Yomawari: Midnight Shadows

Steam Reviews

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• Recommended Posted October 19, 2025 on Steam Two young girls, a dog, a lot of upset ghosts, and some twisted gods... Yomawari: Midnight Shadows is the perfect kind of sequel, taking absolutely everything that worked about Yomawari: Night Alone and expanding on it to deliver a more fun and refined gameplay and narrative experience than it's predecessor; unfortunately, it kept some of the frustrating elements too. The gameplay is greatly expanded and improved upon from what came before, no longer are enemies simply roadblocks most of the time meant to indicate to you that you're going the wrong way but actual threats meant to be engaged with; and boy does everything want to engage. Everything wants to kill you in this game; Chairs. Tables. Paintings. Fog. There's still a lot of generic enemies with very basic mechanics but the amount of special or boss type enemies and encounters is massively increased as well as the depth to these encounters; from tricking a fire enemy into shooting itself with it's flames to rushing past the raised arm of a giant skeleton, the intensity of the encounters is tenfold anything seen in the first game. Instead of side quests simply being fluff, this time around they reward you with charms that can improve one of your stats, stuff like having more stamina to run longer or being able to hold more of an item. Unfortunately, we do retain some of the frustrations of the original as well; you still die in one hit to every enemy in the game which is perfectly fine but can cause some frustration when you aren't actually sure why you died or what you did wrong, and run backs to where you were killed can be brutal. Sometimes it feels like you have nearly no indication of what to do during some special encounters, like you're meant to die a few times to figure out how to win. The story is brutal. It's sad out here man. Yomawari: Night Alone's story was very simple, vaguely conveyed, and really took a backseat to the other elements of the game which is another thing the sequel improves on. This time around the narrative is a constant element, with much more talkative and charismatic protagonists you really get attached to and want to see safely through this nightmare. This is a story about loss, letting go, and forgiveness. It's hard to really explain the story of Haru and Yui without spoiling it and I think it's best experienced for yourself, so if you're interested in this game, just know you're in for a compelling and tragic story about two young girls going through the suffering gauntlet. I compared the first entry to Silent Hill in terms of atmosphere and storytelling style and the same is true of this sequel; once again you don't have any steel pipe karate to beat your way out of any bad situation, instead it's majority puzzles and exploration focused. There's references to it's predecessor as well which is always appreciated, you'll visit the downtown area from the first game; after completing the story you can even meet Kotomo, the protagonist of Night Alone, which is really cool. Yomawari: Midnight Shadows is a cute, violent, sad, and overall fantastic sequel; one I highly recommend if you like psychological horror, little girls having really bad not fun times, or just interesting and tragic stories. Also I really like the animation when the girls get jumpscared and then fall on their butts, cracks me up every time.
• Not recommended Posted November 15, 2025 on Steam Yomawari Midnight Shadows is a good game, but it's definitely a step down from the first game. The story is still nothing to really write home about, but the main duo of Yui and Haru pull at heart strings more, and definitely have more development in general. It has a lot of gorgeous little scenes that show the team was more confident in designing environments, but the atmosphere is a bit dampened by it feeling a bit more gameplay heavy. It still boils down to the same gameplay loop of starting a night, doing some specific objective, boss fight, rinse and repeat for a few hours. Your flashlight shows spirits, but some are visible no matter what. What changes a bit with this game is that it has a lot more spirits than the first game, and their lethality is turned up by eleven. Your average gamer will die a lot, and the game seems to compensate for this by giving you a lot more coins to save at the Jizo statues and tons of new items to deal with the various new spirits. Jizo Statues now also actually save instead of being general quicksave spots. Also a new form of "puzzle" is in the game, with you needing to carry or push objects in the environment. It's not really a puzzle though, you just kinda do the actions. Post game content is relatively the same, but instead of heavily relying on rare events, it now relies heavily on the aforementioned pushing and carrying mechanics. If it doesn't do this, it'll be some multi-chain process to get items. It can be quite obnoxious to get a lot of the collectables. If you're not interested in doing a 100% run, I recommend avoiding the entire post-game. It wasn't as much of a problem with the previous game, but navigation can be super obnoxious specifically because of some new indoor areas. You cannot fast travel out of these indoor areas, and they are lethal labyrinths. Despite my dislike of some of the new changes, I enjoy this game a lot, so why do I not recommend it? Because it also has a critical issue where the game just stops working. Nowhere near as bad as the previous game of course because it actually boots, but on both my computer and Steam Deck, it would just randomly close for no reason I could identify. While it did stop doing this eventually, it did it over seven times. Yes you can save a lot, but a game should not have an extra stress of making you need to save constantly so you can avoid losing progress. When the game was working on my Steam Deck 512 GB LCD, it ran smoothly just like the previous game with at least three hours thirty minutes of battery life and with no sound or graphical issues. I did not change my version of Proton. Same with the previous game, get it on sale if you're PC only and don't be afraid to refund it if it frustrates you or doesn't work. If you can, buy it on another platform as I do think it's worth it.
• Recommended Posted June 27, 2025 on Steam This is a review I felt like I need to do- now that I bought the game twice (here, and on the switch). I used to have a love-hate relationship for this game: it's not like the first game, blabla. Now that it's been years, I feel like I can objectively talk about it. I want to say that I enjoyed the first Yomawari, but it's not needed to complete it to play this one. There's only one easter egg (a really cute one) for people that have played the first one. If anything, I recommend this one over the first, as the gameplay is much less frustrating. Unlike the first game, this one has a long and complex story. I mean, the first had a story too, but clearly not as complex as this one (you have 2 different PoVs after all!). On top of that, you get more systems like bonus items. This comes with a big problem: [b]you are handholded through a good chunk of the game.[/b] And this is why I could never fully love this game; The first game letting you explore felt really immersing as you desperately tried to avoid monsters and ghosts and get lost in an oppressive night, but this one locks you into specific paths to make sure you cannot avoid to go to the next part of the story. I enjoyed the story and it's honestly one of the best I've seen from how emotional and tragic it is (especially with legit 8 yrs old children??), but to go from the sandbox first game to this was something I couldn't readily accept. Besides that, the game also introduces new ghosts on top of the ones from the first games. I personally liked them. The level design though was fantastic- as long as you properly used the Jinzo statues (the temporary quick save points). This makes it this game can be very hard to put down: not in the sense that it's gripping, but because you need to save the game (at the house only) and you just [i]cannot[/i], because you are too deep inside a level. My personal favourite was the haunted house as the game uses its atmosphere perfectly. Gameplay-wise, it's similar to the first Yomawari Night. However, due to its nature of being separated by chapters, the game is much less punishing than the first one, who was... rough around the edges, and much less polished. It is still very much a die and retry, but I'd still recommend it over the first due to all the QoL and polishing it got. The graphics are however, very much improved, with a lot of shading to each asset compared to the first Yomawari. The game is a treat to look at and I loved taking screenshots of it, especially the train level! On a final note, I really do recommend this game the most over any of the other Yomawari games, as it is genuinely a really good game (if you don't mind the die and retry), and a good first entry point into the series (even if realistically, none of the games connect to each others deeply).
• Not recommended Posted July 9, 2025 on Steam The aesthetics are great, but the game itself is tedious. In my opinion, the insta-death mechanic ruined the exploration, which also ruined the game. Considering that there are many divided paths with many traps and lackluster rewards, It would have been better if the game had quick saves, which would have allowed for more easier exploration. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have minded the lackluster rewards or traps in the game if the game didn’t have an insta-death mechanic. The number of times I died trying to find collectible items is ridiculous, and being sent back to the last save every time is tedious. I died so much that I ended up experiencing learned helplessness in one of the boss fights—the sewer boss—because I didn’t want to do anything that could potentially kill me. Overall, the game could have limited the tedium by including quick saves.
• Recommended Posted September 19, 2025 on Steam The second game in the Yomawari series. Compared to the first entry's open-ended nature, this one feels like an over-correction into a much more linear experience. At the same time its narrative is a lot more involved and grips at the heartstrings, so it's no wonder to me that it's so beloved. Personally it was my least favourite of the trilogy to play, but I'm still glad I stuck with it to see these two girls' story to the end.
• Not recommended Posted November 4, 2025 on Steam It's alright when it comes to its style, it handles its sounds mostly well and there's an attempt at an equipment system. However, there are many cheap jumpscares, enemies teleporting on you and very tedious trial & error boss sequences. The first couple chapters are pretty good, but the game loses its momentum before the halfway point and progressing becomes a slog. Overall, it's just kinda boring. 100% achievement completion boils down to a collectathon after you beat the story, which has you re-explore every corner of the map (or, more likely, following a guide).