Four Horsemen

Four Horsemen is a visual novel and SLG about homelands and the immigrant experience. You follow four contemporary immigrant teenagers squatting in a World War II-era machine-gun bunker as they try to find a place in a pre-apocalyptic, present-dystopian country that has no place for them. Their paths involve choices about whether to assimilate at the cost of turning against their own people, hold on to their parents’ identity while remaining strangers in their adopted country, or reject both homelands and shape a future of their own.

Story and choices

The game explores migration through the difficult decisions of ordinary people and the consequences those decisions carry across generations. It has four main storylines, nine endings and 12 playable homelands, each of which plays differently. A playthrough takes a matter of hours, and you can revisit the game to see other stories and pursue a place to call home.

Your choices can have consequences much later in the story. Characters may become heroic or villainous depending on how you treat them, and they do not always reward kindness. There is no faction reputation system or alignment meter: moral choices can be difficult, and some have no right answer, only different consequences.

The playable homelands

Each homeland has its own vocabulary, cultural values, prejudices and history. Choices that work in one country may be a bad idea in another, so you have to read the new culture and adapt. The game also includes profanity in 10 real-world languages, reviewed by current and former teenage native speakers.

Life in the bunker

You can furnish the cold, austere bunker by scavenging parts from dumpsters or buying them with earnings from a day job. You can use those parts to make do-it-yourself versions of things you cannot afford. The characters interact with what you build: a disco ball can prompt a dance party, while repairing a hole in the roof can give them a quiet moment together on a rainy day. The crafting system is not always fair to immigrants.

Confrontations

When a stranger threatens you with a knife and tells you to leave town, you can try to de-escalate with words or draw your own blade. Combat focuses on the anxiety and terror of real violence rather than a power fantasy.