The Exit 8 (2023)

I picked up Exit 8 due to the buzz around the movie adaptation. It seemed right up my alley, and for $4 it wasn't exactly a major investment.

For something that amounts to a glorified version of those spot-the-difference puzzles, there's a surprising amount going on. As far as horror goes, it's alright; the scares range from somewhat silly to genuinely startling, although there's nothing here that is deeply upsetting. As a video game, though, there's a lot of fun ways the designers mess with your head.

First, there's the anomalies. A big part of the initial game play is developing a sense for what counts as an "anomaly" in this setting. How much detail do you need to remember from these hallways? How clear will it be that you are seeing an anomaly? For that matter, when do you know when the game actually starts? As you get a sense for these details, you realize that you need to build out a strategy if you want to spot the anomalies without taking an eternity to finish a loop. Where do you initially look when a loop starts? What types of things do you need to wait for? What is a good order in which to check for different categories of anomalies? Did you remember to check for all the categories of anomalies before running to the next loop?

Then there's the growing sense of frustration and paranoia as you inevitably miss a few anomalies that are incredibly hard to spot. The closer you get to Exit 8, the more maddening it becomes when you find yourself dropped back to the beginning of the loop, even though you were certain there were no anomalies in that last cycle. That frustration builds, making it even likelier you'll miss the next anomaly, no matter how determined you are. That's an impressive amount of narrative heft for such a short title.

It's easy to see how this could be expanded into a snappy supernatural thriller, and I'll definitely catch the movie at some point. As far as these kind of "walking simulators" go, you won't regret spending a few bucks and an hour of your time on this.

This is the kind of game that scratches a very specific itch - you want to get creeped out without fully committing to horror, or you want a game that messes with liminality and uncanny valley weirdess but you also kind of want to be done with it before your tea gets cold. The looping subway hallway is sterile but also surreal, and it becomes increasingly disorienting as you start paying more and more attention to every flickering light and oddly-placed sign, scanning for the next anomaly and wondering if that poster is different, or if that door was always closed, or if that man just looked at you.

It's fun while it lasts, and it's even more fun if you go into it blind - I genuinely enjoyed testing my memory and perception, trying to clock every subtle or bizarre incident like I was auditioning for a fucked up version of spot the difference. But once you've seen them all - and you will, probably in under an hour - there's not much reason to replay it.

Still, the experience is neatly contained and satisfying, and it's neat enough to be worth the price of admission.

The Exit 8 is a based on a solid, fresh idea but the idea doesn't have huge longetivity. Basically The Exit 8 is a game where you need to scour a subway station corridor to see if there is anything off about it. If there is, you go forward and end up on the same corridor again. If not, you go back and, surprise surprise, you're also back at the same corridor. Manage to choose correctly 8 times, you've completed the game.

Initially I thought this game will start throwing some crazy horror shit at me when I get deep in thought trying to figure out if there is anything weird on the corridor but no. There's a few creepy variations of the corridor but mostly more boring changes than that.

Also, I don't know how the appearance of variations is scripted but I swear it feels like it takes the variations you have spotted out of the pool. This lead me on a maddening situation where things always looked just the same with no new variations happening... until I finally saw that one door handle was in the middle of the door. Then I guess it refreshed the pool and I beat the game shortly after that.

The game only costs four euros. It's fun for a while and annoying for longer but I got to give credit for an interesting idea.

The Exit 8 took what was great from the P.T. Silent Hills demo and moved that into a subway station. The game is in first person perspective and your only controls are walking, and holding a button in to run. Gameplay consists of a repeating series of hallways that may or may not be slightly different every time. You start by walking through it a couple times to begin to familiarize yourself with all of your surroundings. After that, the real "game" begins where if during that loop of the hallway if you notice something different, you are to turn around where the counter will go up by one and loop again. If everything appears the same, you continue walking forward to increase the counter and lop back. To complete the game you have to successfully make it through 8 loops in a row. If you mess up then the counter begins again at 0. Some of the anomalies are incredibly obvious, while some I am still not sure what exactly it was. It's a fun psychological horror/puzzle type game that I consider more a tech demo as I completed it and found every anomaly within about 75 minutes. My only complaint with the game is that a few of the anomalies take a few minutes to actually occur. So if you are moving quickly, you may believe there is nothing different, moving forward, only to have to start back at 0.

For just a couple bucks, this was a fun afternoon of entertainment!

I had quite a bit of fun with this little game

You're stuck in the Japanese Underground and trying to find the exit. As you move along, little anachronisms may or may not occur in your surroundings. If you see none, you press forward. If you do observe one, you backtrack. If you do either of these correctly, you progress, but one mistake and you're sent back to the very beginning, so you've got to really be on your toes in regards to your surroundings. Some of the anachronisms are very easily spotted, while others are minute

A nice diversion for a few hours