Yuoni

Have you ever heard of Tsun? That's the question we're asked at the start of Yuoni, a new stealth horror game that traps a young, school-aged girl with a bunch of ghosts and forces her to play a deadly game. That sounds terrifying, but fear not, because I have a cheat code. If anybody ever asks if you've heard of Tsun, just say "yes" and then get out of there. The best thing you can do is run far away from this boring, tedious, fright-free horror game from Japanese developer Tricore Inc. Consider this a warning.

In case you're wondering, Tsun was a boy who got sick and died in the hospital as he waited for his friends to visit. Legend says that he's still waiting there to this day, hoping that somebody will come along and play a game with him. To Ai and her friends at school, this rumor is too tantalizing to resist. So, they sneak into the old, boarded up hospital in an effort to find Tsun and play his game.

If you've ever seen a horror movie where they specifically tell the hero not to do something and they do it anyway, then you know exactly what happens next. The young girl ends up summoning Tsun, whose eyes and mouth have been replaced by three gaping black voids. He wants to play a game of Yuoni, and if Ai ends up losing, her mind will forever be lost to the shadow world.

This sets up a series of rounds where our grade-school hero must track down a hidden doll and then burn it. Sounds simple, right? Well, don't get too confident, because the nightmarish world Ai is exploring is full of shadowy figures from the ghost realm that are there to keep her from winning the game. This sets up a short and incredibly frustrating stealth game where Ai must sneak around the haunted hospital avoiding supernatural creatures and destroying dolls.

We learn early on that most of the shadow people cannot see, but make up for this with exceptional hearing. This means that they'll know where you are from your footsteps and breathing, forcing our young hero to hold her breath and crawl to safety. Sometimes she'll run into tall creatures that can't hear, but have great eyesight. The goal is to slowly find the right path to the doll without being noticed, which usually means staying quiet and not stepping on any shards of glass.

Click For the Full Picture Archive

Once you've navigated Ai through the labyrinth of doors and corridors, she'll retrieve the doll and have to rush all the way back to the start of the level. That would be bad enough with the shadow characters haunting the halls, but it's made even worse by a smoke monster made out of nothing but eyeballs that chases her to the exit. If she can find her way back, she'll destroy the doll and win the game. But don't celebrate just yet, because she's going to have to repeat this process a bunch of times before the credits roll.

As a stealth game, Yuoni is about as simple as you can get. Ai is able to hide under beds and in lockers, but that's about it. There are no useful items to pick up and no distractions to throw. Just as long as Ai is holding her breath around shadow figures and not stepping on glass, she'll usually be okay. What makes this game challenging is doing all the stealth stuff while simultaneously trying to figure out where to go next. Although linear, it's not always very clear where you're supposed to be going or what doors will lead you there.

Yuoni is the type of game that relies almost entirely on trial and error. You'll likely get caught and die dozens of times while exploring each level's maze, all with the hope that you'll learn and memorize the path. Where this falls apart is after you've found the doll and you're running back to the start of the level. With the smoke monster always nipping at Ai's heels, all it takes is one wrong turn and she'll be stuck in a dead end, literally.

Beyond simply being frustrating, the trial-and-error structure also sucks a lot of the scares out of the game. Instead of being freaked out the imagery or affected by a jump scare, I found myself just rolling my eyes every time a shadow character noticed me. You spend so much time memorizing the layout and locations that it all becomes too predictable, which might as well be the death knell for a horror game.

Click For the Full Picture Archive

And it's actually worse than that, because Yuoni is also tedious. You'll have to play the exact same game with Tsun four different times, and each of those times will be set in the exact same locations. Sure, the layout will be a little different and the key you need to find will be in a new spot, but it's always the same places. Worse yet, it never feels like it's actually building to something. Instead what you get are four levels that are, for all intents and purposes, identical.

It doesn't help that the graphics look dated and the audio choices are all wrong. It also doesn't control especially well, what with Ai getting caught on the beds, televisions, tables and pretty much everything else in the environment. And then there are the rampant bugs. There was a door that wouldn't let me exit, no matter how hard I tried. I could walk through it, but it warped me right back into the room. That was a glitch, but it's a perfect metaphor for a game that does little more than play the same note over and over and over until you can't take it anymore.

Yuoni has a compelling setup that is totally squandered by a tedious adventure with nothing new or interesting to say. It's a horror game that lacks scares, instead opting for trial-and-error gameplay that is a lot more frustrating than fun. And even though it's a brief adventure that can be completed in a single sitting, the plodding pace and repetitive level designs make it feel like a 12-hour slog. Yuoni is not a game worth holding your breath for.