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Horror Games and "The Exit 8" (2024)

I'm actually really bad at horror games. That hasn't stopped me from trying to leave this horrible and unending underground passageway.

Mischief

May 10, 2024 — 6 min read

As it turns out, I’m not that good at playing “Spot the difference”.

Personally, I’ve always been fascinated with the horror genre. Especially, since it’s such a vast field that covers a multitude of fears. Throughout the last few years, many of my close friends had to suffer at least one lecture on ‘horror history’. It’s been a blast to read, watch, or listen to a multitude of horror stories. However, it seems that my fascination with the subject still has not changed my inability to “play” through most horror games.

The Exit 8 (2024) places me in an underground passageway, there’s no fanfare or big introduction. Instead, we’re just thrown into this small passageway. The goal of the game is to leave through Exit 8, but to reach the exit, one will have to repeatedly walk through ‘the same’ hallway. The setting itself already ensures that ‘feeling’ of being trapped. The passageways are short and due to its location there are also no windows present. All of this certainly adds to the claustrophobic feel of the game. Now, we add its never-ending and repetitive nature, and the argument that this game leaves you feeling trapped seems appropriate. Even more so if one had actually gone through progress only to fail at the last hurdle. To proceed to the exit, one has to do more than walk through the hallway. This is a game of observation, and as it turns out I’m not that good at playing “Spot the difference”.

Honestly, my history with horror games is a rather short one. There have been a multitude of ‘horror-themed’ games, but I’ve barely played anything that included a more “horror-style” gameplay loop. I tried to remember games that would fit that style and the closest would have been the zombie parkour game Dying Light (2015), which I’ve played with a friend of mine back then. The multiplayer truly elevated the game into quite the fun mess. With the same friend, functioning as moral support, I’ve tried playing through Outlast (2013), but I’ve never managed to play through it. Instead, I’ve turned into moral support and watched him play. A far more relaxed situation overall. More recently I’ve started a playthrough of the Alan Wake remaster, since I did not have an XBOX I’d only passively experienced the original, back in 2010. This playthrough is still unfinished.

As it turns out, I am only able to endure horror games in really short bursts. Unlike horror stories or my podcasts where I’ve spent hours immersing myself in the horror, there’s something different about playing through these stories myself. The knowledge that there certainly will be a scare and that I am unmistakably walking toward it is a feeling I’ve come to despise.

Exit 8 wants you to look for the thing that is wrong with itself. “Don’t overlook anomalies”. In what way does this hallway just scream ‘wrongness’ at you? The first time I played it I must have overlooked way too many anomalies, little instances that could have been noticed had I either stayed in the hallway for a bit longer, or had I been paying closer attention to the smaller things. I hadn’t looked up, thus, missed the misaligned lights, for example. There was this one time I sprinted through the hallway so quickly that the actual noise trigger set by the game didn't happen. Another time I tried to actually look at my surroundings, and it dawned on me that I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted to find anything or not.

The beauty of this game lies in the simple fact that the easiest way for an anomaly to be found is if it, and its horror, are obvious. How easy it is to turn back when you are facing a scene that is simply taken from a horror movie. Now, while these things are great to help me reach my goal of leaving this place, it is also these “obvious” anomalies that provide me with this moment of true fear. The clear presence of horror should be comforting, but it’s immediate break from the norm is shocking in itself. There is no sigh of relief. I think the first few times I didn’t turn around because I knew I had to, but because I simply did not wish to engage with whatever was happening in that hallway. Hurray, one step closer to the exit!

But now, when the hallway looks just… so similar to its normal state, why do I still fear that unease? I don’t find any anomalies and I move on - only to see the counter return to zero. I am not feeling disappointed at that moment, I feel fear. There had been something potentially ‘abnormal’ in the hallway and I hadn’t noticed it at all. As it turns out, I am awful at playing “Spot the difference” unless they actively try to scare me to death.

The mundaneness of some of these anomalies are sometimes more unsettling than those big scares, mostly due to the fact that they are missable. Those little things that are off, just a step away from normal, are the ones that create tension even within a completely ‘normal’ hallway. This paranoia that starts to creep in, after nothing more obvious has appeared. This urge to double-check, to see if there truly is nothing - those moments of doubt where one is not sure if they had remembered the original hallway correctly. Those moments are as tension filled as the more intense and sudden scares, if not more so. The game manages to package these different concepts of fear, the supernatural and the mundane really well.

Another element of note is the location itself. The term ‘liminal space’ has gained a lot of traction and has often been “utilised as something of a catch-all expression for ambiguous, transitional, or interstitial spatio-temporal dimensions (...), while sliding away from precise definitions (...)“ (Downey, Kinane and Parker 3). In regard to video games, the term has received a lot of traction in terms of ‘liminal horror’, where the term is used to describe elements in relation “to dreams, borders, the unconscious, and irrationality” (King and Krzywinska 219). Now liminal spaces are often defined as “familiar, yet unknown; (...) secure, and yet intimidating” (Downey, Kinane and Parker 3). The underground passageway as seen in Exit 8 nicely fits these vague definitions, as its location itself already falls under a “transitional aspect”. The spatio-temporal element is present due to its loop, both the repetition of the hallway even after progressing further, and the return to ‘level 0’ after having failed to recognise an anomaly. In regard to the game itself, the passageway itself could certainly be described as either dreamlike or irrational, as its existence defies all normal logic. Lastly, there is a certain familiarity that comes with going through these loops, however, the nature of the game is to spot something that is different, to recognise what is yet unknown to the player and as long as we are unaware of all the anomalies that are within its game, the passageway will remain both familiar, and yet unknown.

Exit 8 could probably be sorted into the ‘genre’ that is “Hallway horror”, a word that has become quite known after the release of P.T. (2014), the playable teaser for the sadly cancelled Silent Hills. The repeated loops through such small and ‘liminal’ spaces had gained traction, after P.T. had clearly shown its potential. This had led to a bit of a fatigue, as an article by GameRant had noted in 2021 (Richter). Personally, I think the concept itself is quite fascinating. There is a “less is more” approach, which works perfectly well for Indie devs, who try to create their little horror pieces. My time with Exit 8 was certainly enjoyable. As it turns out, it’s actually quite fun, but intense, to play “spot the difference” in the underground passageway.

The game has the perfect length. With 27 anomalies in its pool, it manages a good balance between its main puzzle aspects, the horror bits, and the length of levels that need to be reached to be able to exit this place. It is a game I would recommend to all that enjoy a short puzzle game, who wish to experience both mundane and supernatural horror in one go, and those who are better at “spot the difference” than me. The game is currently on Steam, with a sequel already in the making.

Honestly, it had not been my intention to play another game with repetition as a core gameplay mechanic, but here we are. At least I can finally say that I’ve beaten a horror game.