Yandere Virus review: four people yelling at one screen

We were not paid for this review, and the studio did not give us the game.

Think about the loudest machine in the arcade you grew up in. It was not the one with the expert parked at it for an hour. It was the one with four kids crowded around it, elbowing each other, shouting the same thing at the same time. That noise did not come from good design. It came from the people standing next to you.

Yandere Virus seems built to make that noise again.

Underneath, it is tag

The setup is simple. A trip with friends goes wrong, you wake up in an unfamiliar graveyard, and one of your friends has caught the yandere virus. The infected friend chases you, driven by warped affection and obsession. If they catch you, it is over.

Your job is to gather the platonic pumpkins scattered around the graveyard, make the cure, save your friend and get out. You pick things up while being chased. Tag, with errands attached.

Running so you do not get caught and stopping so you can pick something up are constantly at odds. That conflict is the whole game.

Mutant plants sit in the middle of that. They are there for the moment you shake off the infected friend and let your shoulders down. Proximity voice chat is the load-bearing part. Voices fade with distance, so the moment you scatter, you lose information.

Why it gets loud

Alone, the game is thin. You get chased, you pick things up, you craft, you leave. That is it.

With four, it changes. Someone has to collect while someone else pulls the chase, and that plan almost never survives contact. Because voice chat drops off with distance, you end up yelling "where are you" over and over. The noise four kids made around one cabinet is the noise this game makes.

It comes from the subculture side

The game is built on Moka Sphere's SCON Universe IP. Eleven VTubers appear as playable characters, and Steam sells each character's avatar separately. Anime-styled art and lines that are sweet and threatening at once get laid over co-op horror.

The numbers say something. Of those wishlists, the overwhelming share came from outside Korea, and it climbed to fourth in the subculture category at Next Fest. It ships with Korean voice acting and subtitles in a couple dozen languages. This was made for the overseas subculture market, not the domestic one.

Playing it now

The good side is clear. The structure needs no explanation, and a first-timer knows what to do inside one round. Proximity voice chat turns that simplicity into commotion. Controller support is proper and the price is light.

The other side belongs here too. Steam user reviews are mixed, and they split on much the same points. There is little to do alone, the rounds grow familiar fast, and the horror itself is shallow. If you do not know the IP, about half of what the characters offer passes you by.

If you want a frightening game, this is the wrong one. What it is good at is not fear but noise. If you have three people to play with, you get an hour of that arcade evening back. If you do not, wait for the next one.