Kitsune: The Journey of Adashino is an upcoming action adventure game inspired by Japanese folklore, and I recently had a chance to check out a short demo. The story begins with a kitsune girl and her frog companion arriving on a mysterious island. With no way of getting back until the next morning, they’re instructed to light altars around the island using the main character’s flame.
The island has a nice, slightly spooky atmosphere that I enjoyed. Darkness acts as a barrier to prevent you from progressing, but lighting an altar nearby will clear away the darkness and let you proceed. There isn’t much to do in these areas in the demo; the handful of conversations with other characters were plot-based, with no optional dialogue that I could find.
However, it isn’t long before you encounter a demon. At this point, you have no choice but to run, tossing sparks of light behind you to blind and temporarily delay your pursuer. You only have 3 of these lights available, and they refill when you light an altar, so lighting the altars becomes key to your escape in more than one way. Strangely enough, I found I had to run to the next area, a dead end, to stop the demon’s pursuit, and then double back to the altar to light it and resume the chase. This felt odd and disrupted the tension of being pursued, so I wonder if it was a mistake.
The demo ends on a creepy, ominous note that implies more supernatural incidents are about to occur, but it’s such a short demo that it left me unsure of what to expect from the full game. Will the demon chases make up the bulk of the gameplay, or will there be more interactive sections aside from that? Is progression as guided as it is here, or will you choose how to explore? Kitsune: The Journey of Adashino has a great art style, and I love the Japanese fantasy themes, but I’ll need to see more to get a better grasp on the sort of game it is.
