Yomawari: Midnight Shadows

if you take the first game, dumb down the gameplay, remove the interesting narrative beats, and remove the powerful ending, you get this game. it's too long for what it is. imo.

Tedious and frustrating is what I would describe my experience with this game. Yomawari has a beautiful 2d chibi design going for it. Along with a creepy ambiance, but the gameplay loop is atrociously dull. Every night you look for your friend who got separated from you or the reverse. It feels like very little is achieved and it stops being scary once you know the gimmick is just stealth around ghosts or hide.

Decent sequel to the first game, adds a little more items but they feel just as useless as the first game. The story is depressing and bitter sweet, though it was enjoyable still. worth getting on a sale if you like the first game, and this one doesn't crash. 6/10 would not go looking for my friend in a rural town in Japan again

Important notice: I ran the game with no issues on one of the computers that couldn't run the previous episode. In general, fortunately, it seems to have fewer reported issues or, at the very least, they took care to fix them. From the opening moments, and remembering how the first game started, I'm pretty sure one of the creators suffered a serious trauma related to a dog as a child. Then it gets even more shocking. And it's just the tutorial. It's one of the valid reasons this game got an M rating, compared to the T rating of [b]Night Alone[/b]. Not much has truly changed in the couple of years (only one year for Steam users) between episodes. The trouble with aligning with interactable objects is mostly gone, and most encounters with [i]yokai[/i] felt a bit fairer while playing, with fewer chances of being jumped on with no chance to react; more of them also act according to whether the torch is on or off. It's more generous with essential coins for saving and activating fast travel points, as I often found more than I could hold. Objects on the ground, whether consumables or collectibles, are still represented by twinkles but are more visible, and when a collectible is found,…

Not as good or interesting as a first one, rehash, very unbalanced

x-- 8/10 --x Amazing horror game, despite the cute graphics there are some genuine moments that scared the heck out of me.