Unforeseen Incidents

What a beautiful piece of art Unforeseen Incidents is. It’s just so fantastically drawn, animated, colored, lit… And then on top of that, it’s a brilliant adventure game, and a very funny one.

That last aspect is more surprising, given this is about the spreading of a deadly new plague that causes people to bleed out of their eyes, nose, and mouth, and one handyman’s attempts to stop it. (It’s worth noting this came out in 2018, a couple of years before new plagues felt like less of a hilarious subject.)

Part of the secret behind Unforeseen Incidents’ brilliance, on top of being a stunningly well-made adventure game packed with great puzzles, is that its  translation from German to English was handled by British comedian Alasdair Beckett-King, with the freedom to rewrite as he saw fit. Beckett-King, as well as being a successful stand-up and television star, is no stranger to adventure games—he made the adorable Nelly Cootalot games, which themselves are hilarious. And the result is perfect.

It’s fair to say that a lot of German adventures lose a lot in translation, often receiving very literal language swaps, which leaves a lot of the humor behind. That problem is eliminated here, with a wealth of wonderful one-liners added to an already very funny story. That’s made even better when you notice that the game’s characters aren’t clumsy stereotypes, and there’s a complete lack of exploiting vulnerable characters to solve puzzles: instead, here you help people who deserve it, in a very progressive tale.

This is a lovely, long game, with excellent voice acting, consistently laugh-out-loud writing, and a sense of wholesomeness that isn’t even vaguely twee.