Four Horsemen
Nuclear Fishin' Software · 2017 · Indie, Simulation, Adventure, Visual Novel
PC
4 user reviews100% · 4 📉 Recent reviews down 82%
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About Four Horsemen
EMIGRATE TO WESTERN EUROPE.
MAKE CORNFLAKE NACHOS.
CONFRONT THE GHOSTS OF A DEAD INTERNET.
PRETEND YOU DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH.
GET ARRESTED FOR APOLOGIZING TO A COP INFORMALLY.
KISS YOUR CRUSH.
START AN ARMED INSURRECTION.
WATCH ANIME.
DIE FIGHTING FOR YOUR RIGHTS IN A BLAZE OF GLORY.
START OVER IN NORTH AFRICA.
WATCH LESS ANIME THIS TIME.
Four Horsemen is a visual novel / SLG about homelands and the immigrant experience. Play as a group of four contemporary immigrant teenagers squatting in a World War II era machine gun bunker, trying to find a place for themselves in a pre-apocalyptic, present-dystopian country that has no place for them. Will you go native, turning against your own people to bury the past your parents fled to escape? Will you cling to your parents’ identity at any cost, at the price of being a permanent stranger in your adoptive country? Or will you strike out on your own, turning against both your homeland and your adoptive country to shape a destiny for yourself? Love is all you need…and also improvised firearms.
Four Horsemen is not another hagiographic, pioneer-tradition, self-exotifying immigrant explainer about being slightly different. It is an exploration of human migration in terms of people–neither as mythology nor as political platform, but as a difficult decision made by ordinary human beings caught in impossible circumstances, with consequences that ripple for generations. This isn’t a game about finding yourself…it’s a game about your self finding you.
Drawing from the developers' real lived experiences, interviews with current and former immigrant teens from around the world, and a year of painstaking anthropological research, featuring 4 different main storylines, 9 different endings, 12 different playable homelands (all of which play differently), and a multitude of agonizing, important decisions, Four Horsemen tells a powerfully compelling, heartrendingly familiar, brutally honest story about what it's like to be a stranger in a strange land. One playthrough can be finished in a matter of hours, but you’ll want to revisit it again and again to see all of the many stories the game has to tell…and to pursue that elusive dream of a land you can call your own.
MAKE CORNFLAKE NACHOS.
CONFRONT THE GHOSTS OF A DEAD INTERNET.
PRETEND YOU DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH.
GET ARRESTED FOR APOLOGIZING TO A COP INFORMALLY.
KISS YOUR CRUSH.
START AN ARMED INSURRECTION.
WATCH ANIME.
DIE FIGHTING FOR YOUR RIGHTS IN A BLAZE OF GLORY.
START OVER IN NORTH AFRICA.
WATCH LESS ANIME THIS TIME.
Four Horsemen is a visual novel / SLG about homelands and the immigrant experience. Play as a group of four contemporary immigrant teenagers squatting in a World War II era machine gun bunker, trying to find a place for themselves in a pre-apocalyptic, present-dystopian country that has no place for them. Will you go native, turning against your own people to bury the past your parents fled to escape? Will you cling to your parents’ identity at any cost, at the price of being a permanent stranger in your adoptive country? Or will you strike out on your own, turning against both your homeland and your adoptive country to shape a destiny for yourself? Love is all you need…and also improvised firearms.
Four Horsemen is not another hagiographic, pioneer-tradition, self-exotifying immigrant explainer about being slightly different. It is an exploration of human migration in terms of people–neither as mythology nor as political platform, but as a difficult decision made by ordinary human beings caught in impossible circumstances, with consequences that ripple for generations. This isn’t a game about finding yourself…it’s a game about your self finding you.
Drawing from the developers' real lived experiences, interviews with current and former immigrant teens from around the world, and a year of painstaking anthropological research, featuring 4 different main storylines, 9 different endings, 12 different playable homelands (all of which play differently), and a multitude of agonizing, important decisions, Four Horsemen tells a powerfully compelling, heartrendingly familiar, brutally honest story about what it's like to be a stranger in a strange land. One playthrough can be finished in a matter of hours, but you’ll want to revisit it again and again to see all of the many stories the game has to tell…and to pursue that elusive dream of a land you can call your own.
Exciting Bullet Points!!
- YOUR DECISIONS MATTER. Hard choices you make at the beginning come back to haunt you at the end. Characters turn out to be heroic or villainous depending on how you treat them--and they don't always reward you for treating them well.
- NO TWO COUNTRIES PLAY ALIKE. Each homeland has its own unique vocabulary, cultural values, prejudices, and history. Choices that are a good idea in one country turn out to be a reaaaaally bad idea in another. Like a real immigrant, you'll have to read your new culture and learn to adapt.
- NOT JUST BLACK AND WHITE. No faction reputation system! No alignment meter! Four Horsemen offers realistic, genuinely difficult moral choices, and to some questions there are no right answers--only different consequences.
- DELIGHTFUL CRAFTING SYSTEM. Make that cold, austere war bunker feel like home! Dive into dumpsters scrounging for parts, or buy them with your earnings from your terrible day job, and make DIY versions of things you could never afford! Characters interact with things you build. Make a disco ball and they'll throw a dance party, patch up that hole in the roof and they'll enjoy a quiet moment together on a rainy day. But beware--the system is not exactly fair to immigrants...
- TRIUMPH OVER HATE. A stranger pulls a knife on you and screams at you to leave town--what do you do? Do you try to de-escalate the situation with words...or respond by drawing your own blade? Our combat system replicates the anxiety and terror of real violence, not a power fantasy.
- THE MOST ADVANCED PROFANITY SYSTEM IN A VIDEO GAME, EVER. Audited by real current and former teenaged native speakers! Learn how to cast aspersions on a person's ancestry in 10 different real-world languages!
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
The game was alright I think. I did like some of the interactions of the characters, some of the routes/endings were really good, but there was this weird thing with the game for me, that I wasn't really sure what the end goal was most of the time, until I managed to find that one thing, that made it for me through to the ending I was looking for. My maybe most annoying part about this game was how it just threw you into it, no explanation, no leading into the story, just *plop* "you are immigrant kids making a club house, go do your thing." which was honestly a weird choice to go with in my opinion. The art style is pretty great, I liked how the main characters all looked unique in their own ways, but I wasn't a fan of the repetitive use of the models of the main characters with some of the other characters, just with a different color scheme, that gave me a lazy look at the game and it felt like the devs didn't really want to make more NPCs, even though some of the characters would have benefited from being special and unique in their own ways. In the end however, it's a great little short game that will be interesting for many players, but I just couldn't recommend it with t…7 found this helpful
As someone who has ancestors who were illegal immigrants, this is pretty special to me. We can't ever go back to the fatherland, and like HELL l can call this place home. We are the orphans of the world, the forever-exiles. I keep telling myself that having no anchors means no chains. But I still fear - is it a blessing or a curse?7 found this helpful
I'm kinda suprised that this game isn't more well known! It's amazing! From when I'm typing this, I've only played it once and that's just one of the endings! The story and plot is so relatable, It can make you laugh for one second, and then it hits you in the heart in the next. Not to mention that the art in the game is really nice! If no one told me about this game, I would have never thought about buying it! I highly recommend it to everyone!2 found this helpful
I liked it. It manages to talk about a hot button political issue without actually seeming political, if that makes sense. I also like that the characters talk and act like [i]actual people.[/i] Every decision you make has repercussions, some of which are obvious and immediate and some of which come back to haunt you further down the line. My main problem is actually that there are almost [i]too many[/i] choices/endings. It can make it difficult sometimes to go for an ending you haven't had before. I got this via Kickstarter, and I can't really remember what I paid for it. $15 is too much though. P.S.: Anyone who said this is targeted at "tumblr" or "sjws" must have played a different game. It is a "political" game, and it is on the left side of the spectrum, but in the end it's just here to show what's happening, not to actually change your mind.2 found this helpful
Ok1 found this helpful
Ok so first of all - I have beaten the game when I got it in the bundle for Racial Justice and Equality itch.io but I just had to buy this game here to show at least a little bit of support to the devs thus my low playtime on steam. It is in my honest opinion one of the best visual novel games ever made. It is filled with creators' passion and I can't recommend it enough. Just be sure to replay it as there is more than just one story in the game.
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