南方公园：真理之杖 South Park: The Stick of Truth p.504

动荡

Unrest

在 2010 年前后，众筹对电子游戏起到了无与伦比的重要作用。在众筹的帮助下，不仅早已消亡的游戏类型和玩法风格得以重见天日，而且那些入不了发行商法眼的游戏也得到了资金，给业界带来了一股新风。

《动荡（Unrest）》就是个最好的例子：这是一部短小精悍的独立游戏，讲述了 5 名角色在奇幻版的古印度中与严格的种姓制度的抗争，呈现出了一个没有简单答案的艰难世界。

毕姆拉（Bhimra）城正遭受一场致命的旱灾，贫民窟中的人们因饥饿而死，商人、祭司和贵族则躲藏在城市的高墙之后。游戏开始于国王宣布他与强大的纳迦（Naga）帝国签订了一项绝望的交易。

故事在八个小章节中步步展开，玩家会从 5 个不同的角度探索这个城市：被锁在宫殿中的公主，前来谈判的纳迦外交官，将要开始包办婚姻的农夫女儿，尝试保护家人的疲惫祭司，以及在混乱的局势中斟酌如何行动的佣兵队长。尽管整个游戏只有 3-4 小时的内容，但文本的写作技巧精湛，每一章都精准地呈现出了角色们的挣扎。

但是，不要对斩杀大群怪物或者成为城市的英雄有所期待。《动荡》中的角色基本上都没什么力量，同时被他们在社会中的职责所束缚。他们不得不妥协，做出没有明确答案的决定，而他们永远不知道结果是什么。游戏中没有道德倾向，没有声望值，没有幻灯片式的结局总结，没有任何和“选择与结果”相关的 RPG 元素。但是选择仍然会产生深刻的影响——并非是通向不同奖励的路径，而是玩家表达的工作。你没法一下子改变这个世界，但是你可以让事情变好一点，或者变坏一点。游戏中有多个结局，甚至角色死亡都有好几种不同的方式，这些都是故事的一部分。

It's impossible to overstate how important crowd-funding was to video games in the 2010s. Not only it revived genres and gameplay styles long declared dead, it also breathed new life into the industry, funding games no publisher would touch.

Unrest is a perfect example of this: it's a short indie game about five characters in a fantasy version of ancient India, struggling with a rigid caste system and a harsh world where there's no easy answers.

The city of Bhimra is suffering from a devastating drought, with people in the slums starving to death while merchants, priests and nobles shelter inside the city walls. The game begins as the King announces a desperate deal with the powerful Naga Empire.

The story unveils through eight short chapters, exploring the city from different angles: a princess locked in the palace, a Naga diplomat arriving to negotiate, a farmer's daughter entering an arranged marriage, a weary priest trying to protect his family, and a mercenary captain deciding how to act amidst all this chaos. While the entire game lasts only 3-4 hours, it's skillfully written, with each chapter successfully presenting character's struggles in a concise way.

However, don't expect to slay hordes of monsters and become the city's hero – Unrest's characters are mostly powerless, chained by their roles in society. They are forced to compromise and make decisions with no clear answer, which they may never know the outcome. There's no morality bar, no reputation, ending slides or other RPGs tropes associated with “choices & consequences”. Yet, choices matter deeply, not as paths to different rewards, but as tools for player expression. You won't radically change the world, but you can make things a bit better or a bit worse. There's multiple endings and even ways for characters to die, which gets embraced as part of the story.

2013 年，《动荡》在 Kickstarter 上启动了众筹，最终筹集到了大约 36000 美元。他们最初的目标是 3000 美元。

Unrest was crowdfunded in 2013 on Kickstarter, raising about $36,000 USD. Their original goal was $3,000 USD.

有些人可能会认为《动荡》并不是“真正的 RPG”，因为它没有属性，技能，经验值以及失败结局。确实，整个游戏要做的只有走来走去和对话——战斗十分稀少（而且非常粗糙）。甚至道具也主要是为了世界观构建而存在的，例如宗教饰品或者是发霉的面包屑。

正因如此，《动荡》并非是一款适合所有人的游戏。就像 Richard Garriott 曾说过的那样，扮演游戏和 RPG 已经逐渐变成了两种事物。但这正是众筹的优势所在：一支小团队加上微不足道的预算，这就可以忽略掉游戏类型的一切惯例并制作出一款迷人的游戏。这样的游戏可能提出棘手的问题，其中生活的艰辛也无法通过二元化的道德选择或者典型的 RPG 英雄主义来解决。

Some will say that Unrest isn't a “real RPG”, since it doesn't have stats, skills, XP or failure states. Truly, the entire game boils down to just walking around and talking – combat is extremely rare (and very crude). Even items are mostly just for world-building, such as religious trinkets or moldy bread pieces.

As such, Unrest isn't a game for everyone – as Richard Garriott once said, role-playing games and RPGs have become different things over time. But that's precisely one of the perks of crowd-funding: a small team with a minuscule budget can ignore genre conventions to deliver a charming game with tough questions, where the hardships of life can't be solved with binary morality or typical RPG heroism.