In our latest Revisited Column We Take a Look at Bijou Indie Horror Gem ‘The Exit 8‘
Do you remember The Exit 8? This relatively short but nonetheless haunting Japanese indie adventure game from developers and publishers KOTAKE CREATE first hit our screens back in November 2023.
If you missed it first time around you might be interested to know the game has since been adapted to the big screen (dropping the ‘The’ in its title in favor of a more streamlined ‘Exit 8’) and has been showcased at the Cannes, Toronto, Sitges, and Melbourne Film festivals, among several others. Since then distributors Neon acquired the North American rights to the film, with an early 2026 release planned for US audiences. So if you haven’t heard of Exit 8 at all, chances are you soon will.
The game is both wonderfully simple, and eerily atmospheric. You find yourself walking through the sterile, white-tiled corridors of a deserted Japanese Metro station, searching for Exit 8. By the time you realize you’re actually in an endless loop (3 rounds ought to do it), you notice a sign on the wall offering a cryptic hint at a way out.
There are 3 rules to progressing. Don’t overlook any anomalies. If you find an anomaly, turn back at once. And finally, if you don’t find any anomalies, proceed with caution.
Wait? What are anomalies? And how will I recognize one?
Exit 8 requires the player to observe their loop environment carefully. An anomaly could be something as missable as a subtle change to a poster on a wall, or as claxon-blaringly obvious as a wall of blood cascading down the corridor towards you.
You never quite know what to expect around the next corner. It might be a door cracked open just a smidge, with what looks like a woman’s face peeping out at you from the blackness within. Other times it’s something more subtle like a ghostly face on the ceiling tiles, or a door knob where it shouldn’t be. In order to proceed to the next level, you must immediately turn back the way you came as soon as you spot something that looks out of place in your pristine labyrinth. Succeed, and you’ll find yourself progressing to Exit 2. Succeed in spotting a new anomaly in this level, and you’ll progress to Exit 3 on so on.
However, if you fail to notice something amiss — or if you are knobbled by something unnatural — you’ll find yourself back at Exit 0 all over again.
The game keeps things fresh with a couple of additions. Every time you successfully find an anomaly, the game will remove it from its library of surprises. So for example, if you notice an open door where there wasn’t one before, and you turn around and walk in the other direction, the open door anomaly is removed from your current run, and won’t reappear until you die, or win the game. This keeps things fresh over the course of your journey, and allows for Exit 8 to surprise you with new additions around the next corner.
Additionally, you are not alone in the Metro either. At a certain point in each loop you’ll see another traveller turning the bend at the end of the corridor and walking towards you. Walking at a steady pace, you’ll pass each other mid-point as you both go about your business. Is he lost like you? Or is he another anomaly? Better take a good squint when you next encounter each other. Just to be sure.
Billed as a horror game, The Exit 8 is, on the whole, not big on gore, or violence, and certainly not as psychologically harrowing as PT, Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro’s playable demo for their unfinished Silent Hills title, which similarly saw the payer navigating a surreal gameplay loop that presented subtle changes to the environment in each run.
And while The Exit 8’s film adaptation certainly had some backfilling to do in order to round out plot, protagonist, and environmental plausibility, the game is happy to let players fill in those gaps by themselves, or simply choose not to. (Edit: The Nintendo Switch 2 version features a new anomaly that pays homage to the film adaptation.)
Additionally, Exit 8 is a brief walk on the weird side, offering about an hour’s worth of gameplay, max. Once you familiarize yourself with the full library of anomalies you can speed run your Metro journey in as little as 20 minutes if you should so wish.
However, none of these shortcomings are sufficient to dull The Exit 8’s shine. Big on style, existential dread, polished liminal spaces, surreal events (and at a stretch maybe even an exploration of mortality and doubt?), and boasting a price point of less than $5, there’s a lot to like here.
Perhaps what makes The Exit 8 so appealing to play is its sense of restraint. With its clearly set game rules, lack of musical score, and only your keen observational skills to guide you, it’s not long before a sense of unease starts to set in. And the longer you play, with only the sound of your own footsteps to keep you company, the more you begin to doubt your own perception.
Was that poster always that size? Were there always 2 security cameras, or 3? Did that man just … look at me in passing? If I turn around will he be standing behind me?
The horror isn’t in what jumps out at you (although sometimes it does) but rather in the slow erosion of your certainty.
The Exit 8 is proof that horror doesn’t need bombast, buckets of blood, or ten-hour campaigns to leave a mark. Sometimes all it takes is a corridor, a flickering light, and the nagging feeling that something, something small, is terribly, terribly wrong.
Our Score: 8/10. It’s telling that The Exit 8 has made the leap to cinema since its 2023 debut. The core concept is strong enough to support it, but its original form, a minimalist experiment in tension, repetition, and perception, is almost purer.
Genre: Adventure/Horror/Walking Sim
Platforms: Android, iOS, Meta Quest, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S.
Release Date: November 29, 2023
Studio: KOTAKE CREATE
Publisher: KOTAKE CREATE
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