This review contains spoilers.
My curator review for Escape from Yandere was very simple.
Deranged girl.
I think that remains a fairly accurate summary.
First of all.
Is the title supposed to be a play on Escape from Tarkov?
I have no idea.
But surely I can't be the only person who thought of it.
Anyway.
Then there is Yuki.
I'm not entirely sure what her background is supposed to be.
Japanese-American, perhaps?
Or maybe she's Japanese and simply speaks English most of the time.
I don't know.
She has a Japanese name, and very early in the game there is one moment where she gets embarrassed and calls you:
"Baka..."
You idiot.
And then, as far as I remember, I never heard her speak Japanese again.
Most of the time, you communicate with her in English.
And I do mean communicate.
Escape from Yandere uses your microphone as part of its dialogue system.
Yuki says what she wants to say first.
Then you answer through your microphone.
It isn't really a free conversation.
She mostly wants to hear the answer she has already decided is correct.
Talking to an attractive woman who may or may not stab you to death is still a fairly entertaining idea.
She doesn't like swearing either.
Say a certain four-letter word beginning with F and she'll tell you not to swear.
Fair enough.
She may be violently unstable, but she has standards.
Still, making pizza with Yuki was quite a nice memory.
Anyway.
The protagonist really is remarkably sweet and kind.
I've recently become friends with someone online through a rather unexpected connection.
They're into necrophilia.
Fictional game characters only, obviously.
Anyway.
If that friend were actually the protagonist and ended up alone in that house with Yuki...
Hmm.
That's enough about that.
Perhaps Yuki just needs to meet her match.
Someone even more deranged than she is.
A taste of her own medicine might do her some good.
As for me?
If I were the protagonist, I probably would've taken shameless advantage of the fact that this attractive, completely unstable woman was already in love with me.
I'm just saying.
But even if we ignore my considerably less honourable intentions, there is something else that bothered me.
Yuki is trying to stab me to death.
I'm considerably bigger than she is.
Surely there should be an option to grab something heavy and fight back.
Apparently not.
Once Yuki loses it and comes after you with a knife, your options are rather limited.
Keep her happy.
Or escape.
There isn't really a third option where the protagonist finally decides:
"Right.
Enough of this."
and fights back.
I found that slightly disappointing.
Perhaps one solid hit with an appropriate household object would've done wonders for her mental health.
Unfortunately, the game doesn't allow that.
So.
Escape it is.
And escaping the mansion means puzzles.
Of course it does.
You have to search around.
You have to work things out.
You have to use your brain.
Wonderful.
I hate puzzles.
My head already hurt.
That said, hating the puzzles is one thing.
If you try to escape in the middle of the night and make even a little noise, that deranged woman starts roaming around the house with a knife, looking for you.
I have to huddle in some secluded corner and wait for her to give up and go back to bed.
Those moments create an extraordinary amount of suspense.
Few horror games have ever made me break out in a cold sweat like that.
Seriously.
There was even a Steam achievement waiting for me if I managed to escape.
I didn't care.
Achievement or not, I eventually made the only sensible decision available to me.
I told Yuki I loved her.
A lot.
I said plenty of lovely, sugary things.
I stopped trying to leave.
And I got the ending where we stay together and live happily ever after.
Probably.
Well.
There is one slight concern.
If Yuki doesn't get some serious help, I suspect our first proper marital disagreement may also be our last.
You don't even need to do anything particularly dramatic.
Disagree with her.
Reject something she wants.
Refuse to do what she says.
Anything that sufficiently displeases her seems capable of turning:
"I love you."
into:
"I am going to stab you."
That could make married life somewhat difficult.
Still.
At least I didn't have to finish the escape puzzles.
Anyway.
Is Yuki actually a slasher villain?
At first I wasn't sure.
This isn't Michael Myers.
This isn't Jason Voorhees.
This isn't Ghostface.
This is just a deranged woman with a knife who happens to be in love with you.
That's different.
Or at least I thought it was.
Then I considered what she actually does.
She traps a man in a mansion.
She becomes obsessively possessive.
She reacts to rejection with homicidal violence.
She chases him around with a knife.
And she repeatedly tries to stab him to death when he doesn't behave the way she wants.
Some of the classic franchise slashers would probably look at Yuki and say:
"Calm down."
So.
Yes.
I suppose this is a slasher game after all.
And Yuki herself is what makes it work.
The microphone mechanic is especially important here.
A lot of horror games give you a killer and tell you to hide from them.
Escape from Yandere gives you a killer and asks you to talk to her.
And because you're actually speaking rather than simply selecting dialogue options from a menu, the relationship feels considerably more immediate.
Unfortunately, that relationship is with Yuki.
So the intimacy does not necessarily make you feel safer.
Quite the opposite.
You're having a conversation with someone who loves you.
And who may attempt to murder you.
That's a good horror mechanic.
The escape side of the game is less appealing to me personally.
Because puzzles.
Naturally.
If you enjoy searching through a mansion and solving things while a homicidally possessive woman becomes increasingly unhappy with your behaviour, you'll probably get considerably more out of that side of the game than I did.
I chose romance.
Not because I believed it was the healthiest solution.
Not because I thought Yuki and I had built a mature and stable relationship.
I simply didn't want to solve any more puzzles.
Sometimes love requires compromise.
Apparently mine required surrender.
Anyway.
My original curator review said:
Deranged girl.
After spending considerably more time thinking about it, I have reached a more sophisticated conclusion.
Deranged girl.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4081840/Escape_from_Yandere/?curator_clanid=46578905