Resident Evil: its lineage, descendants, and standing in Japan

Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau Buried gem

Per Steam's own store text, this is a third-person action horror set in a parallel Japan where exorcism is a government function. The player is Shiraishi Mizuki, 27, a licensed exorcist of the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs' own Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau, sent to investigate Saigawa Village in Nara Prefecture, a village that has vanished from the internet entirely: no residents anywhere, power, phone, and internet all cut, and sealed behind a barrier holding in an abnormally large number of illegal spirits. Guided by radio from section chief Kohinata and junior colleague Marugawa, the player fights back with hand-to-hand combat, gunfights, and stealth action, and the developer's own pitch names exactly what it is reacting against, calling it 'a horror game where you finally get to fight back,' aimed at anyone tired of the genre convention in which bullets and fists do nothing against unreasonable ghosts. Made and self-published solo by developer Noto Muteki (per Japanese Wikipedia's own infobox, a one-person team), who per the same source personally finds horror games not to their taste and originally set out to build a different, gun-based TPS called AKASPA about a fictional VTuber agency scandal, before pivoting to this shorter horror game, a choice Wikipedia attributes to both AKASPA's likely-longer development time and, in part, Noto Muteki's own financial hardship at the time (utility bills and loan repayments), one of two stated reasons, not the sole one. Japanese Wikipedia also names Amata K.K. as a co-publisher, but a dedicated check of that company found its confirmed role limited to the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 ports plus a manga adaptation, not this Steam release, which Steam's own API lists as developed and published by Noto Muteki alone. Released October 4, 2024 at ¥1,200, it is Very Positive at 93 percent over 2,833 reviews (2,625 positive, 208 negative, per Steam's own review API), a paid title, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated assets, and per Steam's own content descriptors (gunfight, blood, and violence), nothing sexual. It supports English along with Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, yet only 307 of its 2,833 reviews, 10.8 percent, are in English: the game is playable in English and still has not organically reached the West in real numbers, a fact worth stating plainly.

Japanese House Exploration Buried gem

A friend went missing on the way home from school, with no witnesses. But you have an idea where she went, because the day before, not quite herself, she said: I am being called to that house. There was never a house there. You go anyway, half disbelieving, and a Japanese house is standing on the spot. That is the premise, quoted from the store page, and the game is a first-person puzzle horror set inside that one building: you explore it, you find things, you open the parts of it that were closed. Steam's own user tags describe the shape better than its official genre does, listing Hidden Object, Inventory Management, Multiple Endings and Survival Horror alongside First-Person. There are four endings, with a fifth added after release, and it runs sixty to ninety minutes. What makes it worth the trip is the building itself. The store text defines the house with two words that contradict each other, calling it somehow eerie and somehow nostalgic, and the second half of that pair only fires if you have been in a house like it: the corridor, the closet, the room with the altar. It is a horror design drawn on a floor plan that a certain kind of person already has in their body. That is not a coincidence. In an interview with Creators Guild the developer says plainly that the Japanese house in this game is modelled on their own family home. The same interview is worth reading for what else it says. Asked about their team, they answer that they are making it alone so they will skip the team questions. Asked about industry experience, they answer that it is zero, that they came out of a humanities degree and started game development knowing nothing. It took one year and two months against an estimate of about one year, built in Unreal Engine 5. And the reason they started: they were watching let's plays of indie horror games and thought they would like people to play one of theirs. This is that game, and it is the only one they have. A direct check of Steam's developer search under the name Sealio returns exactly one title. Released August 1, 2024 at ¥330, it is at 96 percent across 130 reviews (125 positive, 5 negative per Steam's own review API), a paid title, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated-content disclosure on its page and Steam's content descriptors completely empty. English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean are all supported, so there is nothing stopping you. And yet of those 130 reviews, 85 are in Japanese and 7 are in English.