It takes a while to get your breath back, and solving all your problems by running away will often end up for the worse. Both girls can run, but only for a short amount of time before their stamina runs out. Neither Yui nor Haru can actually hurt any of the apparitions roaming in and around their town, and instead they have to find ways to avoid them. Midnight Shadows is most easily described as a mix of bullet hell and a classic adventure game. It’s pretty beneficial to try interacting with as many things as you can, even if it only leads to a cheap scare every now and then. A lot of the side-material, and even a couple of boss tips, are tied to the various signs and documents you encounter while roaming around. You learn a lot more about the characters and spirits by their expressions and actions, which are delightfully fun to look at thanks to the game’s beautiful art style. The story is very bare bones, and there’s little dialogue. This game really likes to play up the subtly. Haru will encounter a myriad of different types of spirits and specters, each with their own tale of misery attached to them, and she ends up solving more issues than simply that of her missing friend. It’s a touching story that has way more going for it than one might suspect at face-value. Yui has been spirited away by the many evil apparitions lurking in town, and Haru follows a meager trail of breadcrumbs to track her down and bring her home. In Midnight Shadows you play as one of two girls, Yui or Haru, after they are separated from each other one summer night. Yomawari: Midnight Shadows is this year’s sequel, and it does a lot of the same things Night Alone does while also exploring plenty of concepts that prevent it from feeling like a simple copy-and-paste. It’s also one of the few games that I feel really explored what it could do with a minimalistic approach to both gameplay and story. It does a lot as a horror piece to scare the player with a good ratio of subtle, fear-building, moments and opportunistic jump scares. Last year’s Yomawari: Night Alone is easily one of my favorite games from 2016.