Fear and anxiety prevail after the darkest tales from Japanese folklore come to life in this first-person psychological horror game. Set in a feudal era, Ikai revolves around the priestess of a shrine struggling to defeat the spirits of her past and her present.
About the story
Rumors have spread even through the most skeptical villagers, giving way to fear and hysteria. It’s not just a matter of gossip this time. The blood-stained leaves indicate that evil creatures are getting closer and closer to humans. It is believed that a new demon has turned up in the underworld. Its will is to cross the doorway into our world as soon as it finds what it is looking for. Such a situation requires the priest to head to the village, leaving the shrine under his niece’s control, the priestess. The crowd’s fear hasn’t reached the shrine far away in the mountains, where the priestess, Naoko, works as usual, too busy to worry. Sweeping and sweeping, time goes by, with or without the priest. Without giving much importance to this sort of demon and ghost stories she ascribes to fearful children, Naoko leaves the shrine to get to the river before it gets dark. Villagers’ dreads seem to take shape in the gloomy forest. She keeps walking, increasingly tense, until her doubts are dispelled; but not her fears. She soon loses consciousness of her soul and body and falls to the ground; almost dead, almost alive. The shrine’s bell screams for help, but it is no longer a sacred place. All Gods have gone, giving way to monsters, ghosts and spirits.
Platforms
Switch PC PS4 PS5 XONE Series X|SGenres
Indie PuzzleThemes
Horror Thriller
Languages: English and 6 more
| Interface | Audio | Subtitles | |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | |||
| English | |||
| Japanese | |||
| Italian | |||
| Spanish (Spain) | |||
| French | |||
| Chinese (Traditional) |
Media
Critic Reviews
Rapid Reviews UK
By Seb HawdenIt’s not very often I get sent physical copies of stuff, so you can imagine my joy when I was offered a physical copy of Ikai to review. Having not known anything about it, knowing nothing of its form or function, I was happy to give it a bash. Unfortunately, this is where most of my joy ended.
Generación Xbox
By Alejandro SerradorIkai is a first-person horror adventure that provides an interesting starting point to understand a little more about the figures we continually encounter in ancient Japanese culture.
SomHráč.sk
By Adam HambálekIkai fails to utilize its Feudal Japan setting properly and despite the potential, in the end it's just forgettable.
GameBlast
By Ivanir IgnacchittiIkai is a horror game with a solid atmosphere and that's its main strength. Unfortunately, its tendency to jumpscare and poorly implemented puzzles cause the game to lose its momentum. Because of this, much of the gameplay feels more like an inconvenience than essential to the experience. Even so, fans of the genre will probably enjoy it a lot.
WayTooManyGames
By Kyle NicolIkai was a horror title I was actually really looking forward to. A game steeped in Japanese folklore in a self contained location could (and to be fair, should) have made for an absolutely terrifying and unique experience. However, it just didn’t manage to make the cut: its short runtime, generic gameplay loop and complete lack of scares resulted in a really underwhelming and, more often than not, frustrating, horror title you should avoid.
