Developer: Kotake Create
Publisher: Kotake Create
Platform: PC, Switch
Tested on: Switch
The Exit 8 – Review
If you’ve been looking at horror games lately, you might have seen an increase in the popularity of a specific sort of horror walking simulator genre. These types of games don’t have an official title for said genre yet but people often refer to them as ‘anomaly spotters’ or something similar. These eerie titles revolve around walking through a location several times and noticing small details that change between each run. The Exit 8 (often called simply ‘Exit 8‘ though that’s incorrect) is the originator of this genre. It’s a short yet creepy experience that taps into your fear of liminal spaces and near-empty subway stations. Let’s take a look at the game that launched a whole new trend in horror!
Story
There is hardly ever a proper plot for this type of horror game, though sometimes there might be some backstory to explain why your character got stuck in a supernatural loop. For The Exit 8, this isn’t the case. You’re just supposed to accept that your anonymous player character happened to stumble upon an endlessly repeating subway station. It’s better to go with the flow and get right into the creepiness.
Graphics
The Exit 8 has a very realistic graphic style, which further enhances the uncanny valley vibe the entire game is meant to evoke. The environment is crucial for the gameplay, meaning it has been designed with the utmost detail in mind and you’ll be spending a lot of time examining it closely. The character models that appear infrequently by comparison look a bit stilted and over-detailed. But it’s very possible this was also a deliberate choice since looking at them makes us feel a little uncomfortable. Whereas later games in this genre sometimes fall into the pit trap of adding too many unnecessary background items and thus make things too complicated, The Exit 8 also strikes a perfect balance in that regard.
Sound
The game has no music, meaning you’re playing with only the sounds of the environment to keep you company. However, this is once again part of the gameplay. A strange noise or sound effect might also be an anomaly, so paying attention to what you’re hearing is as important as paying attention to what you’re seeing. The eerie silence greatly enhances the unsettling atmosphere this game wants to make you feel, and because the runtime is so short we didn’t mind the lack of soundtrack.
Gameplay
The Exit 8 is a horror walking simulator where you need to observe your surroundings very carefully to spot any strange anomalies going on. If everything looks fine, just keep walking. If you see or hear something that shouldn’t be there, turn around and return to where you came from. You start on exit 0 and have to try to get to exit 8 by always being correct on whether or not an anomaly is present, though messing up will reset all your progress and send you back to exit 0. This means that you have to be correct in your assessment eight times in a row before you can escape the endless subway tunnel. Sounds easy? Well, think again.
The game is gracious enough to always give you the hallway without anomalies for exit 0, so you can try and memorize what it looks like. Anomalies you encounter in this game can range from extremely noticeable to so incredibly subtle they’re almost impossible to spot. A flood of blood coming down the hallway or a sign suddenly changing color is pretty obvious, and you will instantly turn around to retrace your steps. Other times, the change is really just a tiny detail on a noticeboard, which is extremely easy to miss. While the game can technically be completed in about fifteen minutes if you get lucky and perform a flawless run, you can expect to be stuck for a while longer when having to restart multiple times.
Further enhancing the replayability of this game is the fact that the anomalies will appear in a random order and there are a ton of them. Some of them are very scary and include jumpscares, or can even kill you if you don’t turn around and flee quickly enough, forcing you to start over. So it’s fun to replay the game even after finishing it once, just because you want to see more of the anomalies. There is a screen that will allow you to track the amount of anomalies in the game and which ones you have seen.
Conclusion
We might not be entirely sure why the ‘anomaly spotter’ genre caught on the way it did, but we won’t deny that The Exit 8 offers a bite-sized and creepy horror experience that doesn’t take a lot of skill to play. Even if you don’t get into the trend, if you like unsettling atmospheres and squinting at your screen, this game might still be something you’ll enjoy.
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