Written by Randalf

This review is a transcript from a video. If you want to watch this review in its video form, check the link at the bottom.

When I’m not researching crusty old Resident Evil progenitors, looking through the backlog of failed consoles, or playing broken beta builds of cancelled games…. I go on walks and spend time in nature because I’m not a very insidey type of person…. But when I’m not doing that, I play indie games.

I like mainstream games for the most part, but I do think the mainstream gaming industry has a huge problem of chasing trends rather than innovating and evolving, and that a lot of mainstream games feel very samey as a result, because they’re all copying the same flavor of the year things.

Indie games are less affected by this. There are of course the screamer streamer games, you know those 1st person explatory jump scare fests, but aside from those, indie games are ripe with innovation and because they’re not meant to appeal to a wide audience, they can also go to some real dark places and deal with some real fucked up subject matter, and take us to exciting and exotic locales that aren’t some town in the US or some mountain in Japan. Not that those locations aren’t great, but they’re overused and there is a whole world out there and different cultures, geography, folklore and history just as interesting if not more interesting than the well-trodden settings of Japanimerica, just due to the fact that they’re rarely explored in any medium, and definitely not in video games.

And I would like to see more of these indie games do interesting things, and instead of whining about the mainstream games industry being bad like a child, I’m gonna do my part, and I’m gonna dedicate a fair number of videos to no name indie games made by no name solo developers, because no one else is going to, and it’s the only way we can get better indie games… and I’m also gonna rope my friends from horrify.world into also playing these things because the more people I can get talking about these no name games, the more exposure they get.

And this week I reached out to KanashiDev and asked if the Horrify.World crew could check out his first game Yakyosho, and he agreed, and here is the review.

THE BASICS

The game opens up as we, a teacher at some kind of school, fall asleep at our desk and have a horrible nightmare and then wake up.

We’re told by an evil ghost lady that we have to light 12 lanterns to leave, and that she will eat us if she finds us.

And that’s the setup.

Gameplay consists of navigating the school and dodging the numerous enemies that lurk around and especially the lady ghost because she will straight up kill you if you come to close. Scattered all around are keys and other items, and they all have their usage.

Keys come in 4 colors, green, yellow, blue and red, and they’re a single use item that can open a door of their own color.

The items can be anything from ingredients to make food that can distract the lady ghost for a time, to batteries that can be put in a radio and turned on for a similar purpose I assume, but I didn’t find much use for most of them.

The only items that really matter are the blue and red flowers that can be found in the courtyard of the school, as they can be combined with green and yellow keys at the school lab to make blue and red keys.

The significance of those keys is that the lanterns that you need to light in order to escape are all with the exception of one located behind a red door, and sometimes a red door will be behind a blue door, so you need those keys as well.

Once the lanterns are all lit you’re free to leave and the game ends.

THE GOOD

So if you can’t tell by my tone of voice I definitely have a few gripes with the game, but let me point out what the game does really well first. The graphics.

The game has an incredible look. It’s extremely stylish and it’s very unique in its presentation, and it’s absolutely gorgeous to look at. You can tell that every model was made by the same person, and that they put a lot of work into them. The creatures despite not being terrible memorable, all have a really awesome look, and if the creator of this game doesn’t find success as a solo creator, I hope that they land work as a modeler, because they’re very talented.

THE BAD

This is a game that costs money so there is a certain expectation of what the quality of it should be, and there are hundreds if not thousands of games that are better at doing what this is trying to do, available for completely free.

If this was a free experience I wouldn’t be harsh on it at all, and I would pat the creator on the back and say good job, but it’s not, it’s a commercial product that is available in exchange for money, and that opens it up to be criticized on a level that I wouldn’t criticize a free game.

It's…. flawed at the core level. The location is fine and the gameplay loop of finding keys and using them is fine and the traps and all that, it’s all fine on paper and it works as a concept, but the execution is just so off, that it completely breaks the game, and at least half of the horrify.world reviewers that played it, finished it by exploiting how it’s designed, and missed out on a lot of the action of the game.

Let me explain.

Every item and key you pick up respawns, and since the lady ghost that chases you, doesn’t go outside in the courtyard, you will probably find yourself seeking refuge there, and since all the items respawn and fairly quickly, you can farm both green and yellow keys and also the blue and red flowers. What I ended up doing, was just farm all the ingredients I needed and then go up one floor and make all the keys, and then I went floor to floor looking for the 2 red doors on each that contain a lantern, and then I made my way to the gate and won.

And I missed out on the entire streamer screamer gameplay loop of running from a spooky ghost lady and setting up traps for her and being overly dramatic about the whole thing, and I missed out on the side quest about the other person that has been going through the same thing as you the player, and the side quest with the code, I didn’t free any of the Kitsune’s either, and I didn’t defeat the ghost lady, because I didn’t have to, and it was easier not to.

And while the respawning items and the ghost lady’s terrible AI were the chief reasons I ended up respawn farming, another smaller reason, is that the game is annoying to play.

Your character doesn’t run by default, there is a progress bar that needs to fill up when you do anything, the other monsters that lurk around do literally nothing to you, and half of the rooms in the school, are the same rooms pasted over and over again, and they usually only contain keys that you already have, and items that will distract the ghost lady for a very short amount of time… And the whole thing never really comes together, and that’s a shame, because I could totally see how this could be a fun challenging game.

HOW TO FIX IT

And I have 2 solutions on how to do just that. One is a short term solution, and one is more of a plea to the developer to make adjustments to a future project.

The quick one out of the way first. Make the character run by default, remove the timer when picking up things and interacting with objects, make the objects around the school not respawn, and make the monsters dangerous.

I understand wanting to keep ghost lady as the big bad scary monster, but the others could also contribute by maybe lowering a bar everytime the player gets spooked by them, and if they’re spooked too many times and the bar reaches zero, they get a heart attack.

With all of these changes, the player would be forced to engage with the mechanics of the game, and they would be forced to experience more of it, and have a better time while they do.

I watched one of our contributors Nyghtfall play it, and he was dodging the ghost lady left and right and despite him complaining that he didn’t like the game, I’m sure he had a better time than I did spending 30 minutes farming keys in the courtyard.

It would be a fun fast paced experience that would be over in 20-30 minutes, and it would still very much appeal to the streamer screamer audience that this is intended for, if the thumbnails on youtube are anything to go by… oh, and make it free.

I’m not saying that developers shouldn’t earn money off of their things. But if your first game is this, you need all the exposure you can get, and it’s much much easier getting people to play a free game than a game that costs a couple dollars.

We initially reached out because we wanted to help get the word out there, and we wouldn’t have needed to do that if the game was released for free on Itch.io, because it would have gotten plenty of exposure there.

And for the longer solution and a suggestion for how to approach future projects: Write what you know.

If you’re not in the know, the developer is from the Canary Islands, a part of Spain off the coast of Africa. It’s an archipelago that’s rich in folklore, unique culture, and most importantly for making a horror video game: Mystery.

The Spanish weren’t nice people to their subjects as colonizers and conquerers rarely are, so a lot of Canary Islands indigenous or Gaunche culture as it’s called, is lost, and it’s drenched in mystery.

The islands are not only believed by some to be the ruins of Atlantis, both due to their location, but also their white looking Gaunche population.

For reasons that no one can explain, it took the Spaniards 90 years to conquer them, whereas it only took them 4 years to conquer the entirety of the Aztec empire.

And finally…. How did they get there? When the Spaniards arrived the Gaunches didn’t have the technology to build boats capable of getting to the islands from Africa, and there were no land bridges at any point like we know there were in places like the South Asian sea or Great Britain…

And there are many many more examples of what could be the foundation for a unique and very interesting horror scenario, if only Kanashi would drop the Anime setting and embrace their own culture and use it as the foundation upon which to tell a story.

Did I like it, no, would I recommend it, yes, because you should support the indies, and this developer can, if they listen to player feedback, make some really solid fun little experiences, and they at the very least have a future in the industry making models and designing the visual look of games.

As it is right now, I give the game a 5/13. If the changes I’ve recommend are implemented, it will definitely be an 8/13.

Regardless. I wish the developer all the best. I’ve been chatting with them and they’re a very rad person and pleasant to talk to. I think they will go on to do amazing things, and despite none of our reviews being very positive, I hope the exposure at least helps get them get their name out there.

But that’s been it for me. Until I see you again, from all of us here at Horrify.world, take care and goodnight.