SENSEs: Midnight from developer SUZAKU Games and publisher eastasiasoft Limited, is a love letter to PS2 era survival horrors, like Resident Evil and Fatal Frame, in particular. The graphics, controls, and play style all harken back to the puzzle based adventures many of us grew up with, all while adding a touch of cyberpunk that makes a retro game feel brand new.

As a horror game, SENSEs: Midnight deals with topics like murder, death, and suicide, so gamer and reader discretion is advised.

The Story

You play as a girl named Kaho, in Japan’s Ikebukuro Park in the 2080’s. You and your friends are supernatural enthusiasts, investigating the urban legend of The Midnight Door. Numerous ghosts, disappearances, and hauntings connected to the legend caused the park to shut down, but are they real? 

Legend says that a group of boys opened the door to the girl’s bathroom in Ikebukuro Park. They found the body of a girl that had hung herself, already rotted and eaten by a host of centipedes. The boys took photos of themselves in front of the corpse and posted them online before reporting it. All six boys disappeared one by one, and their houses became infested with centipedes. People say that if you knock on the door and call out for the ghost, dubbed Okiku-san, to let you in and take a selfie in front of the door she will come and snatch you away.

You are alone, but your friends follow you with their drone camera, offering hints along the way through your PDA. Your task is to find the Midnight Door, test the legend, and snap pictures of ghosts and supernatural occurrences. Unfortunately for you, the legend is quite real. It’s going to take all of your wits to survive until you can escape Ikebukuro Park.

The Gameplay

There is no combat in SENSEs: Midnight, as Kaho is not a fighter. She’s barely even a runner, but you’re going to be doing a lot of it as you traverse the park. Once you open The Midnight Door, all sorts of ghosts pop up around the park from faint green jibakurei that you need to give the run-around, to little balls of light called hitodama that suck out your life force, to the infamous Okiku-san herself.

Camera

You have no control over your camera. In classic survival horror style, the camera has specific angles that follow you across the map. It’s very dramatic, particularly during chase sequences, but also quite annoying for players used to being able to look around on their own. If the street you need to walk down has the camera facing your front, you’re not going to see Okiku-san if she’s on the other end of the path.

The only time you can choose to look forward is when you’re using your camera. It’s usually used to take pictures of the harmless ghosts that don’t have the energy to attack you, but I’ve also found it useful to spy on places from across the map. You don’t have any loading screens to wait on when you’re wandering outside, so you can see where Okiku-san and the other ghosts are and plan your route accordingly. The first time that I realized I could see Okiku-san through the trees in the next area was quite horrifying.

Interaction

There are a few hiding places scattered around when you need to escape your pursuers. Okiku-san in particular is persistent, and quite fast, so hiding is one of the few ways to escape her. You have a little minigame to hold your breath until the ghosts have gone, which works a little like one of those fishing games in a cozy sim. If you’re good at following a meter, hiding should be no trouble for you.

There are items and locations all around the map that you need to interact with to solve the problems and puzzles that will lead to your escape. Unfortunately, you only have four slots in your bag and can’t carry everything with you at once. You have to prioritize what objectives you need to accomplish. I have seen videos where players were able to complete SENSEs: Midnight in two hours because they knew precisely what to get and where to go, where it took me eight hours to finish my blind run. It’s quite the challenge!

The Music

I cannot praise the audio team enough for the musical score and the sound effects in SENSEs: Midnight. The developers, SUZAKU Games, have based their SENSEs series heavily in Japanese culture and locations, and their choice in instruments and style serves to really ground the game in it. 

The developers utilized the Nohkan flute, as well as the taiko and Tsuzumi drums that are used for Noh plays. They create the tense atmosphere that transitions seamlessly between you sneaking around the park to those moments when you’ve been noticed and are on the run. The sharp notes of the flute keep your senses on edge, matching the fluttering of your heart. If the high-pitched static squeal that signals the presence of a nearby ghost or their sharp gasp hasn’t alerted you to the fact you’ve been caught, the drums certainly will. The dramatic boom of the drums prompt you to pound your feet to the pavement, and fade once you’ve lost your pursuer and are once again out of danger.

The game is also voiced in Japanese, which is a lovely touch. All of the ghosts and cultural elements like the Jizo statues are accurate to their real-life counterparts as well. All of the important information and conversations are handled over text in English, so there’s no real worry about the language barrier. There are a few typos, but nothing you can’t figure out through context.

The Graphics

The low poly count graphics are also quite accurate to the era of games that SUZAKU wants to evoke, without detracting from appearance or aesthetic. Kaho is quite cute, boob physics and all, and Okiku-san is marvelously gruesome. I also really enjoyed the bright, fluorescent colors from the tech. The cyberpunk elements contrasted to the dark grittiness of the abandoned park. It did a really good job of drawing your eye to important places and keeping you from losing Kaho in a scene.

The only real trouble I saw was that Kaho’s avatar is sometimes jittery in the cutscenes. The finale sequence in particular was quite bad for this, which is a real shame. Every other figure’s movement is smooth, so having the player character jerking around just takes you out of the moment. It’s something that can easily be patched, though, and I hope that SUZAKU Games will do so in time.

New Game +

SENSEs: Midnight also has a New Game + mode that introduces new lore, a new outfit, new ghosts to capture, and an alternate ending to the base game that I think is worth the effort of going through the story again.

New Game + is much harder with additional, more difficult ghosts to dodge in places that used to be semi-safe. It also reveals more of the backstory behind Okiku-san as a person, before she became this vengeful spirit. The items and puzzles are mostly the same, so if you struggled before you shouldn’t have the same problem here. Just expect the endgame to have a bit of a switch-up on you. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter.

Overall

I genuinely love SENSEs: Midnight. I see some of the aspects that a few reviewers have been complaining about, like getting confused by the camera angles changing and how frustrating it is to deal with the inventory. Those are valid complaints, but I also think that that’s what makes the game challenging.

SENSEs: Midnight has a way of just… grabbing you. It’s almost addictive, the way that it engages you with the story and the puzzles. Even when you get killed and want to quit, there’s the sense of, “But I know what to do, now!”. I kept coming back because I had to find out more, I had to get the best ending. And I think most of you will too.

I, for one, am looking forward to playing SUZAKU Games’ newest title, SENSEs: Death Harvest, whenever it comes out. And I will also swing back around to play their first game, Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story, too. They have an ongoing storyline here, and I will happily follow it.

SENSEs: Midnight is out now on PC, PS4/5, Xbox One/X|S and Nintendo Switch. It retails for $14.99. You can find all purchasing details on eastasiasoft’s website.