No, I’m Not A Human takes deduction gameplay and throws it against a backdrop of mindbending alien suspense
I’ve never quite played something like No, I’m Not A Human. The game, from developer Trioskaz and publisher Critical Reflex, pushes what we think about psychological horror into a strange, judgmental direction. The game puts us in isolation during an alien invasion, with the beings taking over human bodies pod people-style. We have a home in the middle of nowhere, and in order for us to survive it’s up to us to determine who is human and not, and who to save in the process.
It’s a suspenseful deduction game at its heart, revolving around interrogation and choice. When night comes people trying to evade the aliens will knock at our door, and we need to ask a series of questions to understand if we should let them in or not. They themselves might be an alien! Or they might just be an afraid couple that is hitting hard times. We can turn some away, but then they might face an untimely end in the darkness.
There are some telltale signs if people are aliens, which we learn as we play and progress, but they don’t always line up. Early on it may seem easy to decide based on their answers or their appearance, but there are some nuances that we find out about the more we play. Now, we can let people in if we’re MOSTLY sure, but even then we need to listen to the things they say, to the clues that appear on the in-game TV or radio or phone calls, and even to the other people we’re housing for the night to determine if someone is or isn’t what they seem. We can let them stay and hope they’re not an alien, or we can call them out. Sometimes we’re right, and sometimes we’re very very wrong.
The game thrives on this balance of choice and suspense of result, but the concern isn’t that we may make a wrong decision — because frankly it’s kind of fun to “accidentally” blow someone away with a shotgun that ends up being a human — it’s more that there’s such a loop to go through that by the end of a playthrough we’re not really all that excited or ready to jump in again to see if we can get a different ending. There are multiple, and they’re all in different levels of uniqueness, but it really depends on if we want to through that same loop over and over to see them.
No, I’m Not A Human is a solid execution of an intriguing premise for a game. It’s a little too reliant on the loop but if we’re dedicated to resolving and surviving then we may be happy when we make correct — or wildly incorrect — judgments.
Steam code provided by publisher. This video originally appeared in The SideQuest LIVE for December 30, 2025.
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