White Space

Genki Kawamura's Exit 8 brings the cult Japanese videogame to life

- JAMES MOTTRAM

SHOWS SUCH AS Fallout and The Last Of Us may, finally, have cracked how to adapt videogames for the screen, with glossy visuals, A-list casting and huge VFX budgets. But there's more than one way to level up, so to speak. This year sees the UK release of Exit 8, a devilishly surreal take on the cult walking simulator from Japan. Initially released on Steam, before shuffling its way across various consoles and platforms, the game traps the player in an endlessly looping metro station passageway, requiring a subtle reading of clues to escape.

First published by Japanese videogame company Kotake Create in 2023, The Exit 8 – as it was known – immediately caught the attention of filmmaker Genki Kawamura. “It was a game that had a great design, a great set of rules, but had no story, no narrative,” he notes. Players must scout for so-called anomalies in the white-tiled corridor – such as a poster, for example, suddenly hanging upside down. If there isn’t anything amiss, you simply carry on and progress to the next level. However, if you spot one, you must turn back on yourself, or else be booted back to the dreaded Exit 0 to start all over again.