Ikai welcomes new players into the world of Japanese folklore by immersing them in the role of Naoko, a young priestess who works with her uncle at a feudal Shinto shrine. As with most psychological horror games, Ikai wasn’t made as a Miko chore simulator. Naoko’s world will be turned upside down, and it’s up to us to see her through her trials and tribulations as literal hell begins to break loose.
Ikai’s atmosphere is definitely one for the books, as Naoko makes her way around the area of the shrine and participates in daily chores such as sweeping, organizing supplies, and managing the general facilities. Her uncle has gone down to the village below to assuage their feelings of paranoia, which leaves us alone to walk about the shrine and study our whereabouts. The warm sunshine falling through the tall trees is suspiciously peaceful, with the rustling breeze whispering that all is as it should be. Of course, it isn’t. As Naoko ventures further into the forest towards the river to wash the laundry, following what we can only assume are her uncle’s directions, Ikai begins to reveal its true colors.
After falling unconscious, Naoko discovers that she has unwittingly taken part in a blood ritual that has thrust the shrine and surrounding areas into a living nightmare. Armed with only her dwindling sanity and training as a young priestess, she’ll have to rely on herself to restore order to the shrine and stop evil in its tracks. The line between the spirit world and that of the living is all but thinned out as she encounters a myriad of yokai that she had only heard about through stories. Pages of these stories can be found throughout the game as collectibles to give the player more information about Japanese mythology and the creatures that they will undoubtedly encounter in the future.
Ikai takes inspiration from some of my favorite psychological games such as Amnesia and Layers of Fear which force the player into hiding and using cleverness to escape encounters. There are no weapons to be found within the shrine, except for pen and ink. Ikai introduces a fairly interesting talisman system, making the player physically draw out the talismans with their mouse. While this is such an incredible system, it can very quickly turn on the player if they’re at their wit’s end and can’t stop shaking. Yokai lurk in the dark and there often isn’t much room for error. Mess up once and you’ll get a dreaded jumpscare and have to start back to your last autosave. This can also become increasingly frustrating when you have to withstand the same jump scare over and over because you can’t draw a line correctly. The cheap scare tactic begins to lose its sense of novelty and becomes more of a nuisance than anything.
In fact, most of the spooky elements of Ikai come in the form of jump scares. Be it yokai falling out of the sky while you’re trying to run around in a dark forest, or failing a puzzle, that seems to be the solution: throw a monster at your screen. Even then, the evil spirits start to lose that sense of horrifying mystery after you’ve seen their appearance. For example, one of the spirits that Naoko will have to exorcise from the shrine is a Jorogumo. While hunting for the yokai, we can find collectibles that tell us more about their lore. She is a type of spider demon that takes the visage of a beautiful woman, sings, and plays her instrument to lure men to their deaths. I absolutely love the haunting melody that plays in the background, luring Naoko via a trail of spiders to where the spirit’s location should be.
As we grow closer to the space that houses the cursed item we’ll have to destroy, we see the spirit at the far end of the hallway creeping closer, and closer to our destination as the music begins to spin faster. At this point, you’ll have to solve a puzzle. If you fail that puzzle, jump scare. The first time, it makes you jump, but you kind of expect it. It isn’t necessarily the yokai’s visage that scares you, in fact, I was a little disappointed when we saw her up close. But the atmosphere building up to that point was what set me on edge. I almost wish we would have just seen a dark, misty form instead of the models that grabbed and killed us every time we failed.
Puzzles in Ikai were also a bit hit or miss for me. Oftentimes they just felt thrown in there to frustrate the player and made little to no sense as to why they’d be in their particular location. One puzzle in particular towards the end of the game took me almost an hour to puzzle through thanks to the lack of instruction from Naoko, and completely halted any sense of immersion or fear that I had been holding onto.
The sound design, in my opinion, could use a bit of love. As a frequent reminder throughout the game, we hear the extremely heavy footfalls of our Miko, stomping her way through the darkened hallways of the shrine while she’s trying to stealth her way from room to room. It didn’t even sound like the clop of geta, it just sounded off, loud, and once again brought me out of my immersion which is so important for a psychological horror game.
Ikai has such an amazing concept that sets it apart from other forms of media that like to capitalize on the whole Japanese folklore/yokai aesthetic but it feels overshadowed by some of its mechanical and immersion-breaking faults. I absolutely loved collecting pages of yokai lore to learn more about the strange creatures we encountered and was always on edge when we found a page about a spirit that we hadn’t seen yet. Then, when those spirits were finally revealed I just felt…hollow. I don’t know if it was the cheap jump scare introductions or the character models, but it felt kind of lackluster.
Even about 3.5 hours in (admittedly, a pretty short length), the ending felt rushed, confusing, and underwhelming. Maybe others will be able to puzzle out some of the finer details in the plot, but there were far too many details left unspoken for and strange plot holes that left me somewhat upset and disappointed. I wanted to love Ikai, and there were some parts of it that I was really fond of, but by the end, I felt cheated. It’s not necessarily a bad game, but I wouldn’t put it up there with any of my top favorites in recent years. That being said, Ikai is extremely affordable for those that are looking to scratch that horror itch at only $14.99. I do think that’s a fair price for the experience being provided. The lore is really interesting and fun to parse through, and the atmosphere itself (when you’re not yanked out of it forcefully) is terrifyingly delightful. Maybe you don’t mind cheap jump scares as much as I do and it’ll be right up your alley. For the launch, Ikai is even seeing a small 15% discount, changing the price to $12.74 on Steam. Try it for yourself and let us know what you think about it!
