The Exit 8

• 1. Introduction

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  The Exit 8 is a 2023 indie game that asks the player to do almost nothing but walk down one passageway in a Japanese metro station. Its creator works under the name Kotake Create, and is also known as Kotakenotokeke. By August 2025 the game had sold over 2 million copies. The setting is a single corridor, and the main task is noticing small changes in it. So how does a spot-the-difference exercise become unsettling enough to frighten people? Where did that corridor come from, and why did strangers begin visiting a real station because of it? And what happens when one developer's quick, low-budget idea becomes a template that many other games copy?

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• 2. The Rules of the Loop

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  At the start of The Exit 8, a sign on the wall beside the player spells out the rules, and the player stands at Exit 0. The player walks the passageway and judges what they see. If nothing looks wrong, the right move is to keep walking forward. If something is off, the player must turn around and walk back the way they came. Every correct judgment moves the player on to the next exit. Eight correct judgments in a row lead to Exit 8 and out of the station. A single wrong judgment sends the player back to Exit 0.

  Altered messages on signs and repeating poster designs are among the quiet differences the game calls anomalies. Others involve proportions, such as a passer-by who looks subtly wrong. A power outage sits at the obvious end of the range. The core feel resembles a spot-the-difference puzzle.

  A flood of red water is one of the anomalies that can wipe out progress. It does so if the player fails to turn back quickly enough. The same is true of a man camouflaged as the wall tiles, who chases anyone who gets too close.

  The Backrooms, a well-known example of a liminal space, is one of the ideas behind the game's mood. The Exit 8 is a first-person 3D walking simulator that blends puzzle play with psychological horror. Leaving the passageway only seems to lead back into it, as though the corridor repeats forever. Even the passer-by appears caught in the loop. Some anomalies exist only in particular versions of the game, including the VR one.

  The trick behind the endless loop turned out to be plain, and it came from a developer in a hurry.

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• 3. Borrowed Ideas and Tight Limits

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  Four years as a 3D artist at a Japanese game developer came before Kotake Create went solo. Working alone, he made The Exit 8 in Unreal Engine 5. At the Indie Developers Conference 2024 he gave three reasons for making the game. He wanted a Steam release. He wanted a shorter project, because his other game, Strange Shadows, was taking a long time. And he wanted something that would sell, to cover living expenses and development. He told the website Game Makers that the game took over nine months, with six for planning and prototyping and three for final development.

  I'm on Observation Duty, a 2018 horror game from Finnish developer Notovia, supplied the central spark. That game is built around surveillance cameras and spotting anomalies. Playing it showed Kotake that spot the difference could work as horror. He also saw a genre with untapped market potential that could be made quickly. In his words, "'spot the difference game with a horror feel' seemed like fun to make." Camera footage also reminded him of a looping video, which fed the idea of a loop. To set his game apart, he used a first-person view and let the player point out anomalies.

  The number 8 in the title was chosen casually, Kotake said in a tweet, because it just felt right. He also linked 8 with infinity, which suited the idea of loops. A taste for the "surreal" atmosphere of confined spaces such as underground passageways pushed him toward a looping game. Twelve Minutes, a 2021 adventure game whose events repeat after twelve minutes, was a further influence.

  Marvelous runs an incubation program called iGi, short for indie Game incubator, and Kotake took part in it. At a showcase event he asked other developers to playtest a prototype. In that version, a player who spotted an anomaly ran back to the sign at the start and made a U-turn. Feedback from friends and iGi testers changed this, so that turning back toward the start loaded the new passageway.

  Two passageways with identical structure solved the looping problem. They became connected when the player's route hit a trigger that moved them together.

  P.T. and The Shining were Kotake's reference points for the anomalies, which he wanted to keep at "borderline horror" and "unsettling". Early ideas had the player photograph anomalies with a camera or shoot them with a gun. He judged both a poor match for the setting. Because he also wanted a short, low-budget project, he chose the "proceed or turn back" mechanic. The red water was awkward to build. He made a static mesh that followed the shape of the pathway and used a shader to reveal it gradually, creating the illusion of flowing water. An early plan even let the player board a subway train, but development limits cut it.

  Photos that Kotake took himself became 3D models for the passageway, whose visuals were among the hardest parts of the job. He also set a policy of using store assets where possible, drawing on MetaHuman Creator, Pixabay and the UE Marketplace. He credited the game's simplicity to his seven to eight years as an indie developer, and said he was conscious of Inside, a game he likes that has no tutorial. The hallway itself was modelled on the real world.

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• 4. The Real Station

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  Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station in Kōtō, Tokyo, is one of the stations that served as models for the setting. Asked by BuzzFeed Japan and Game Makers, Kotake confirmed that the hallway came from a real location. He declined to name it, to avoid causing the station trouble. He did say that an art installation in Kiyosumi-shirakawa directly inspired one anomaly. The installation is a set of diagonal ceiling lights scattered at random across a hallway, meant to "resemble the hustle and bustle going on above the ground".

  In August 2025, Kotake revealed that the game was originally modelled after a station in Osaka. He had walked through its passageway every day on his way to school.

  Exit A3 at Kiyosumi-shirakawa became the focus of fan speculation. According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation, that exit has an irregular pattern of fluorescent lights across its ceiling as part of a public art installation. Fans from around the world began to visit. Many compared the real hallway to the game, and some spread rumours of supernatural incidents there.

  Local reactions, gathered by Shueisha Online, were mixed. One person described the station as non-distinctive before the game made it famous. Others were angry about visitors who dropped litter. Another resident argued that the area deserved a visit for its mikoshi and festivals, not for a video game.

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• 5. Launch, Ports and Sales

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  A flood of emails asking for a Steam CD key pushed Kotake to open an X account to promote the game. On the 3rd of November 2023 he announced the game there with a trailer. The announcement was retweeted 24,000 times, far more than his earlier posts. He credited good timing within the day and good use of key words. He made the trailer eerie by leaving out text and logos, guided by a video and an article on note.com. Steam wishlists then rose from 5,600 to under 40,000.

  The game was planned for the 30th of November 2023, but Kotake finished early and moved it up a day. The Exit 8 reached Steam worldwide on the 29th of November 2023. A few days later, a patch closed an exploit that let players glitch to the end in under a minute. Debugging was hard, because it was difficult to tell whether a complaint about a reset with no anomaly was true or just an overlooked anomaly.

  On the 17th of April 2024, the Japanese broadcast of a Nintendo Indie World presentation announced the Nintendo Switch version. It released worldwide that same day under the publisher Playism. PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions followed on the 8th of August 2024. Xbox Series X/S arrived in January 2025. The iOS version came out on the 28th of March 2025, and Android followed on the 31st. Kotake said that outsourcing was hard, because it took time to explain which areas needed adjusting.

  The Nintendo Switch 2 Edition arrived on the 29th of August 2025, with improved resolution and frame rate and a path to upgrade from the original Switch version. In December 2025, a New Anomaly Update brought its extra anomalies to the remaining versions.

  MyDearest Inc., a Japanese virtual reality developer, announced The Exit 8 VR in early June 2024. A demo ran at the Miyashita Park shopping complex from the 7th of June to the 7th of July. The headset version released on the 11th of July 2024 for Meta Quest 2, Pro and 3. A VRChat world inspired by the game launched alongside it, and a second world the following month let players take photos with the passer-by. MyDearest brought the game to Steam with SteamVR support in September 2024, and it later became compatible with the Quest 3S.

  Thirty thousand copies sold on the first day. By the 17th of April 2024, Kotake Create announced that the Steam version alone had sold 500,000. Two days after the Switch launch, the game became the most downloaded Switch title of that week in Japan, ahead of Bunny Garden and Suika Game. A press release in August 2024 reported more than 1 million downloads, with the Switch version credited for much of the push. The game finished 2024 as the second most downloaded title on Japan's Nintendo Switch eShop, behind only Suika Game. Playism reported over 1.4 million downloads in January 2025, and over 1.5 million by March.

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• 6. Critics and Commentators

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  An average of 67 out of 100 from 9 reviews, with 56 percent of critics recommending it, was the game's OpenCritic standing. Jordan Helm of Hardcore Gamer called the game's use of discomfort its "greatest stride". He wrote that one wrong decision wiping out all progress made a binary choice stressful and let paranoia seep in. Hamish Hector of TechRadar called the jumpscares cheap and avoidable, but found the loop made it "impossible to not grow paranoid". Ollie Reynolds of Nintendo Life said "not knowing what's around the corner" made it engaging, though it also brought frustration after a missed subtle anomaly.

  Jenni Lada of Siliconera had the opposite experience. She found the hallway comfortable, and thought that comfort caught her out. She found it "oddly relaxing to take a walk and pick out the 'mistakes'". Hector, despite the short length, found it very replayable and wanted to play again a few hours after each session. Chris Person of Aftermath compared the repetition to a commuter's instinct to notice changes on public transport, and it reminded him of LSD: Dream Emulator. Ed Thorn of Rock Paper Shotgun praised the imitation of Japanese comedy and game show humour, saying the game "wouldn't be amiss in a Yakuza game".

  Length was the common complaint. Lada said a good and lucky player might finish in "15-30 minutes". Reynolds did not expect to return after one playthrough, and felt that leaning harder into horror like P.T. might have made it "a modern classic". Helm hoped Kotake would build something bolder next, yet said the game was a "fifteen-minute experience with more warranted involvement and intriguing design" than longer games.

  The VR edition drew similar praise, with many critics saying the headset sharpened the unease. Alicia Haddick of UploadVR called the game a "natural fit" for the Quest, and recalled her own visits to Nogizaka Station in Tokyo. Abu Yamazaki of Famitsu found the red water and the fast-walking passer-by especially frightening. Lada wrote that VR was "immersive in a way that was impossible on the Switch". Hisui Mizuki of Real Sound said the narrower field of view made anomalies harder to spot and the game more enjoyable.

  The game won the Breakthrough Award at the Japan Game Awards 2024, where the committee praised its "ingenious" idea. At the 2024 CEDEC Awards it took an Excellence Award in Game Design. The committee cited its "simple and easy-to-understand design" and its creative use of familiar scenery. Kotake Create won the Governor's Award, the Grand Prize, at the Kyoto Digital Amusement Awards. It finished tenth at the Dengeki Indie Game Awards 2024 and reached the finals of the Nuovo Award at the 27th Independent Games Festival, losing to Consume Me. Google Play Best of 2025 in Japan gave it the grand prize in the indie category.

  Kanakki, narrator of a horror radio show, told Shueisha Online that the game blends supernatural elements into an ordinary city setting. He pointed to its dream-like loop and to liminal spaces, which he said stir nostalgia and claustrophobia. Eric Switzer of TheGamer argued that the short gameplay loop let the game thrive on TikTok. Shueisha Online counted over 100 million views of playthroughs on YouTube by February 2025, with Hikakin and Sakura Miko among the players. Suchetana Mukhopadhyay of Tatler Asia placed the game alongside Alice in Borderland and Squid Game as part of a rise in survival stories, and called the human spirit "indomitable".

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• 7. Copies, Sequels and Successors

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  "0th floor. , The cursed elevator to floor zero -" moves the anomaly hunt into an elevator, where each floor of a building has a different setting. It is one of many indie games that followed The Exit 8. News outlets and the developer himself call them Exit 8-likes, and fans call them 8-likes. They keep the core play but change the place, often a shopping centre, a hospital or subway trains. Some add monsters and ghosts. holo8 is set in the offices of the agency Hololive Production and features over 70 current and former members, including Houshou Marine and Minato Aqua. Track No. 9 is a two-dimensional pixel-art game where the player looks for 34 anomalies on a subway platform. These games appear on Steam, itch.io and Unity Room.

  Kotake Create does not condone gameplay videos of Exit 8-likes using thumbnails or titles that suggest a link to his game. He also said he was not angry about copies, since his own game was influenced by others. In his words, "ideas aren't copyrighted", and he was happy to have "pioneered" a genre. He shared links to Exit 8-likes he looked forward to, and named False Dreams, Victor's Test Night and Dead End as ones that left an impression.

  The Exit 9 reached the PlayStation Store in January 2024, before The Exit 8 appeared on PlayStation. Its strong likeness made fans ask Kotake Create about it, and the studio denied any involvement. Verity Townsend of Automaton West speculated that its makers exploited the original's absence from consoles. After the PlayStation versions of The Exit 8 arrived, the copycat was rebranded Exit 9 Metro. Its store page was delisted by February 2025.

  Hideki Kamiya, a video game director and designer, posted a series of tweets in October 2024. He had thought of P.T. on first playing The Exit 8, and was surprised that others did not. He argued the genre should be called "P.T.-likes", since P.T. was "the true originator". He lamented that Konami had delisted P.T., which meant The Exit 8 might take its place in memory.

  Platform 8 was the sequel, and its funding was unusual. Kotake told Game*Spark that he would rather make a new game than add anomalies to the original. He then considered real advertisements in place of the original's fictional ones, to "reduce the operating costs". In late February 2024 he began accepting submissions for guest advertisements, and brands such as ZONe Energy filled the spots. The Steam page appeared the following month. Platform 8 is set on a train that never ends, and the player must spot anomalies to escape. It released on Steam worldwide on the 31st of May 2024. A Switch port followed on the 28th of November 2024, and a physical bundle with The Exit 8 appeared the same day.

  Kotake said he wanted no more sequels in the series. He wanted to return to Strange Shadows, the horror adventure he had paused. In November 2025 he announced that it would be renamed Pale Dots, with an indefinite delay caused by development issues.

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• 8. Beyond the Game

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  A middle-aged man with a receding hairline, work clothes and a briefcase is the passer-by who walks the hallway. He never interacts with the player, and he can occasionally be one of the anomalies. Fans made fan art of him and recreated him in Phantasy Star Online 2 and Soulcalibur VI, according to Automaton West. Writer Hideaki Fujiwara suggested he is the only other real person in the game, a "source of security and familiarity for the player". Fujiwara also offered the "mere-exposure effect" as an explanation, since players pass him again and again. Kotake said he grew attached to the man during development. His model, at around 140,000 polygons, became the largest in the game, and he returned in Platform 8.

  Merchandise featuring the passer-by sold at Ikebukuro Parco department stores from the 23rd of August to the 30th of September 2024, to mark 1 million downloads. At the 2024 Tokyo Game Show, attendees could pose with him at a photo spot. In December 2024, Playism handed out masks resembling variations of him outside the ticket gates at Shinjuku Station. A Japanese pharmaceutical company released a web commercial in April 2024 parodying the game to advertise its mouthwash, Mondamin. Kotake clarified that this was a permitted parody and not a collaboration. In late March 2025, Maid Cafe on Electric Street added Exit 8 material in a collaboration.

  Toho announced a live-action film on the 27th of December 2024. Kazunari Ninomiya and Yamato Kochi star as the "lost man" and "walking man". It premiered in the Midnight Screenings at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on the 19th of May 2025, and opened in Japan on the 29th of August 2025. Rotten Tomatoes scored it 96 percent from 27 reviews. In its first three days it earned over ¥960 million, approximately US$6.46 million, and became the highest grossing live-action film released in Japan in 2025. Screen Daily reported a total of ¥5.17 billion, approximately $33.9 million, and by the 1st of February 2026 the film had grossed over $39.1 million. Neon bought North American rights, and the film reached American theatres on the 10th of April 2026.

  The film sent the game climbing charts as well. It topped paid games on Google Play in Japan. Sensor Tower reported that mobile earnings between the 16th of August and the 15th of September 2025 passed ¥12 million, about US$80,000. That was five times the second-highest earner, Chants of Sennaar.

  From the 29th of August to the 3rd of November 2025, ESCAPE LLC ran Tokyo Metro Escape Game: Exit 8, where participants solved puzzles and spotted anomalies. More than 20,000 tickets sold in its first 28 days. Toho and the Kobe Municipal Subway also built a real-life version of the exit at Shin-Nagata Station, which was due to open to the public on the 31st of October 2025.

  A manga adaptation by Tamura Mitsuhisa launched on the 30th of May 2025. A novel from Suirinsha followed on the 9th of July 2025, with Yuki Kaji narrating the audiobook. Its initial print run sold over 100,000 copies. Real Sound writer Chihiro Yuki predicted that the film would be "a pioneer in the 'indie game film adaptation' movement". He named Gnosia and Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo as other examples of that trend.

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