Unsighted

Unsighted is a Metroidvania in which the player character and all non-player characters have a time-limited counter and become "unsighted" on expiring, making them permanently disappear from the game. The player can expand their and other character's time by using meteor dust, an item discovered throughout the game that extends the time by 24 in-game hours. Allocation of meteor dust is limited, requiring players to become selective about which characters survive. The player can disable this feature in the game's settings by activating "Explorer Mode", which removes all time limits.

The primary objective of the player is to explore the city of Arcadia to find five meteor shards, each within a separate dungeon. Navigation throughout the game world involves platforming, including jumping across gaps and platforms, and using tools collected throughout the game, including a hookshot to pull the player towards objects or enemies. As players explore the world, they unlock terminals which can allow them to save the game, access upgrades, heal and teleport to other locations. The game world is displayed on a map that reveals areas which the player has explored.

The player character is Alma, an experimental combat automaton that awakens with amnesia in the laboratory of her designer, Dr. Zeferina. The laboratory is situated in Arcadia, the site of a crash-landed meteor. Following the arrival of the meteor, the automatons gained sentience with access to the resource anima, and the humans fled, with the exception of Dr.

Zeferina. The doctor helped the automatons, and took five shards from the meteor to study them, each protected by a powerful automaton.

Unsighted is the debut game of Studio Pixel Punk, a Brazilian independent games studio founded in 2017 by designer, programmer, writer and composer Fernanda Dias and programmer, level designer and artist Tiani Pixel. The game was inspired by the dungeons and linear progression of The Legend of Zelda series and the open-ended gameplay of the Metroid series, with the game intended to evoke the familiarity of those titles whilst introducing a level of choice and freedom not normally seen in the Metroidvania genre. The game's use of a time limit in its narrative and gameplay was conceived to provide weight to the consequences behind gameplay decisions, build the player's connection to non-player characters, and encourage repeated playthroughs of the game. Dias and Pixel, both transgender women, also designed Unsighted with the intent of presenting a game that partly reflected their experiences but subverted the expected conventions of a "wholesome" game with LGBT themes.

The developers sought to pursue these themes in a subtle and natural way by designing diverse characters "for people who don't always feel connected to games on a personal level". The game was developed in the Unity engine, with Ableton Live and FMOD used for audio and effects.

Unsighted received "generally favorable" reviews according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Several reviewers cited the game as one of the best of 2021, with Kotaku describing the game as the best Metroidvania of the year.

Many reviewers praised the game's use of time limits as an innovative gameplay and narrative mechanic. Writing for Esquire, Dom Nero discussed the emotional impact of these mechanics was "disarming" and "devastating", praising it for its ability to prompt empathy for the game's non-player characters. Several critics commented upon how they viewed the mechanic created difficult and emotionally impactful moral decisions about the survival of characters, with Edge describing the mechanic as adding a "thrilling sense of urgency" to the game. In contrast, Moises Taveras of Vice expressed a preference to play the game without the system, citing the "continuous notifications" of dying characters as "unusually cruel" and a distraction to the enjoyment of the game.