Yuoni

Going back to school is one of the most melancholy feelings a child can experience. You are filled with fear and anxiety when you wonder “where has all the time gone?”. Every child eagerly waits to get out of class and run back to their comfortable home, but what if you had to spend eternity in school?

Ai, a 10-year-old, though often unnoticed by ghostly eyes, will not be forgotten by history. A simple girl with only one goal; to hide dolls from a ghost child. Trapped in a labyrinth of memories of school and hospitals, Ai must play his way out of an eternal game.

Yuoni is a first-person horror adventure game – one of many in the vast ocean of options. Like other similar games, there are no combat options and most of the gameplay revolves around exploring environments, finding important items and dodging threats. How is Yuoni different than the rest? Discover it in our Yuoni review!

Yuoni
Developer: Tricore Inc.
Publisher: Chorus Worldwide Games
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
Release date: July 28, 2022
Players: 1
Price: $15.99 USD

Yuoni is a case of a developer who has a solid idea, but lacks the resources to fully realize its potential. The developer’s strengths are in art direction and writing, but otherwise the game falters and the limitations hit Yuoni difficult.

The first thing gamers will notice is that Yuoni looks really good for a Unity game made by a small team. There is great attention to detail in the 3D models of the environments that make them feel lived in and great care has been taken with the lighting. Even with the low-spec Switch, lighting effects look convincing.

The lighting makes many of the environments glow with an inviting warmth that contrasts with the harrowing conditions. It feels warm, heavy and moist; especially with the loud chirping crickets filling the dead air and the cawing of distant, panicked crows. It’s the kind of vibe that makes your skin feel itchy and greasy, gross, but also real.

The opening moments just impressed you with its visuals. You’ve just completed a simple tutorial phase where Ai has to go find some hidden dolls and bring them back to a bucket of water while sneaking past some paralyzed demons and now you’re ready to step up the game. The next stage begins and it is almost exactly the same.

Same goals, same resources and room layouts, but shuffled in a different setup. The threats have been remixed and players will still hide under beds, lockers and crouch while holding their breath to crawl past sensory-deprived lanky ghosts.

This is probably also why the game is so intensely short. There just isn’t enough content to fill out a varied and balanced experience. Within an hour, players have seen almost everything Yuoni has to offer. Please note that the game does not take an hour, it only takes an hour for Yuoni to show his whole hand.

This is not like Fobia: St Dinfna Hotel where the environment is full of meaningful details and there are several brutal puzzles to solve. Yuoni is a game where players must find an object and bring it back to its home base each time, while harnessing the enemy’s senses.

There are a few types of enemies, and each type reacts to Ai in different ways. Some are blind, some can’t hear, and then there are boss phantoms that can move through walls during the end-stage chase. The trick is to manage Ai’s breath meter for maximum silence and tap a face button to quickly catch your breath between safer areas.

This tug-of-war balancing act is the most exciting aspect of Yuoni’s game mechanics; not find a doll and throw it into a fire or bucket. Sneaking through the various hospital and school halls and quickly ducking into a room as a vengeful ghost approaches to investigate is exhilarating.

Much of the excitement is due to Ai’s excellent sound design and pounding breathing that adds to the tension. It’s a shame that not much else is done with the game’s premise. What Yuoni needed were real puzzles and more thoughtful level design rather than haphazard and interchangeable corridors.

Between each gameplay chunk, the story unfolds in the form of static images and text. This is disappointing as the images are not stimulating and there is no interaction. Fortunately, the writing is strong enough to capture the player’s imagination.

Everything is written from the POV of a 10 year old and it feels authentic. Sentences are highly descriptive and emotionally charged, as you would expect from a pre-teen girl who faces the prospect of being locked in purgatory with a ghost tormenting her.

When completing the game, the reward is more text and knowledge expanding Yuoni and has connections with Yuoni: rising. This is apparently a franchise that focuses on the Japan of the 1990s, when there was still some mystery left in the world. Anyone who is a fan of this series will probably get a kick out of this, but everyone else won’t care.

At least, Yuoni manages to feel scary at times and the ghosts have a strong creep factor. When you glimpse these things, the hairs stand on end and your blood goes cold. It is unfortunate that the consequences of failure do not punish enough. After dying from these things and respawning a few times, their effectiveness diminishes.

Yuoni is a very standard example of the hide-and-seek variant of first-person horror games. It has decent graphics even on Switch, but the gameplay is stretched incredibly thin and will be over before you know it. For its price, Yuoni is quite a distraction. It lacks depth and has a few cheap thrills that make it a casual game for when Halloween rolls around.

Yuoni was reviewed on Nintendo Switch with a copy of Chorus Worldwide Games. You can find additional information on Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Yuoni is available now for Windows PC (via Steam), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.