Platform 8

The Exit 8 is a first-person three-dimensional (3D) walking simulator type game with elements of puzzle and psychological horror. Inspired by the concept of liminal spaces such as the Backrooms, the game is set in a passageway of the Japanese metro. At the start of the game, the rules are displayed on a sign on the wall next to the player, with the player starting at Exit 0. Every time the player exits the passageway, the passageway seems to repeat seemingly forever with even a passer-by appearing to be caught in the loop.

The core gameplay of The Exit 8 is similar to games like spot the difference, where the player must look out for and identify anomalies in the room's layout. If there are no anomalies, the player should proceed down the corridor; whereas if there is an anomaly, the player should turn around and walk the way they came in order to progress to the next exit. The player needs to be correct eight times in a row to reach the final exit, Exit 8, to leave the station. Should the player be incorrect with the assessment of a given room layout, their progress will reset back to Exit 0.

The Exit 8 was developed by Japanese indie developer Kotake Create, also known as Kotakenotokeke, who developed the game in Unreal Engine 5. He previously worked for four years as a 3D artist at a Japanese game developer before leaving the company to work on games as a solo developer. Whilst holding a session at Indie Developers Conference 2024, Kotake laid out three reasons as to why he developed The Exit 8; wanting to release a game on Steam, wanting to make a game in a shorter time span as another game he was working on called Strange Shadows was taking a long time, and wanting to make a game that would sell in order to finance living expenses and development. Elsewhere, he also expressed that he had a desire to make games set in underground passageways. In an interview with Japanese website Game Makers, Kotake stated that the game took over nine months to develop, split between six months of planning and prototyping and three months of final development.

In the initial concept for the game, the player would have been able to board a subway train. However, due to development restraints, the concept was dropped to just the corridor setting; the train aspects were later reused as the setting for The Exit 8's sequel. Kotake stated that he liked the surreal atmosphere of confined spaces such as underground passageways, which inspired him to create a game based on loops. Another influence for the looping mechanic during development was the 2021 adventure game Twelve Minutes, which featured a mechanic where the events of the game would loop after twelve minutes.

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According to review aggregator website OpenCritic, The Exit 8 received an average score of 67/100 based on 9 reviews, and 56% of critics recommended the game.

Since The Exit 8's release, journalists began to analyse the game's success and what made it popular. In an interview with Shueisha Online, Kanakki, narrator for horror radio show "Magabanashi [ja] (禍話)", believed that part of what made the game successful was its blending of the non-horrific/gore supernatural elements in an ordinary urban environment, detailing that the game had dream-like qualities such as the looping mechanic that "really add to the eeriness." Kanakki further emphasised that the dream-like qualities also linked to the concept of liminal spaces, labelling underground passageways as "transitional spaces" that may allow person to imagine they are in another world. Kanakki suggested liminal spaces were another aspect he believed the game's success derived from, stemming from their rise in popularity from stories on message boards such as "Monkey Dream [ja] (猿夢)" and "The Backrooms".

He explained how liminal spaces create a sense of nostalgia and claustrophobia, which Kanakki linked as a common theme to 1990s video games; he described how it would induce a fear of uncanniness, which he believes the game takes advantage of to allow players to "experience the presence of fear". Writing for Tatler Asia, Suchetana Mukhopadhyay saw the game as part of a growing trend in popularity for survival narratives in media, comparing The Exit 8 with television shows such as Alice in Borderland and Squid Game along with the video game Silent Hill f. Mukhopadhyay linked their popularity to people wanting to control their fate in an uncontrollable world, noting the game as demonstration that the human spirit is "indomitable."