里帰り | Satogaeri

里帰り | Satogaeri is a J-Horror walking simulator developed by とらんぽ（Torampo), a freelance game developer and released on Steam around late November of 2021. I don’t personally know much about this game developer as I don’t really speak Japanese or read Japanese or know…basically anything Japanese aside from the origins of a variety of my favorite media series like Yakuza, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and J-Horror movies like The Ring or The Grudge. However, what I do know is that I originally found this game through a friend of mine, Scott’s Game Asylum, wishlisting it on Steam. As someone who is into J-Horror and walking simulators, I figured I’d give it a wishlist. I bought this game around Christmas of 2023 to stream in the future for a friend of mine along with other games like Eschaton and That Which Gave Chase and then ended up playing it tonight before delving into Nightmare of Decay.
I’m going to start with the gameplay here mainly because it can be summarized in one sentence: “It’s very linear, you can only pick up a few things, and the only reason you’d get confused is if you can’t read Japanese.” Literally, not understanding Japanese is the only reason why one would take more than half an hour on this game. This goes into the plot, which I had to discern from a Youtube video: You play as a woman named Misaki, who’s quit her job after a bout of depression and returned home (hence the translation of Satogaeri being “Returning Home” or something similar) to her parent’s house. She was moving stuff by herself while her parents went to work and woke up during the evening. After waking up, she proceeds to gather rice into a goblet before placing it on her altar as an offering. Afterwards she goes to the old playground where she used to play as a child, swinging on an old swing and contemplating her future before a strange sound erupts and a nearby gate opens up. Heading down the path, she encounters an old and abandoned shrine by a pond. After looking at an old mirror, she witnesses ghastly spirits that make her collapse as the mirror cracks.
Heading home after, she picks up a notice board and puts it in a neighbor’s mailbox while witnessing strange ghosts and a small child crying next to a tree. The boy is crying over his lost toy plane, and Misaki unlocks her shed to grab a board, which she uses to knock down the toy from the tree. It’s here where she witnesses a giant ghost racing down the road at her while the boy disappears. Heading home, the phone rings and the caller is Misaki’s mom, who called because her teacher (a psychic she used to talk to) had said that Misaki was in danger. More haunted stuff happens and Mom urges her to grab some salt (which is believed to make evil spirits go away) and to make a square in her room so that she’ll be safe until the morning. Grabbing it and running upstairs, the hauntings only get worse and it ends in a spirit standing over her. She wakes up in her mother’s car the next morning and they go to the psychic teacher’s house for counsel, and it’s learned that the little boy went missing near the shrine which was later closed. Overall it’s a simple plot for a walking simulator, but a simple plot that was enjoyable once I got it translated by a Youtuber but otherwise I don’t have much in the way of feelings on it.
Graphically this game gives me a decent bit of retro Playstation 1 vibes but unlike other throwback games who’ve embraced it hardcore, this one seems to dial it back to where it’s a mix between somewhat realistic looking and old blocky graphics. In all honesty, the most beautiful area in the game is the small forest path that you walk when you get closer to the shrine that honestly looks like it could be in a painting, while other textures look like it was in the middle of rendering but stopped at five percent. It’s a strange mixture that honestly works kind of well, though there are times where it can get a tad darker than it should be but that’s just me. Atmospherically, the game is a very slow burn of a title, not really hitting you with constant jump scares as much as it does slowly hit you up with a small sighting here or there. This is when it’s effective but other than maybe one or two decent scares, it doesn’t really do much to actually SCARE you. I never really felt scared or nervous or frightened once, and to be fair not every game needs to do that! However, I felt like this game could’ve gone in on the scares a bit more than how it did but that’s just a personal preference. As for the sound design, you’ll hear a lot of bugs chirping through the night that adds a bit of comfort noise, but aside from opening some doors and maybe a horror sting, the game doesn’t give you much in the way of sounds to distract you from any potential tension or paranormal sighting. I also don’t really remember much in the way of music, which sucks but I’m not too surprised considering the lower budget style and the focus on atmospheric horror.
Overall, 里帰り | Satogaeri is a chill half an hour horror walking simulator that showcases that Torampo has a pretty solid idea of what he’s doing in terms of how to create an effective, slow burning horror piece with its simplicity. It’s nothing too crazy really but it’s a nice start and I’m interested to see what else he could come up with. I know he would go on to release 廃村巡り | Haisonmeguri around half a year later before disappearing from the gaming scene for a while. I know at some point that I would like to try out Haisonmeguri to see what it’s like but other than that but honestly I don’t have much to say about this one other than I hope that the dev continues as well as I hope at some point that there might be more language support other than Japanese. As for is it worth playing? Well, it’s a small indie horror game that’s about three dollars or so for a half an hour’s worth of content so if you’re willing to pay the price of a bag of chips to a small indie game developer then I would say yes, go for it. Others however might prefer that this game’s free due to the small amount of content though as someone who wants indie developers to be supported and encouraged to create more games, I would say that yes, it’s worth your time; otherwise a Youtube Let’s Play works just fine.
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Like the first game, it is very unique. But this time you really need to speak Japanese (or use a walkthrough) to play it. I like it.