robert, a journalist arrested for photographing a shipment of concrete. Fox escapes the prison through the sewers, but unintentionally surfaces in the base's Alpha Building.

UnMetal was developed by Spanish game developer Francisco Téllez de Meneses, a former Ubisoft developer, under the pseudonym "Unepic Fran" and the indie studio UnEpic Games. Several elements of the game, including some levels and mechanics, are directly copied and improved from Prisoner of War (2017), a similar MSX video game developed by Francisco. The game's player character, Jesse Fox, was originally created in 2018 for Afraid Project, a strategy game that donated money to African humanitarian aid NGOs based on the player's progress, in which Fox was an aid delivery driver; however, Afraid Project was canceled when its Kickstarter campaign failed.

UnMetal was first released for the PlayStation Vita on 21 April 2021 with a limited run of physical copies published by Eastasiasoft. Experience from the PS Vita release was used to improve aspects of the game ahead of its digital ports, such as the graphics of certain levels. The game was among the indie titles that were teased in the Guerrilla Collective showcase at E3 2021, the final Electronic Entertainment Expo before the event's retirement in 2023. UnMetal was released on Steam, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Games Store, and the Nintendo eShop on 28 September 2021.

UnMetal received mostly positive reviews upon release. Review aggregator Metacritic displays a score of 85 out of 100 based on 7 critic reviews, and a user score of 8.3 based on 36 user ratings.

In a review for PC Gamer, Joseph Knoop praised the game's humor, the influence of the unreliable narration, and how it captured "Hideo Kojima's flair for bonkers storytelling, villainous monologuing, and action hero logic". Francis DiPersio of Hey Poor Player similarly lauded the humor and influence of the narration on gameplay, saying "there were moments that literally left me in tears and gasping for breath as if I were infected with FOXDIE", though he also criticized the "obnoxious" difficulty of two maze segments that must be completed without errors. Daniel Weissenberger of Gamecritics.com called UnMetal "one of the most successful comedy games of all time" and commended how well it parodied Metal Gear and Kojima's "ultra-serious" storytelling. Ryan Keenum, writing for Screen Rant, highlighted how the comedic elements helped the game stand out and remain original even as a clear Metal Gear parody, which he attributed to "clever, enjoyable writing". In Third Coast Review, Antal Bokor called the game "absurd in the most delightful ways" and deemed it one of his favorite games of 2021.