Saiko No Sutoka is a Horror Survival Game where you must escape and avoid the crazy yandere girl, Saiko (I see what you did there), who wants you dead.
Storyline:
The main character is Saiko’s senpai. That means that she wants his love and attention. Yet, it’s quite hard to return the feelings of someone who just killed your friends and wants to lock you up forever, so your main task is to escape and stay alive.
Gameplay:
As the main character, we have to find a code written on four blackboards in locked classrooms to get the key that opens the exit door. But Saiko doesn’t want that so she’ll try to stop us. The AI in the game is quite complicated and Saiko has lots and lots of behaviors.
She can make traps, ambush, stalk, play weird “hide and seek” games, steal the keys the player found, demand to give them to her, track the player using cameras, switch off the power in the school, hug the main character from behind and even let them go if they are cornered.
These are just examples of her behaviors, in fact, there are so many more things she can do and as the game constantly gets updated, you can expect the list to get longer.
Positives:
- It’s a very powerful horror. The game is insanely scary. Upon starting the game it’s almost impossible to predict the AI’s behavior, even on the easiest of difficulties. She will outsmart the player, outrun them, and jumpscare them many times. There are also some jumpscares in the lockers and cabinets which makes the game even scarier as the player has to interact with these things constantly which eventually wears your guard down.
- As stated before, the AI’s behavior is very complex. She acts unpredictably and finds ways to mess with the player. She also can get angrier if the player doesn’t agree with her rules and doesn’t give away the keys she demands or keeps running around the same chairs avoiding her stabbing attacks. If that happens and she gets mad, she’ll be less likely to let the player go and can also switch to using her lower-damage slice attacks instead of stabbing.
- The game constantly gets updated. Lately, it takes the developer longer to update the game, but each time a huge amount of new content appears. Even if the game gets boring at some point, the updates makes it fresh and scary again.
- The game is free! It’s almost unbelievable, but it is completely free. Hard to beat that.
Negatives:
- There are lots of bugs in the game at the moment. They get fixed dutring each update but it’s really hard to fix every bug when the game is still in development. Still, be ready for the game to suddenly break and see Saiko clip through the lockers like there are no walls.
- The game is much more difficult than you’d expect. Each update shifts the difficulty balance a bit, so sometimes the game becomes too easy and sometimes too difficult. While it nominally has three difficulty levels, I can assure you that it will be a challenge beating the game even playing on Easy.
- The number of behaviours and rules might seem overwhelming at first. It’s easy to get used to them if you check out each update but for new players, Saiko might seem like too much at once. So, don’t expect her to be easy on you.
Rating:
It’s unbelievable that this game is free! Considering that this masterpiece is still in development, it deserves 9.5 bloody knives out of 10. I’ll keep track of this game’s development and maybe the rating will change in the future. But as a free horror experience – it’s top-notch. So, what are you waiting for? Check it out right now and get scared!