Listen to the podcast below for the full interview with Black Tabby Publishing and Sunset Visitor Studios about the upcoming game, Prove You’re Human.
Prove You’re Human is a sci-fi narrative adventure game from Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客, the visionary studio behind the Peabody award-winning 1000xRESIST. What’s even more exciting is that Prove You’re Human is the debut title for new developer-turned-publisher, Black Tabby Publishing. Yup, the developers who brought you the genre-smashing Slay the Princess are in publishing now.
The official synopsis is short and sweet: “In the game, you play as Santana and split your consciousness in two. The company behind this program has a chance at achieving true AGI — but there’s just one problem. The company’s AI, Mesa, believes she’s a human being. It’s your job to train her out of these delusions.”
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But where the synopsis is simple, the trailer gives audiences a haunting visual of one of sci-fi’s greatest topics, becoming human. More importantly, though, tackling the subject of AI, and more specifically Agentic Intelligence in today’s world, is a tall task, and one that Prove You’re Human hopes to meet.
We sat down with Black Tabby Publishing co-founders Abby Howard and Tony Howard Arias, and Remy Siu, the Creative Director at Sunset Visitor Studios, to discuss Prove You’re Human. In our discussions, we talk about independent game development, why science fiction is such a powerful genre, and for Black Tabby Publishing, why they knew that Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客 was the perfect developer to work with as they took the leap into becoming a publisher.
With both teams being prolific indie developers in their own right, we opened the conversation by discussing the emotions involved with announcing something new. For the Black Tabby team, it was a resounding note of excitement. As for Remy Siu, he was a bit more reserved, commenting first on his nervousness.
“I’m always nervous about this stuff because [I’m] always very cognizant of being like, ‘we make narrative games,’ but I think one of the nice things this time is that I think we’re excited for the people in our Discord, and the people who follow us because of 1000x to kind of see what we’re up to. So that part is exciting,” Siu said.
Arias adding.” I feel like Remy’s job as the creative lead on the game is to maintain a little bit of modesty and humbleness. But as people who are just promoting it, that trailer is awesome.” The excitement for the title was clear right from the jump.
As a studio composed primarily of Asian developers, Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客 has already been extremely successful in how they wield both science fiction and speculative fiction in 1000x Resist. But in our conversation, we didn’t really discuss the past; we were looking to the future. Or in the case of Prove You’re Human’s AI subject matter, the present.
AI in science fiction is a tale as old as time, and when asked about reinterpreting it and making it unique, Siu explained the process. “For us, we’re always trying to have our heads up when we’re making things, and especially after 1000x was finishing in 2024,” he said. “When we were starting to idea what we might do next, and we looked up, we saw the landscape of things. We saw what was happening [with AI], and even to a lesser extent than now… Our primary influence was just the world around us, and trying to be very porous with it and let it into the writers’ room.”
He continued, “There’s a huge tradition of classical science fiction that talks about artificial intelligence. Knowing that, and having engaged with that, and kind of looking up in 2024 and feeling strange, it was an interesting tension that we wanted to explore. What does it mean to tell an artificial intelligence story in 2026? What does it mean to see a lot of these things that were previously speculative start to actualize and be different than what we thought they would be? How would it play out?”
But this isn’t the first time Siu and his team looked to the present. He explained, “In 1000x, a lot of that was around pandemic things, and a lot of the effects [it caused]. For us, it was really focusing on the effect of how [the pandemic] was different than what we thought it would be. And I think that’s still a guiding light for us. What is the effect and human experience of living in 2026 for [AI] to be so different than what we thought it would be?”
Prove You’re Human aims to play in that space between fiction and reality, and the trailer captures that with its use of Captchas and the AI’s ultimate urge to replace us. And to do so in a body it won’t take for granted. When we spoke about Siu’s inspiration behind their new game, we asked Howard and Howard-Arias about how they chose this project to launch Black Tabby Publishing.
“For our end,” Howard-Arias said, “1000x Resist [was a] great game—groundbreaking, amazing. You’re presented with an opportunity to find out [Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客] is trying to make their next game, and you have the money to fund it. I mean, isn’t that just it? Isn’t that the whole thing?”
Howard-Arias’ approach to answering the question was to speak to the heart of artists, as much as to a business decision he and Howard made. He continued, “Shouldn’t we look at artists with fantastic track records, who are making groundbreaking media, and then just say: Whatever it is you want to do, I want to see it. Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen. I want to make sure that your vision is undiluted. And let’s not make someone like Remy jump through the hoops of pitching a game to traditional publishers, where it’s a long process.”
Hearing Howard-Arias discuss their approach as a developer-turned-publisher was refreshing, especially in a time when not every studio gets a follow-up to a big hit just because it passed on funding alone. And ultimately, it came back to the fact that games are art.
And right now, whether it’s film, television, music, books, we seem to be in a media landscape where if you want to, if you want to have funding, if you want to make it far, you have to fit somebody’s cookie-cutter. But for Black Tabby Publishing, it’s about funding the creativity and uniqueness of storytellers. One of the more exciting elements of the conversation was better understanding how the shift from developer to publisher influenced the feedback loop between Black Tabby and Sunset Visitor.
Howard-Arias explained first, “How we approach publishing comes from a position of as developers ourselves, and we’re always going to be 95% developer, 5% publisher. As developers, what would we want out of a relationship? What are areas [of the pitching and contracts process] that made us chafe and stiffen up that felt so constraining that we wouldn’t want to do something? And the thing you were saying about media fitting this cookie-cutter template of whatever a given funder wants—hasn’t that been leading to a glut of, if I may be so blunt, bad art?”
Howard didn’t skip a beat, jumping in to continue the conversation immediately after Howard-Arias posed the question. “This is the list of things that you said you wanted. And here you go, you get it again. And it’s watered down. It’s unoriginal because it is a list of things that somebody decided should be sold. And I think a big part of what we are offering is understanding how to integrate, the idea of trying to get people interested in something,” she said.
Adding, “Marketing is what it is. But that sounds so businessy, but at the same time, it’s like marketing being something that can start the conversation of a piece of art. I think what we see art as is like a very complicated conversation, one person kind of making something and showing it to somebody else and saying, do you understand? But it’s really complicated, so you can’t just say it in a sentence. How do you then start that conversation with a sentence?
“So that is kind of like part of what we do, and understanding then when to do that and when not to, when to push it all the way to here is a list of terms. Do you like these terms? [With the list of terms], you’re just stripping it bare of the things that actually make it interesting. Because a list of terms also doesn’t tell me what something is. Like, those little book publishing things where it’s just like, ‘oh, it’s got queer romance,’ and it’s like, that’s great, but what do they do?” Howard concluded.
During our discussion, you could see how Black Tabby Publishing had developed its idea of what a publisher is. Not just for what they needed as developers, but also by knowing exactly what they didn’t need as artists. As developers unrestrained by genre and focused on story in their own work, the conversation naturally switched to the ephemeral and emotive equalities of art, and how difficult it is to treat that as most capital-focused publishers do and still make good art.
And for a team like that at Sunset Visitor that isn’t looking to fit into any mold, the fit between the two studios seemed, well, natural. Pointing to 1000x Resist again, Howard-Arias added:
“People love that game,” he said. “It’s been building a snowball effect of cult support and following since its release. And I think one of the things that’s so special about [1000xResist] is that it defies categorization, and that’s in the very definition of a work being groundbreaking. And you can point to a laundry list of influences, be they subtle, be they big or small, but fundamentally, it’s something where someone finishes that, and they’re like: I want another game like this.”
“I would struggle to come up with a recommendation, and then the recommendation I would come up with would maybe be something like What Remains of Edith Finch, which also kind of defies categorization and is thematically very different, and like the language that it uses is very different. So again, it’s just [figuring out] how do you [market something without] placing heavy constraints on the structure of things or on the artist you’re working with.”
As for Siu’s part, his relationship has been about iteration and feedback without constraint. Speaking on the collaborative process of publishing that the Black Tabby team described, he said:
“I think it’s been a really interesting process. The writer’s room is always something that’s relatively closed doors. The way that things leave or come in from the writers’ room is often [when] we’re struggling with something, and we need a separate set of eyes. We do go over and talk to Tony and Abby, and are like, ” Hey, what do you think about this?” You know, and the dramaturgy aspect of it is that they haven’t just spent seven hours talking about it. They’re not caught up in a logic yarn ball of something.”
Dramaturgy is the key way to explain their relationship. If you’re unfamiliar with the performing arts, dramaturgy is the art of structuring performances (theater, dance, music) to encompass context, theme, and narrative development. Those who do this are Dramaturgs and work to build a bridge between artistic vision and audience understanding it. For Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客, that’s the role that Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias fall into. The crucial partners that ensure it all fits together.
“[Abby and Tony] have some clarity on being able to continue jamming and devising on it, and then that returns to the writers’ room. Then that may spark something else and something new. It may not be the solution, but it may be a new avenue to break something open,” Siu said.
The conversation continued as the three discussed bits and pieces of the publishing partnership, offering listeners and me (you can hear in the audio above) a little bit of inside baseball. But the takeaway of it all was partnership through collaboration, not ownership, not capital, but guidance that can be taken, ignored, or used in a completely different way. But ultimately, what Black Tabby Publishing wanted to make clear is that the developer is the one who pushes them as publishers.
Howard-Arias said, “I would say to most indie developers, aspiring or established, the best advocate you’ll have for your game, the best marketer, the best pitcher, it’s always going to be you. I still think that that’s true of the core creative team at Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客, because they are so much more immersed in this than we are. But like, at least checking in early on and getting to have these conversations puts us in a position where we can jam on that with them.”
Siu closed out the topic, offering the perspective from Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客, pulling the conversation directly into how Prove You’re Human has been developed. He said, “Because the writers’ room is a very organic place, a lot of the process is us breaking something open. It’s hard to always go back and understand exactly where it was happening, but often it’s born out of trying to define this character that you’re talking about, who’s speaking in the trailer, the artificial intelligence Mesa.”
In the trailer, Mesa’s voice isn’t the intimidating, cold artificial intelligence we’ve come to expect in sci-fi, like HAL. Instead, it’s more haunting and, unsettlingly, more intimate. But getting there was a process. And one that Remy Siu used to illustrate the connection between his team of developers and Black Tabby in the dramaturg role. Mesa is an AI that is about what any good ghost story is about: yearning.
“We were largely trying to understand how this artificial intelligence character would be very different from its predecessors, right? Because there’s so much work about AI, it really involves us jamming a lot until we’re writing all kinds of different types of imaginary scenes. We’re writing all kinds of different material until we start to find something that feels really good and has an inherent tension,” Siu said.
He continued, alluding to a comment I had made about the Prove You’re Human trailer feeling almost like a ghost story on top of its sci-fi genre. “I think, as you kind of felt, the tension here is that this is more achingly intimate than we were expecting. So many artificial intelligence characters often take a distance, right? And kind of have a degree of objectivity, right?”
“We wanted to disarm that a little bit and subvert it, for sure, and in terms of what we want the players to feel, we want them to feel unsettled and have that expectation. We kind of want them to feel what you felt. And I think that will continue throughout the game, where there is personhood assigned to artificial intelligence is something that science fiction has tackled a lot, but I think one of the nice things about the medium that we’re working in is that it becomes even more intimate when it comes to you interacting with an entity, and learning that this entity truly believes what they say,” Siu concluded.
Developer-focused and led, this is a new era for Black Tabby Games as a publisher, and for Sunset Visitor 斜陽過客, it’s a new game, with a new focus after a cult hit. For both, though, they’re taking this step together and aiming to never lose the heart and passion between their respective arts.
Going inside baseball, development, and publishing right now can feel hopeless. It can feel like there is no future without appeasing some overlord that cares about profit over people and “content” over art. But here, with Black Tabby Games and Sunset Visitor, it feels like there is something better ahead.
Prove You’re Human was announced as a part of the Triple I showcase. For more information, head here.
