If you wish Ghostwire: Tokyo was an actual horror game, try the demo for Chiyo

The Xmas season approaches, but for some of us, Halloween never ends. I've just finished (well, reached a grisly end within) the demo for Chiyo, a first-person horror game from Nimbus Games, set in Edo era Japan, in which you are a plucky young mystic sent by the Tokugawa Shogunate's Magical Arcane Division to investigate and cleanse a spooky abandoned mansion on the coast.

Much like the protagonist of fellow Japan-set exor-simulator Ghostwire: Tokyo, you have a brace of occult, gesture-based powers with which to explore and, hopefully, vanquish any lurking spirits, but so far, the only ones I've gotten access to are a funky finger torch, the ability to unseal cursed doors, and the ability to see glowing puzzle props through surfaces. I very much do not feel like an Edo era John Constantine. I don't even feel like an Edo era Scooby Doo. I mean, at least he was good at running away: the titular Chiyo waddles about like she's worried her trousers are about to fall down.

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