What would you do to keep a job? Is the prospect of a salaried position worth doing something morally questionable? Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination is an interactive horror fiction story by Finnegan Motors that investigates that premise. When it becomes clear that your employer isn’t the fantastic place they advertise themselves to be, you must act to keep your sanity. Do you discard your morals for profit or take the morally upright route at great personal sacrifice?
Inhuman Resources presents a chilling tale with multiple routes, masterfully weaving subtle horror throughout the story. Characters are complex, making it difficult to know who’s truly terrifying until the pin drops. Choices give you control over your path, immersing you in the narrative as you choose how you would react. There are unexplained concepts that inconvenience you but it never takes away from the horrific masterpiece that this game is.
You are a struggling individual who is barely getting along in life. Your aunt is working for the famous SMYRNACORP and offers to help you get a job there. The corporation’s reputation is amazing on the outside but you learn their true nature once you get the job. Staying with SMYRNACORP is your best and only way to make a living but it eats at you. Do you try to claw back your moral high ground or do you stick with the job for the paycheck?
While the setting of Inhuman Resources is fictional, the themes are grounded in reality. It’s not hard to relate to the protagonist if you have or have had struggles in the job market: staying in a job just to pay the bills, even if you don’t like it. This helps immerse the player in the protagonist’s struggle because there is no easy decision.
The horror also boosts the immersion because you subtly feel it throughout the story. It’s clear that something’s wrong but you don’t know what it is at first. When the horror appears, it hits you because it’s worse than whatever you could imagine. You dread seeing it again but you can’t avoid it. Investigating SMYRNACORP or going through the daily motions requires you to adapt to the terrifying operations, but you can’t look away because you must know how terrible it truly is.
There’s also good replay value in choosing different paths. Your protagonist may have hidden talent that went unnoticed or they could be laughably incompetent. SMYRNACORP is either a corporation you want to bring down or your ideal workplace. Your choices matter and that makes you wonder what would happen if you chose differently. There are many variations that are easy to explore thanks to the interactive fiction format.
There is one downside to the gameplay and that is a lack of instructions on how to proceed. It’s not inherently obvious that there are skills you can develop or master. Some choices are made when you hold your mouse button on an option while others need one click. It makes it hard to understand what you need to do when you have new objects like a map. Thankfully, it’s easy to learn once you realize what must happen to progress.
Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination presents a frightening tale that takes a real-life fear and dials the horror up to eleven. The parallels to a real-life situation and multiple-choice routes immerse you in the narrative, making it hard to turn away. There are moments where you must figure out how to proceed that interfere with the immersion, though there aren’t many. For a chilling story that rings true for any former or current job seeker, Inhuman Resources is the undisputed masterpiece.
Victor played Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination on PC with a provided review copy.
