The good news is I feel the Steam Store page for the game aptly describes what it is. I often see a store page, sometimes with videos that hardly show any gameplay and is more concerned with showing off its lore and/or features or I might see that the logo and screenshots evokes features of another game, fooling me into believing it is similar to another and I eventually find out it's not quite what i thought it was.

In my personal opinion, the best way to experience The Exit 8 is near completely blindly (which is something I never say, considering how many games will leave you with buyers' remorse), so if you know nothing about this game and happen to be reading this review, You should only verify if your hardware can properly play the game, in which it can be refunded (provided you play it not too long after buying it). Even so, the game can be finished within the 2 hour return limit by most players (if you figure out what the game is about by then) and even better than that, the game is only $4, which in my experience with the game is worth the price.

I discovered The Exit 8 from seeing Nextlander, Ezekiel_III and maybe another streamer play the game - which was great for showing me a game I wanted to play, but bad for effectively "answering many of the puzzles" of the game or even the fact that I had to "answer puzzles".

The only scenarios i'll say not to buy this game is if you get any sort of motion sickness or any other maladies from First Person games or if you have negative interest in games that mess with the player. On that last note, the game doesn't have any blood, gore, or serious violence, but does have some mildly unsettling or creepy moments that might make some more sensitive people uncomfortable


(((SPOILER SECTION)))
I'll use the remainder of this review to cover a few notes that I would feel spoil the experience.
-$4 for effectively 1hr or less of gameplay does seem kind of steep, but if you're able to experience The Exit 8 with minimal spoilers, I think the small surprises and reward of figuring out the game makes for it.
- The game immediately loads into the game: No Logos. No Menu. No Tutorial. Literally press play, the screen fades or flickers to black, the game loads and fades into you being in a Japanese passageway with first person control of the character. This is great for the experience if the game works with no issues for you, but bad if you need to chance options. Thankfully, you can press Esc and get to an option menu if you need to change audio or video settings. Personally, the audio settings ere perfect as is and I didn't have to turn any volume down. I also assume the game auto-detects your hardware and tries to set the graphics settings appropriately, as it set mine to High and ran effectively at 60FPS and "Epic" preset would have been sub-30
- It may be worth playing The Exit 8 in the dark, but the majority of the game is played in "Bathed light" so it may not help immersion.
- For the longest time, I was looking for the anomaly that would change the Yellow floor tiles to faces or something as I've seen from streams. In a potentially masterful move, that anomaly was one of the last ones to appear and I got so used to not seeing it that I literally ignored the floor THE ONE TIME I NEEDED TOO, resetting my run. IT makes me wonder if the game was tracking my camera movements (looking at the floor frequently) and deciding to not give me that anomaly until it only had a few ones to pull from. If this was done intentionally by the developer(s), then this is BRILLIANT.
- The Exit 8 MIGHT be able to add more value with a level/script editor or allowing mod/workshop support, but I suppose that feature alone could spoil the experience. Regardless, if the develop doesn't make a sequel with such a feature, I fear a competitor would or at least you'll see similar experiences in games like Garry's Mod.
- Even with my prior knowledge of the game, my Steam time clocks up to about an 1hr. Some of that may have been paused/AFK, but I think most of if it was due to about 2 or 3 runs where I got complacent and missed some anomalies. Some of it was standing still, trying to notice if something was subtly moving or not, but I can't tell if passage way has a time limit or not.
- I could easily return this game since I only played it an hour, but I enjoyed it and wouldn't want to punish the developer despite making a game I enjoyed.

[h1]The Exit 8 is... ...well this is one of the few times I'll deviate from my normal review style because doing so would spoil the experience of playing The Exit 8.[/h1] [b]The good news is I feel the Steam Store page for the game aptly describes what it is.[/b] I often see a store page, sometimes with videos that hardly show any gameplay and is more concerned with showing off its lore and/or features or I might see that the logo and screenshots evokes features of another game, fooling me into believing it is similar to another and I eventually find out it's not quite what i thought it was. [b]In my personal opinion, the best way to experience The Exit 8 is near completely blindly (which is something I never say, considering how many games will leave you with buyers' remorse), so if you know nothing about this game and happen to be reading this review, [/b][h1]I will use what little reputation I have as a reviewer to say: "Play The Exit 8 with as little research on it as possible."[/h1] You should only verify if your hardware can properly play the game, in which it can be refunded (provided you play it not too long after buying it). Even so, the game can be finished within the 2 hour return limit by most players (if you figure out what the game is about by then) and even better than that, the game is only $4, which in my experience with the game is worth the price. I discovered The Exit 8 from seeing Nextlander, Ezekiel_III and maybe another streamer play the game - which was great for showing me a game I wanted to play, but bad for effectively "answering many of the puzzles" of the game or even the fact that I had to "answer puzzles". The only scenarios i'll say not to buy this game is if you get any sort of motion sickness or any other maladies from First Person games or if you have negative interest in games that mess with the player. On that last note, the game doesn't have any blood, gore, or serious violence, but does have some mildly unsettling or creepy moments that might make some more sensitive people uncomfortable [spoiler] (((SPOILER SECTION))) I'll use the remainder of this review to cover a few notes that I would feel spoil the experience. -$4 for effectively 1hr or less of gameplay does seem kind of steep, but if you're able to experience The Exit 8 with minimal spoilers, I think the small surprises and reward of figuring out the game makes for it. - The game immediately loads into the game: No Logos. No Menu. No Tutorial. Literally press play, the screen fades or flickers to black, the game loads and fades into you being in a Japanese passageway with first person control of the character. This is great for the experience if the game works with no issues for you, but bad if you need to chance options. Thankfully, you can press Esc and get to an option menu if you need to change audio or video settings. Personally, the audio settings ere perfect as is and I didn't have to turn any volume down. I also assume the game auto-detects your hardware and tries to set the graphics settings appropriately, as it set mine to High and ran effectively at 60FPS and "Epic" preset would have been sub-30 - It may be worth playing The Exit 8 in the dark, but the majority of the game is played in "Bathed light" so it may not help immersion. - For the longest time, I was looking for the anomaly that would change the Yellow floor tiles to faces or something as I've seen from streams. In a potentially masterful move, that anomaly was one of the last ones to appear and I got so used to not seeing it that I literally ignored the floor THE ONE TIME I NEEDED TOO, resetting my run. IT makes me wonder if the game was tracking my camera movements (looking at the floor frequently) and deciding to not give me that anomaly until it only had a few ones to pull from. If this was done intentionally by the developer(s), then this is BRILLIANT. - The Exit 8 MIGHT be able to add more value with a level/script editor or allowing mod/workshop support, but I suppose that feature alone could spoil the experience. Regardless, if the develop doesn't make a sequel with such a feature, I fear a competitor would or at least you'll see similar experiences in games like Garry's Mod. - Even with my prior knowledge of the game, my Steam time clocks up to about an 1hr. Some of that may have been paused/AFK, but I think most of if it was due to about 2 or 3 runs where I got complacent and missed some anomalies. Some of it was standing still, trying to notice if something was subtly moving or not, but I can't tell if passage way has a time limit or not. - I could easily return this game since I only played it an hour, but I enjoyed it and wouldn't want to punish the developer despite making a game I enjoyed.[/spoiler]