Yuoni is a first-person narrative horror game that whisks you away to a sunset-stained world to play a deadly game of hide and seek. As grade-schooler Ai, navigate authentic Japanese environments and utilise every hiding space you can find to survive the horrors ahead. And if they find you… run.
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Yuoni
Hide and seek, with murder by ghost stakes.
The gameplay is nothing special and the presentation could use some work. Maneuver creepy classrooms, find notes and the level’s specific doll, return to the level’s start, burn the doll. Intercut with some not perfectly formatted text walls, with some images in the background. It’s serviceable but it could land harder with some extra polish.
But the central thesis of the story is honestly great. Five kids complete a ghost ritual, with protag girl Ai forced to play hide and seek with said ghost. Each level involves memory fragments of one of the kids, allowing Ai to learn something about her peers. It’s a slowly unveiling web of miscommunication and anxious kids doing their best. The game sets up the kids from AI’s perspective, as an abused elementary school girl who follows the crowd because she’s afraid of getting rejected and abandoned. With that in mind, I went in anticipating angry bullying notes from mean spirited kids.
But what instead emerges is how each kid is stuck in their own heads, projecting their anxieties onto others. Ai fusses over being accepted, while half the kids are fussing over how to make Ai and the others think they’re cool. Mikio’s afraid of Sae because she seems so strong that he thinks she’d expose him as a coward, Sae is afraid of Mikio because she thinks he’ll kick her out of the group as soon as she exposes any weakness, Hiromu worries about being a hanger-on, Jun has gender issues, all of them hate Yukina and assume she’s forcing her way into activities to make herself look good, Yukina’s cripplingly lonely and convinced herself she can buy her way into friendship. It’s all a complicated tangled web of kid emotions.
Initially, I assumed the kids just vanished after each levels and I planned to shut the game off there. But when you encounter the actual fate of the kids, it’s genuinely jaw dropping. But it’s not murder. It’s something a person can live with, albeit strictly monitored by society. The kind of person that emerges in the aftermath of that depends entirely on their original morals. The final conflict of the game, the final choice, relies on if that’s something you want to subject someone too. The final kid has some major personality flaws. If you save their life, they’ll never appreciate it. They’ll coast through life and bully others forever. There could very likely be a human cost as a result of their bullying. If you let the ghost curse unfold unimpeded, their brain is ruined forever and Ai’s own life becomes… complicated. Not cursed, but certainly with the capability to do this kind of thing again. For better or for worse, that’s the lesson you leave her with. Is that just? It’s hard to say. It’s up to your interpretation on how to handle that.
It’s nothing brilliant, but it’s morality play is genuinely gripping. I was gripped. No easy answers. No easy questions. Just the lessons kids teach each other, despite their best efforts.
Hide and seek, with murder by ghost stakes.
The gameplay is nothing special and the presentation could use some work. Maneuver creepy classrooms, find notes and the level’s specific doll, return to the level’s start, burn the doll. Intercut with some not perfectly formatted text walls, with some images in the background. It’s serviceable but it could land harder with some extra polish.
But the central thesis of the story is honestly great. Five kids complete a ghost ritual, with protag girl Ai forced to play hide and seek with said ghost. Each level involves memory fragments of one of the kids, allowing Ai to learn something about her peers. It’s a slowly unveiling web of miscommunication and anxious kids doing their best. The game sets up the kids from AI’s perspective, as an abused elementary school girl who follows the crowd because she’s afraid of getting rejected and abandoned. With that in mind, I went in anticipating angry bullying notes from mean spirited kids.
But what instead emerges is how each kid is stuck in their own heads, projecting their anxieties onto others. Ai fusses over being accepted, while half the kids are fussing over how to make Ai and the others think they’re cool. Mikio’s afraid of Sae because she seems so strong that he thinks she’d expose him as a coward, Sae is afraid of Mikio because she thinks he’ll kick her out of the group as soon as she exposes any weakness, Hiromu worries about being a hanger-on, Jun has gender issues, all of them hate Yukina and assume she’s forcing her way into activities to make herself look good, Yukina’s cripplingly lonely and convinced herself she can buy her way into friendship. It’s all a complicated tangled web of kid emotions.
Initially, I assumed the kids just vanished after each levels and I planned to shut the game off there. But when you encounter the actual fate of the kids, it’s genuinely jaw dropping. But it’s not murder. It’s something a person can live with, albeit strictly monitored by society. The kind of person that emerges in the aftermath of that depends entirely on their original morals. The final conflict of the game, the final choice, relies on if that’s something you want to subject someone too. The final kid has some major personality flaws. If you save their life, they’ll never appreciate it. They’ll coast through life and bully others forever. There could very likely be a human cost as a result of their bullying. If you let the ghost curse unfold unimpeded, their brain is ruined forever and Ai’s own life becomes… complicated. Not cursed, but certainly with the capability to do this kind of thing again. For better or for worse, that’s the lesson you leave her with. Is that just? It’s hard to say. It’s up to your interpretation on how to handle that.
It’s nothing brilliant, but it’s morality play is genuinely gripping. I was gripped. No easy answers. No easy questions. Just the lessons kids teach each other, despite their best efforts.