Digit 100 Game Review

First Impressions

For my game analysis assignment I played the horror game Yurei Station off of Itch.io. This game used a vague, environment-based storytelling strategy to portray the writer's experience on trains in their youth during their time living in Japan. I found the most standout part about the game to be it's unique art style. The entire game was hand drawn by high school students in France over the span of 2 days. Despite the game's brevity, this is still a very impressive feat, one that the dev team was clearly very proud of. I have seen similarly made horror games before, and something about the hand drawn aspect always seems to add to the atmosphere positively.

At the very beginning of the game we are met with the main character, she remains unnamed during the story, but provides narration of her thoughts throughout the story. When I first played I did not think the girl on screen was the main character as she doesn't move when the phone is opened, similar issues occur throughout the game, but considering the small scope its really not a huge deal. This game had one other "character" though, the person who sends the emails. Though not explictively shown, it can be assumed that the man met at the end of the game was the culprit.

The puzzles in the game are rather simple, though decifering the clues is often the true challenge. I had trouble making use of some of the hints provided, specifically the gate puzzle shown above, and later the floating eyeballs puzzle. They are often too vague to make use of and where to look in the email is inconsistant. This is not gamebreaking as all puzzles can be completed through brute force, but I do wish there were further hints to help players who may be struggling as many in the Itch.io comments were mentioning their troubles.

The writing was simple but effective. All we get (Unless you read Kanji) are snippets of the main character's thought process during the proceedings, there is no true control the player has, no branching paths or dialogue options. This fits however, as the game is more a outside view of a set story, rather than an interactive one. The dialogue is well written as well giving a thourough, but also realistic train of thought as the main character proceeds through an increasingly unnerving and unknown land. This is also where the non-puzzle interaction comes into play. During the character's travels the player is forced to pick out certain things in the environment to click on, prompting dialogue. This was a bit annoying sometimes as there are no visual indicators as to what the player is to click on so you kinda have to just minesweep until your cursor changes sometimes. I would have liked these to either glow in some way or to have just been optional as not to grind progress to a halt for one line of dialogue.