The Haunted Hoard: Yomawari: Night Alone (PS Vita)
Yomawari: Night Alone wastes no time in delivering shocking moments and terrifying sights, the game not even wrapping up its tutorial completely before it hits you with its first unexpected fright. Right away it wants to make sure you’re on pins and needles, and what better way to do so than to make sure you can never predict when the game might strike with its next shocking moment or monstrous spirit?
Yomawari: Night Alone definitely uses its jump scares early on to establish a proper sense of dread in the player, whipping out some strong stuff early on to put you on edge about what might be waiting in the city at night, but while the early moments are carefully curated to hit you with some scary surprises, it seems after a while the game stops giving its many spirits and possible deaths the same level of care. After you’ve learned to fear what’s ahead, you start seeing a general purpose death screen with blood splatter which packs less of an impact then the more unique stuff you see near the start. In some ways though, Yomawari: Night Alone does understand the true efficacy of a jump scare, the building of tension to the threat of something properly established but abrupt and scary working in its favor, and it also knows to give the player some room to respond to the suddenly appearing threats. The strong start does give off the impression that there will be plenty more high quality scares and swerves, but thankfully the game does continue to deliver on atmosphere and different types of horror after it has ensured you’re in the right mental state to be more receptive to moments that won’t be hitting you quite as hard.
Yomawari: Night Alone starts with a little girl walking her dog Poro, but after witnessing a shocking scene, she heads home, unable to tell her sister what happened. The girl’s older sister heads off to try and investigate, but day turns to night, the little girl growing concerned for her older sister’s safety. Heading out into the darkness, the protagonist soon finds a city inhabited by spirits of all sorts of shapes and with varying degrees of hostility. After it’s made sure you understand how threatening this things can be, Yomawari: Night Alone leaves you to wander the city, the player needing to follow the trail of the girl’s sister across a city that is fairly small but still has areas distinct enough to give the game’s different chapters unique settings.
Wandering the city at night is eerily quiet and your flashlight only clears up a small stretch of the shadows, but even in complete darkness you can navigate well enough, which is fortunate since your flashlight can sometimes agitate the spirits of the city. The unusual beings lurking about are definitely the highlight of the game, the player never knowing what they might encounter as they enter a new area. A few beings of importance do get scenes to establish who they are and present them as an obstacle to overcome at that point in the story. Things like a giant centipede that drapes itself over part of the town and attacks down streets as wide as it is, a dark haired girl who chases you and can suddenly appear right in your path, and a fleshy abomination that seems to drop in at inopportune moments all giving different stretches of the plot their own yokai to overcome. Even in the deliberately limited pixel art style of this top-down adventure, the game knows where to apply details to make creatures and ghosts seem unsettling while also utilizing the limitations of its art direction to create some uncanny and ethereal looking beings.
The regular spirits lurking the city aren’t slouches either. The moment you spot a new spirit, you immediately have to try and figure out how they act and how you need to behave to get around them. How well can the shadowy figures see you in the darkness? How fast are those floating eyes with teeth? Is that ghostly man rigidly walking about dangerous? No two types of spirit act quite the same, and if they are hostile, the moment they catch you they will kill you. The game has a few natural checkpoints as well as shrines to save at that do cost money to activate but you usually won’t be strapped for cash so long as you pretty much only use them as you find a new one. The shrines also let you teleport around the city to help with the sometimes long distances a new chapter requires you to travel or to assist in city searches that could be slow otherwise, especially since you’d have to work your way around whatever dangerous creatures still haunt those familiar streets.
As you head through places like a shopping district, schoolyard, and factory, you’ll find the game’s heroine isn’t really fit for evading spirits, but not in a way that makes the game feel unjustly difficult. Running is your primary means of getting around most creatures, but if the little girl is aware of them and if they’re getting in close, your ability to run is lessened. In quiet areas you can basically run freely, but once the terror sets in, her stamina is used up much faster. To accommodate this you need to make sure you use your run sparingly in a dangerous encounter, and certain foes with an edge over you in speed usually have some trick to exploit so you can dodge their attacks. This is certainly strained at a few points, a ghost dog proving hard to evade and some segments requiring you to be positioned properly as the encounter starts to have a chance of escaping at all, so even reasonable save point placement and good compartmentalizing of the important areas of the map can’t overcome some moments where it feels like you’re just throwing yourself against a tough spot until things click.
The little girl has a few ways to help herself besides just running around though. Throwing a stone can stop or distract certain spirits, salt can prevent some from moving entirely, and your flashlight is both important for revealing certain types of yokai and important to shut off when others are in the area. There are hiding spots as well such as bushes you can plunge into, creatures unable to touch you so long as you’re hiding and pulsing red lights telling you if spirits are lingering in the area. Some just seem to hang out by the bush no matter how long you wait unfortunately, making the game’s liberal placement of them sometimes feel like a trick rather than a reliable escape method.
The rollout of new enemy types and different areas of the city continue to ask you to adjust to what few tools you have as you try to solve the local puzzle, and with the threat of unknown spirits constantly cropping up, Yomawari: Night Alone continues to remain tense and intriguing. There are plenty of optional collectibles scattered around the city even though many of them are fairly plain, but the progression of the main story still tries to carry the emotion from the strong start to a good conclusion, the game’s short length preventing it from growing tired or perhaps too hurt by the often simplistic observations of the innocent lead. Her adventure may be more about sensation, presentation, and tone than an involved story, but it still has a human side to it that makes it more than a procession of strange spirits that want you dead.
THE VERDICT: Yomawari: Night Alone comes out swinging with some early moments that marvelously set the tone, and while it does dial it back some after, it doesn’t waste its terrifying tone. Plenty of the spirits lurking the city at night are dangerous because of the need to learn their behaviors, the looming danger of instant death if they’re hostile, and your limited but serviceable means for overcoming them if they do want to do you harm. Some encounters strain your capabilities a little, especially thanks to the way stamina drains when the little girl is scared, but the texture of this eerie city and the simple yet effective story of the little girl trying to understand this dark world means its rougher moments are easily pushed through to see the highlight moments of this short but spooky title.
And so, I give Yomawari: Night Alone for PlayStation Vita…
A GOOD rating. The understandably vulnerable protagonist may sometimes come up a little short in ways that don’t benefit the tension or the flow of the game, but Yomawari: Night Alone still has plenty of moments where legitimate threats are properly powerful while still playing fair. Playing smart becomes key and learning the ways of the city’s spirits is vital to your continued success, the nature of your enemies helping this little horror title be more than just finding the right places in the right part of town. The artistry definitely does a lot for Yomawari: Night Alone even after it has put some of its best moments of scene construction and art at the start, and if that care was given to the whole of the experience it could be a truly terrifying title despite other graphical limitations. There’s definitely a lot of work put into the backgrounds and creature designs still so there’s plenty to see as you venture forward, and while there are a few individual spirit behaviors that could be pointed at as a little mean even if you are on board for learning how they work through a few failures, the collective bunch are a wonderful fit for filling the city just enough that you’re on edge but not constantly overwhelmed by the need to outmaneuver them.
This cute survival horror adventure does a good job at drawing emotional reactions out of the player. The surprise scare of learning the way a spirit operates the hard way, the touching moments of the little girl working to understand her situation and the nicer creatures, and the intrigue of setting out into a new part of town where you never know what can happen to you build things up into a memorable horror experience. It’s a fairly simple adventure game if broken down to basics and one that accentuates vulnerability over satisfying confrontations with the spirits of the night, but its setting, tone, and string of small mysteries do a lot for making a night spent with Yomawari: Night Alone engaging in its own way.