‘The Exit 8’ Review
The Exit 8 is the first walking sim horror game I have played, so I didn’t really know what I was going to happen, apart from obviously walking. The game takes place in a Japanese underground passageway, where the aim of the game is to escape the endless corridors by following instructions and observing your surroundings. Spoilers ahead as I will be discussing some of the things you can observe in the game as well as how the game works, so keep an eye out for them.
The Exit 8 starts you off in a white, tiled passageway where you walk down the corridor. There are posters on the wall, closed doors, a man walking steadily past you and as you continue on your way, there is nothing too eventful to observe. You continue on your way, turning left, then right and now you are in the game. You are met with a sign with the rules on and a yellow sign saying what floor you are on, which will be 0. The rules are simple to follow and are:
Don’t overlook any anomalies
If you find anomalies, turn back immediately
If you don’t find anomalies, do not turn back
To go out from Exit 8
The corridor on level 0 is the baseline corridor so there won’t be any anomalies on this level. As you progress from level 0, you will need to be extra vigilant of your surroundings, as some anomalies will be easier to spot than others, such as the man walking faster than usual (which scared the hell out of me when it happened but is easy to spot) and others will be harder, such as the wall pulsing when looking directly at the posters. If you correctly choose to continue or go back on a level, you will progress to the next level, however if you did not, you will have to start again at level 0. I had to look up how many anomalies are in the game and it looks like there are 31, as unfortunately there is no in game way to know which anomalies you have and haven’t seen (without just remembering them). When you finish the game though, it does tell you how many anomalies you have left to find and it doesn’t track the anomalies you didn’t notice. During my playthrough I found only 16 of them and I to be honest, the ones I found were spooky enough without seeing the rest of them.
The concept of the game is pretty straight forward and despite being simple, it is extremely fun to play, but be warned it is still listed as a horror game and some of the anomalies that appear will give you a little spook (like the fast man did to me as mentioned before). The setting the game is in is also basic, but it has to be otherwise you would never notice the anomalies and I quite like the charm of it looking like an underground passageway, as it gives a sense of being claustrophobic, being constantly stuck where you are and adds to the tension of the game.
Overall, I would recommend this game. I loved the little adrenaline boost I got when playing this from some of the scares and I will definitely be giving it another run closer to Halloween. Price is currently £3.39 on Steam and I played it for about an hour, so I would probably recommend getting this in the sale, as I can’t imagine I will spend more than 2 hours in total playing this game. It obviously has re-playability if you want to find all the anomalies and your playtime might vary depending on how observant you are.
