The Exit 8

Weaponising the scary day to day

The idea of simulator video games have always somewhat fascinated and confused me. Of course, I completely understand the concept of trying to simulate something fun that is out of reach for most people, like flying or football management… However, there has become an ever growing trend of games that focus on the simulation of the mundane like driving a truck, power-washing, or unpacking boxes. This concept completely baffles me, and I’ve never understood how people devote hours to doing tasks electronically that are simply repackaged reality.

Thus when I heard of The Exit 8, I had no interest. For context, it bills itself as a walking simulator. Through the Japanese metro station. On the face of it, they have somehow managed to out-bore the famously boring genre. By taking a task that is a chore for most, and setting it in as mundane a setting as I can imagine. I mean think about the most forgettable task in any given day. That’s the game!

Yet as I heard reviews and online buzz building about this indie game, I thought there must be something more to the story. Before we dive in, I must clarify the title of walking simulator is actually false advertising. This is a horror game. It also is a game that reveals somewhat the underside of Japanese daily existence.

Efficient Trains

The Exit 8 has you walking through a Japanese train passageways, trying to reach the exit (8!). In a Where’s Wally-esque way, you’re tasked with searching for anomalies in each passage; you advance depending on whether you correctly find them, and are otherwise doomed to roam the underground corridors for eternity. In a departure from other horror titles that use jump scares, the game focuses its attention on the details. The whole purpose of the game is to have you look deeper at any normal everyday setting.

The game is about space. How it's used, how it’s optimised, and what happens when something disrupts the logic behind it.

Lets go back to the setting and the current focus of Hidden Japan: Japan.

Japan has many strengths. To me, one of the clearest is the national trait of being able to maximise space. Almost instilled in the culture, due to most of the country being basically unliveable mountains and dense demographics. That has always meant real estate is limited and incredibly valuable. So what works? Building efficiently, planning meticulously, and accounting for every centimetre. This is why Japanese cities have so much happening but feel much less chaotic (at least compared with other major Asian metropolises).

Now back to The Exit 8. Set in a sterile, efficient underground passageway for moving lots of people quickly.

Does that read like Japan?

These corridors might be the perfect encapsulation of Japanese public architecture. You find them everywhere. Connecting train stations, office buildings, and shopping centers in a seamless and, more importantly, optimised way. So the design of the game toys with that optimisation, in turn toying with the gamer.

The game features that tiny amount of chaos. A misplaced sign. A flickering light. Any slight deviation from the expected pattern. The game’s horror comes from the fact that something is not in place. In a place like Japan, where urban systems are designed to eliminate randomness, even small disruptions feel deeply unsettling.

The game takes that common place space that should be designed for smooth, logical movement and traps you in a loop where progress feels uncertain. The economy of space, so crucial to Japan’s real-world infrastructure, suddenly feels like a prison.

The fear of rigidity

What makes The Exit 8 so unsettling isn’t merely that you’re trapped in a never ending train space like some sort of modern day Minotaur. While that, of course, sucks, they tapped into a fear we all have of being stuck forever in a repetitive man-made environment. Sort of like an office.

By showcasing this common day-to-day occurrence as the tragedy it really is, the game became a hit sensation. People loved reliving this mundane life recreated as horror. This is where The Exit 8 becomes more than just a horror game; it becomes a reflection on the anxieties baked into modern Japanese life. The game doesn’t rely on sudden scares, just creeping anxiety.

Some have suggested that this game is actually #socialcommentary on Japan. They say, look at all these rigid societal structures. The same principles that make the cities so livable…the optimisation of space, the smooth functioning of transit, the meticulous attention to detail, may actually be suffocating.

This is no infrastructure problem. It’s a life problem. Or at least a modern life in Japan, and I suspect outside of Japan too. The pressures of work culture, social expectations, and the rigidity of certain institutions creating a world where stepping out of line is so unsettling. Many young people in Japan today, faced with a stagnating economy, rigid career paths, and shifting social structures, experience their own version of The Exit 8. The fear isn’t just of getting lost. It is of never being able to truly escape.

Having such resonance with the feeling of being trapped and an unsettling sense that everything is slowly going wrong, the game became a massive hit. By hit, I mean they are somehow turning a slightly janky looking walking game into a movie already. They have also announced a sequel to The Exit 8, also known as I’m in a passageway. The natural sequel being I’m in a train. Also known as Platform 8. See the movie trailer for yourself if you want to experience the fear.

The appetite on revealing the horrors of modernity has not yet been sated.

And perhaps, that’s what makes The Exit 8 such a compelling experience. It isn’t just a game about walking. It is all awareness. About seeing the hidden structures that shape our lives. About recognizing when something is off, even if you can’t quite explain why. And maybe, just maybe, it’s about figuring out how to break the loop.