SHINONOME : Rainy Night Manor

A delightful hidden gem for fans of Japanese horror and atmospheric adventure games. Shinonome: Rainy Night Manor immediately drew me in with its moody setting, eerie pacing, and strong sense of place. The game captures the feeling of wandering through a rain-soaked manor where every corridor seems to hold a secret. It is not a game that relies on cheap scares; instead, it builds tension through careful environmental storytelling, sound design, and a consistently haunting atmosphere. What impressed me most is how confidently the game embraces its Japanese horror roots while still feeling approachable and modern. The exploration, puzzle solving, and gradual uncovering of the manor’s mysteries kept me engaged from beginning to end. It has the charm of a classic cult horror title while still feeling fresh in today’s indie landscape. I also appreciated the creative pedigree behind the project. The involvement of Tatsuya Yoshikawa, known for his memorable character and visual design work, can be felt in the game’s distinctive style and presentation. Likewise, the influence of Kenichi Iwao, a writer associated with some of the most iconic survival horror experiences, adds a welcome sense of narrative atmosphere and horror craftsmanship. If you enjoy games like Yomawari, classic survival horror, or Japanese folklore-inspired mysteries, this is absolutely worth your time. Shinonome: Rainy Night Manor is a genuine hidden gem that deserves far more attention. Highly recommended.

Made by some EX-Capcom and Square Enix staff, Shinonome is an interesting 2D take on survival horror. Clever strategic thinking is required to survive in ways not really seen in other titles. Beautiful art by Tatsuya Yoshikawa who worked on Breath of Fire. Playing it gives me vibes of Legend of Zelda, Onimusha, Deception, Resident Evil, and Clock Tower all rolled into one. The game both has a straight forward campaign level mode that has a few branching unlocks as well as a rougelite mode. The game can get a little brutally difficult at times which is why they may have announced the more action focused ABYSS sister game last year to appeal to a wider audience. I beg you, if you like interesting survival horror games give this a shot, I'm not sure why this game hasn't taken off more, it more than deserves it.

Seeing as there's already an announced and in-development quasi-sequel to this game, it's probably unlikely this game is ever going to leave Early Access (provided said quasi-sequel isn't just the full release version, when i'll really look like a clown) Either way, I think my opinion of actually giving this game a positive review is legitimate in both cases for a few reasons that i'll go over quickly. I think this game has a really cool and unique idea for a gameplay loop. It's fundamentally very well designed in a lot of ways but has two specific drawbacks that can really sour the experience. The first one is that it's kind of buggy. Not in a game crashes losing save file way (Though the game did once crash on me and lost me about 2-3 hours worth of progress at the start, which was a bug at the time, probably fixed by now), but in a general gameplay loop being kind of super buggy. Enemies will ocassionaly just decide to deal damage to you telepathically like we're sending packets to a server that doesn't exist and there's desync between me and the enemy, enemies will ocasionally forget to take damage. One of the worst examples of this is a particular mechanic with the Shuriken. The game explains very early on that it's possible, and usually recommended to throw certain items from the room next door, to avoid taking damage as much as possible. Unfortunately for everyone involved this sometimes results in throwing shurikens into a room you KNOW there are large enemies that will definitely be hit once you've thrown it, only for you to waste your shuriken as the enemy waltzes out of the room as though you just sneezed at it. It's small little irritations like that that hamper a lot of the aspects of the gameplay and lead to extremely frustrating moments that add especially because this game's difficulty is brutal. It really doesn't like pulling punches in the way its designed and can sometimes feel like you're just getting screwed over for no other reason than the game's wacky spaghetti code. The second complaint is the level designs for some of the later (pre-made levels). The game is split into two halves. There's the pre-made levels which are developer crafted and usually are closer to a sort of puzzle that you as the player need to solve. The second half are randomly-generated dungeons of all shapes and sizes. My problem is the first half, the pre-made levels. The randomly generated dungeons can definitely have a bit of a feast-or-famine situation, but it never feels too frustrating because ultimately you are keenly aware you are at the mercy of the random level generation. But the premade levels, especially the later ones, feel like they were designed specifically to mess with the player and frustrate them. The levels in the latter half start getting into a really nasty and unfun habit of basically having one good solution to the puzzle of the level, and requiring sometimes several hours worth of trial and error deaths that ultimately barely feel like they're of any fault to your own. While there's definitely room for skill expression, especially in the randomly generated dungeons, these puzzles' room for skill expression can sometimes be completely crushed when you don't solve the level in the exact way the developer intended. This is just unfun in a lot of cases, and whats worse is that it never resolves into a feeling of succeeding at a difficult challenge. I've trashed on the game a lot despite the positive review, but I felt it necessary to write the review to inform people, since it's been a good while since we've had any solid updates on the game, and with Shinonome Abyss somewhere on the horizon, I'll probably buy and play that too, since chances are, it'll patch up a lot of my complaints I had here. This game is exceedingly charming despite my problems with it, so if it seems like your kind of thing I think it's worth a shot, even at full price purely because of the variety and quantity of content you…