Locked In My Darkness 2: The Room

Developer: Blusagi Team

Publisher: Indie.io

Released on: PC (Steam)

Locked In My Darkness 2: The Room is (confusingly) the third and final part of Blusagi Team’s psychological horror series, following on from Blue Maiden and the first Locked In My Darkness. You’re Yuki Tachibana, daughter of the protagonists of the previous games, newly settled in New York as her family seeks to escape its haunted past.

Naturally, they cannot, and as we join Yuki at the start of The Room, she’s stranded in an unfriendly downtown, desperate to return to her family’s modest apartment. Yuki’s journey takes her through the sordid and dirty streets and into underground garages, where a masked killer is on the loose. And there’s no respite for the teenager once she reaches home, as the emergence of a sinister red dimension threatens to plunge Yuki and her family into eternal purgatory.

The Room is a slow-paced and stylish J-horror, full of intense moments and spooky scenes. As Yuki explores her apartment building, dummies shadow her every move, each accompanied by a discordant scratching noise. The focus is clearly on exploration, and while there are many floors in the apartment building, it’s never an overwhelming experience getting around.

With its total absence of combat, simple puzzles and a ponderously slow atmosphere, The Room isn’t going to be for everyone. Yet Yuki’s apartment is a wonderfully designed building, the ordinary furniture and appliances taking on an arcane life of their own, almost as if mysterious entities from God-knows-where possess them. Shadows linger everywhere, and with the occasional jump scare timed in to keep you on your toes, The Room certainly delivers a chilling experience.

While it loses its way (and the scares) a touch once Yuki makes her way to the alternate dimension, the narrative just about hangs together, bringing this evocative slice of Japanese horror to a neat conclusion… for now.