Junji Ito, an iconic Japanese manga writer and artist, is a horror legend. One of the minds behind the Hideo Kojima-led Silent Hills test demo P.T., there are few who know how to truly scare like him.
Following the Netflix release of Japanese Tales of the Macabre, the manga author is working on a first-person video game designed to really scare us s**tless – Junji Ito Maniac: An Infinite Gaol.
In development at Softstar Entertainment, there’s currently no release for the upcoming horror title, but there are a few interesting details about the project.
Described as a “first-person survival horror game inspired by Junji Ito’s psychological horror and eerie aesthetics”, the upcoming video game follows a brand-new story owned by Ito himself. The story is said to center “on the twisted potential of human nature and fear of the unknown, taking you on a journey of survival where memory and mystery intertwine”.
You play as a college student who wakes up in a Western-style mansion – think all those massive Resident Evil mansions – that’s “filled with uncanny statues, trap doors, and spooky mechanisms”. During the story, you’ll team up with two women who are also trapped in the house and work together to uncover its mysteries.
The upcoming horror game is largely focused around stealth and puzzles with a collection of horrific enemies hiding around the mansion. You won’t be able to fight back with weapons, per se, but you will be able to lay traps to make enemies trip over or keep them occupied elsewhere.
As one of the strongest modern horror writers, Junji Ito really knows how to instill fear. As someone who’s read quite a few of his books, the author’s works always have this inescapable sense of dread, and it will be very interesting to see how Softstar adapts this into a video game.
Junji Ito Maniac: An Infinite Gaol isn’t the only video game the manga author has worked on. Alongside the aforementioned P.T, Ito was a guest writer on the PS2 game Shijuu Hachi, and there was even a Wonderswan game adaptation of Uzumaki.
There’s no release date for Junji Ito Maniac: An Infinite Gao at the time of publication.