Here’s a walking-based psychological horror indie game from Japanese developer KOTAKE CREATE. It’s based on the legendary Tokyo metro system, most notably the Shinjuku station.

The metro system is ultra-fast-paced out there. Apparently, it’s quite the achievement to head into it and come out the other side with your sanity in check. Such is its complexity.

The Exit 8 plays on the paranoid nature of undergrounds, here in a world of brief anomalies that must be spotted to progress.

Looping Horror in The Exit 8 (be observant and yee shall escape!)

This is one of those indie games with such a unique premise it catches the gaming community’s attention. The result is it’s been doing the rounds online.

We checked it out on Steam as it’s only £3.99.

The game can either be extremely short or very, very long indeed. It depends how observant you are. This is a spot-the-difference type horror game, with some very creepy things going on.

Just to note, too, it’s based on the following metro station. It’s so vast it can leave some visitors lost and confused, which leads to a sense of paranoia (really, a terrific setting for a little horror game like this).

A lot of people commented that “The Exit 8” computer game reminded them of their experiences at Shinjuku station. This video shows a journey from Shinjuku-sanchome exit C8 to Nishi-Shinjuku exit E8. It takes 27 minutes, but the video is at 16x speed. pic.twitter.com/yXNbhlOmuV https://t.co/iCeYXrLa0B

— Jeffrey J. Hall 🇯🇵🇺🇸 (@mrjeffu) December 27, 2023

The Exit 8 plays on that unfathomable vastness by having an endlessly looping corridor (somewhat similar to Heilwald Loophole’s spooky concept, too).

You start walking, a businessman commuter walks by you (ignoring you, of course, as everyone does on any underground system), and on you go.

If you keep walking, you’ll just loop around over and over forevermore.

What the game instructs you to do, via a little placard on the wall, is to look out for anomalies. Little changes in the scenery every time you loop around. If you spot one, you’re ordered to immediately turn around and leg it. So, you need to spot stuff like:

• The businessman having a fixed grin on his face.
• Posters rearranged on the walls.
• Strange noises.
• Creepy women staring at you from behind a doorway.
• Tiles rearranged on the floor.

As you loop around, the sense of paranoia ramps up as you find yourself questioning your sanity. Almost like the game is gaslighting you one. It works very effectively, too, believe it or not. The game draws you into this world of paranoid checking and rechecking.

Your average playthrough can last between 10 and 30 minutes, it depends how methodical you want to be in your looping searches.

Yeah, an intriguing little concept! If the game is successful there’s certainly plenty of room for a sequel and new concepts, so we look forward to what KOTAKE CREATE does next.