If nothing else, this is how to open a horror game with style.

I cannot think of a more atmospheric opening for a game of this style than putting the player on a completely isolated mountainside, with just a few lines of text setting the scene. You have to save your children. But what you find in the abandoned hot spring may just make you wish you weren’t such a dedicated parent…

Yuki Onna, a first-person survival horror game made by two Japanese brothers under the name Chilla’s Art, is a retraux faux-PS1 experience. It is also unapologetically difficult. A selling point of the game on the Steam store, in fact, is how it has the potential to be quite frustrating. Speaking as a player who isn’t generally one for games that give you a “boo” to make sure you’re awake every five minutes, I was surprised I was able to see it through, despite its biggest selling point ending up becoming quite a hard sell in the end. The selling point is the dreaded mechanic, permadeath. No saves. If you die, you have to go all the way back to the start of the game. I can guarantee you, that will kill a lot of the interest that a large number of would-be players had in the concept. The game’s not that long, but it is quite repetitive. Which is a shame. Because the concept is great.

Yuki-onna (which literally means Snow-Woman), a folklore character in Japanese mythology, was up until the 18th century portrayed as uniformly evil. In more recent times, however, Yuki-onna is portrayed as more human than before. Chilla’s Art decided to make Yuki-onna supremely human-looking. Instead of a floating ghost, she is a tall and dangerous woman who breathes ice from her mouth, which sounds like the icy wind.

The most impressive part of Yuki Onna is indeed the cramped and isolated atmosphere of the abandoned structure you find yourself in. Low-poly icy winds sweep through open windows and long corridors, and your footsteps creak on floorboards or crunch in snow. Small sprinklings of mysterious backstory provide reason to poke around the corners of this lonely place, and context to the story of this snow woman. Suitably oppressive horror-game-darkness creates a claustrophobic small area of vision around you as you play. A powerful torch cuts through the darkness, but sometimes illuminates the very creature you do not want to see, Yuki-onna herself.

Yuki-onna’s presence is welcome and frightening at first. She is an incredibly fast antagonist, who throws doors open and sticks on your tail with grim determination with every pursuit. Her icy screams will have you cringing in fear every time she sees you – at least at first. The screen shakes when she’s in the vicinity, which is a great indication that you need to go and hide in a dark corner somewhere.

As the game wears on, however (a game which lasts over an hour for a single playthrough), Yuki-onna’s merciless presence will begin to feel less scary and more frustrating. She just will not leave you alone. The objective of the game is much the same as many classic survival horrors – collect the right items to open the right doors, while avoiding being killed. But Yuki-onna pesters you. Escaping from her does not decrease the likelihood she will be right round the corner yet again. And she’s fast. Did I mention she’s fast? She’s not like a plodding Mr. X or Pyramid Head, who are scary because they’re unstoppable but fair because they’re slow – she’s only slightly slower than your character’s sprint speed, which has an accompanying stamina meter. If you can’t find a way to shake her quickly, she’ll have you for a midnight snack – and then you’ll be sent right back to square one.

Is it ever right to demand that a player firstly sit down for 90 – 120 minutes, as it says on their Steam page, without the ability to have a checkpoint or a save? You can’t even quit the game and come back later! It would be better if the player had an opportunity to at least quit and come back later, even if death did wipe the save. If the game was half the length, perhaps it would be more fair. As it stands, it’s a tricky ask. At least you can pause, I suppose?

Yuki-onna’s novelty also wears off as you understand that her one move – which is a scary move, sure – is all she has. She runs fast, and she screams ice at you. If she’d had more interesting AI – if you could fend her off, or distract her with something else, or if she did something beyond “boo argh scream chase scream” – I have a feeling this game would be more palatable. But it’s so easy to hide in a pot (where she can’t get you), but when you hop out, you’ll find she’s still in the same room, just waiting for you to hop out! I mean, clever, but this is a video game we’re talking about! We want her to be interesting, not a cheater! Plus, the screaming sound effect gets really annoying. Familiarity is the enemy of good horror. If Yuki-onna wanted to remain scary, she’d show herself less often, but be more of a threat when she did. As it stands, the screeching sound of her chase music is a loud noise that frightens people for about five seconds before it gets annoying. Repetitive loud noises are the cheapest way to frighten people. They don’t linger in the mind. They don’t make the game more memorable. In fact, used so much like this, they make the player more likely to just put the game down for being jarring and annoying. Used sparingly, they can be a good tool to frighten, and can create memorable jumpscares – but used as they are in Yuki Onna, they just reinforce the fact that Yuki-onna is really just a one-trick cursed entity.

Okay, okay, wait. She does technically have more than one trick. She spawns eyeballs as the game goes on, which basically act as sensors for her. Spend too long around an eyeball and it’ll basically start an alarm, and she’ll come running over. And she also slaps slime down on the ground, which, if you stand on it, it’ll hurt you. Not particularly exciting or revelatory tricks, but ones that spice up the late-game a bit more. And Yuki-onna, fortunately, does not have a one-hit-kill mechanic like some horror antagonists. Her ice breath chips away at your health. The caveat? There are only three, non-reusable healing items in the entire game. If there are more, I apologize if I missed any. I counted the energy drink, the medkit, and the bowl of ramen. But man, if it isn’t frustrating. In between being chased and stalked by Yuki-onna, you will be trying to solve all these puzzles. Another caveat? You can only carry four inventory items at a time, and there are several endings – but several puzzles are unnecessary to complete for certain endings. Trial and error should be the name of the game.

You need to accept a lot of caveats to succeed at Yuki Onna. You will die, time, and time, and time again to her screaming ice breath, and each time, you will learn a little more about what you need to do. But with every death, your patience will grow shorter. Is a game like this fair? Is a game like this fun? Horror games have to tread a really delicate line between fun and frightening. Yuki Onna, due to the inherent randomness and erraticism of the titular antagonist, really struggles to retain both the fear and the fun, replacing them both with frustration. Boy, if that isn’t a shame. Because the game, in those opening few attempts, is so desperately lonely, so delightfully atmospheric, that you can overlook the fact you have to restart over and over again. It just hits a certain point where you realize the game is too difficult for its own good, and the excitement and thrill of being chased in this lonely place is replaced by frustration and boredom as you repeat the same cycle of actions over and over again. A disappointing horror game, that could have been much more with more polish and understanding that a relentless, luck-based AI and lack of save system or checkpoints is a one-way ticket to the pile of abandoned horror games in people’s Steam library. Not even a final narrative twist and sequence of scares is enough to save it. Oh well. I do recommend you give it a try if you’re willing to overlook the more frustrating elements of the game, since it’s super cheap, but it is a difficult and oftentimes frustrating game overall. Have I used the word frustrating enough yet?

Hopefully the next horror game I play doesn’t make me feel that way.

If you’re still interested in the game, you can buy it here.


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