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rynlingNextDoor
https://broelbrak.itch.io/nextdoor
NextDoor is a spooky 2D interactive story game based on one of Junji Itō’s short horror manga. It’s free to download or play in your browser, and it takes about ten to fifteen minutes to read.
You play as a college student living in a rundown apartment building. The student is unable to concentrate because of the loud music coming from the apartment above hers, so she finally snaps and goes to complain. The upstairs tenant is an asshole who refuses to turn down his music because his next-door neighbors have never said a word to him. If you can convince his neighbors to complain, the manchild says, perhaps he might listen to what you have to say.
The problem is that the next-door neighbors are decidedly mysterious. They seem to be a group of women, but they’re very quiet, and no one has ever spoken to them. What actually lives in the apartment is sympathetic to the student’s plight, but perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to attract its attention...
Despite its limited scope, the environment design of NextDoor is very nicely done and more than sufficiently creepy. The music is good, and the sound design is better. The character animations are a pleasure to watch, especially when the player gets to see more of what lives next door.
“The Lady Next Door” is from Itō’s collection Mimi’s Tales of Terror (which was finally published in English last October), and it’s a fun take on two classic Japanese urban legends that aren’t widely known. While many American urban legends are cautionary tales, a lot of Japanese urban legends take the form of “here's some weird shit I saw this one time.” Itō transforms the “weird shit I saw” original stories into a cautionary tale, and it’s delightfully cathartic to witness the unnecessarily harsh punishment of the transgressor. Because seriously, fuck that guy.
The adaptation of this manga in NextDoor is interesting in that it configures the college student as the transgressor. By association, you the player are the transgressor as well, and it’s fun to push the college student forward into increasingly bad decisions. She doesn't die, but she definitely sees some weird shit.
There’s one (very mild) jumpscare in the game, and it’s a cameo from what’s actually my favorite Junji Itō manga, Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu. Yon & Mu is exactly what you would expect from a cute autobio pet manga drawn by Junji Itō, and it’s marvelous. (Here’s a link) to a nice and clean PDF of the translated manga on my personal Dropbox. I’ve got viewer tracking turned off for this file, so please feel free to download a copy if you’re interested.
https://broelbrak.itch.io/nextdoor
NextDoor is a spooky 2D interactive story game based on one of Junji Itō’s short horror manga. It’s free to download or play in your browser, and it takes about ten to fifteen minutes to read.
You play as a college student living in a rundown apartment building. The student is unable to concentrate because of the loud music coming from the apartment above hers, so she finally snaps and goes to complain. The upstairs tenant is an asshole who refuses to turn down his music because his next-door neighbors have never said a word to him. If you can convince his neighbors to complain, the manchild says, perhaps he might listen to what you have to say.
The problem is that the next-door neighbors are decidedly mysterious. They seem to be a group of women, but they’re very quiet, and no one has ever spoken to them. What actually lives in the apartment is sympathetic to the student’s plight, but perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to attract its attention...
Despite its limited scope, the environment design of NextDoor is very nicely done and more than sufficiently creepy. The music is good, and the sound design is better. The character animations are a pleasure to watch, especially when the player gets to see more of what lives next door.
“The Lady Next Door” is from Itō’s collection Mimi’s Tales of Terror (which was finally published in English last October), and it’s a fun take on two classic Japanese urban legends that aren’t widely known. While many American urban legends are cautionary tales, a lot of Japanese urban legends take the form of “here's some weird shit I saw this one time.” Itō transforms the “weird shit I saw” original stories into a cautionary tale, and it’s delightfully cathartic to witness the unnecessarily harsh punishment of the transgressor. Because seriously, fuck that guy.
The adaptation of this manga in NextDoor is interesting in that it configures the college student as the transgressor. By association, you the player are the transgressor as well, and it’s fun to push the college student forward into increasingly bad decisions. She doesn't die, but she definitely sees some weird shit.
There’s one (very mild) jumpscare in the game, and it’s a cameo from what’s actually my favorite Junji Itō manga, Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu. Yon & Mu is exactly what you would expect from a cute autobio pet manga drawn by Junji Itō, and it’s marvelous. (Here’s a link) to a nice and clean PDF of the translated manga on my personal Dropbox. I’ve got viewer tracking turned off for this file, so please feel free to download a copy if you’re interested.
