Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle

Nintendo Switch, PlayStation®4 Ι Genre: Yōkaibusters Game

If you ever watched Ushio & Tora, GeGeGe no Kitaro, and Yo-kai Watch you’ll already surely know what a yōkai is. Since the ancient times; Japanese people used this specific term to determine all the strange phenomena and presences in the physical world. They became so popular that during the centuries common people created an entire cultural environment focused on them.
Actually, there are thousands of opus which mention and explain the yōkai subculture. For example, we can’t miss mentioning classic books of the Heian Period (784-1185) like the Nihon Ryōiki, the Konjaku Monogatarishū, or also the globally renowned Ojoyoshu. Compiled by the Buddhist monk Genshin in 985; this scroll shows a detailed description of the underworld realms in which evil people are judged by the Ten Kings of Hell, suffering their punishment at the claws of Oni.
The Ojoyoshu help the subsequent monks, illustrators, and writers to set out both the Japanese Hell structure, and the beings who live in there included the yōkai.
Many scholars studied about them, and an important contribution has been brought by the anthropologist Tsutomu Ema who has classified them in specific categories:

• Five categories based on their “true form”: human, animal, plant, object, or natural phenomenon.
• Four categories depending on the source of mutation: this-world related, spiritual/mental related, reincarnation/next-world related, or material related.
• Seven categories based on external appearance: human, animal, plant, artifact, structure/building, natural object or phenomenon, and miscellaneous.

Anyway, in more recent times, the person who brings them into the limelight is Shigeru Mizuki. Born in 1922 he was a mangaka and a folklorist famous for creating the manga and anime series GeGeGe no Kitaro; which had a huge impact on the rediscovery of traditional Japanese myths. Nowadays supernatural figures like kappa, tengu, oni, and many other ones are so popular thanks to him infusing modern Japan with good, old unease, fear, and divinity.

Talking about video games instead, there a lot of titles in which they are the absolute co-stars. Onimusha, Ni-Oh, Okami, Shin Megami Tensei, just to name a few digs deeply into the hidden world of Japanese folklore providing a lively excursion in it, and at the same time let you witnessing its ever-expanding influence on global pop-culture.

Even the upcoming Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle for Switch and PS4 will let you fight against hordes of bizarre hungry demons who live on the dreadful Hyakki Island; a place in which – as its name suggests – the spirits of false, corrupted, compulsive, deceitful people live a new kind of cursed existence.
Find your way through procedurally generated dungeons. As a samurai, ninja, sohei, or miko you must be always ready to use your weapons and magical powers. Test your skills and save the humanity from the extinction.

Developed by the Japanese media company Happynet; Haunted Dungeons: Hyakki Castle for Switch and PS4 is both an introduction to the rich imagination of Japan’s yōkai culture and an exciting action-RPG in which many different challenges fiendishly awaits you behind each corner.

Don’t worry if there’s something strange in the neighborhood. You as a proud member of the Yōkaibusters are the only one who can stop the latest paranormal plague…
It’s Yōkai Time!

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