SHINONOME : Rainy Night Manor

A delightful hidden gem for fans of Japanese horror and atmospheric adventure games. Shinonome: Rainy Night Manor immediately drew me in with its moody setting, eerie pacing, and strong sense of place. The game captures the feeling of wandering through a rain-soaked manor where every corridor seems to hold a secret. It is not a game that relies on cheap scares; instead, it builds tension through careful environmental storytelling, sound design, and a consistently haunting atmosphere. What impressed me most is how confidently the game embraces its Japanese horror roots while still feeling approachable and modern. The exploration, puzzle solving, and gradual uncovering of the manor’s mysteries kept me engaged from beginning to end. It has the charm of a classic cult horror title while still feeling fresh in today’s indie landscape. I also appreciated the creative pedigree behind the project. The involvement of Tatsuya Yoshikawa, known for his memorable character and visual design work, can be felt in the game’s distinctive style and presentation. Likewise, the influence of Kenichi Iwao, a writer associated with some of the most iconic survival horror experiences, adds a welc…

Made by some EX-Capcom and Square Enix staff, Shinonome is an interesting 2D take on survival horror. Clever strategic thinking is required to survive in ways not really seen in other titles. Beautiful art by Tatsuya Yoshikawa who worked on Breath of Fire. Playing it gives me vibes of Legend of Zelda, Onimusha, Deception, Resident Evil, and Clock Tower all rolled into one. The game both has a straight forward campaign level mode that has a few branching unlocks as well as a rougelite mode. The game can get a little brutally difficult at times which is why they may have announced the more action focused ABYSS sister game last year to appeal to a wider audience. I beg you, if you like interesting survival horror games give this a shot, I'm not sure why this game hasn't taken off more, it more than deserves it.

This game is very good 👍😊

Seeing as there's already an announced and in-development quasi-sequel to this game, it's probably unlikely this game is ever going to leave Early Access (provided said quasi-sequel isn't just the full release version, when i'll really look like a clown) Either way, I think my opinion of actually giving this game a positive review is legitimate in both cases for a few reasons that i'll go over quickly. I think this game has a really cool and unique idea for a gameplay loop. It's fundamentally very well designed in a lot of ways but has two specific drawbacks that can really sour the experience. The first one is that it's kind of buggy. Not in a game crashes losing save file way (Though the game did once crash on me and lost me about 2-3 hours worth of progress at the start, which was a bug at the time, probably fixed by now), but in a general gameplay loop being kind of super buggy. Enemies will ocassionaly just decide to deal damage to you telepathically like we're sending packets to a server that doesn't exist and there's desync between me and the enemy, enemies will ocasionally forget to take damage. One of the worst examples of this is a particular mechanic with the Shuri…

I enjoy the puzzle-set up nature of this game

Pretty interesting rogue-like still in early access, it’s hard to tell how this will develop but if it follows in the spirit of the ideas shown here, I can imagine it reaching Shiren levels of complexity. I guess my one complaint is that it’s not necessarily very frightening but that’s a small complaint.