If you know and love the yandere madness of Saiko no sutoka, Shards Of Solitude should be right up your alley. This odd little horror game from Chilling Designs swaps in a kind of Chinese vampire girl who just won’t get off your back.

As someone who enjoys smaller yandere games like Saiko no sutoka, Love Love School Days and AI2U-With You ‘Til The End, I’m always glad when I randomly stumble across something new in the genre. That’s exactly what happened on April 14 on Steam—the release day of a little game called Shards Of Solitude (Steam page).

What hooked me straight away was the weird character design, which feels very much in the Saiko no sutoka mold. Okay: the professional stalker in Shards Of Solitude is tall, pale blonde and kind of vampiric. Like a Chinese hopping vampire, she’s even got that trademark talisman stuck to her hat. But Miyuki—that’s her name—also has the same sharply split personality as Saiko Chan, and that has a huge effect on the way the game plays.

Love or death

In case "yandere" or Saiko no sutoka doesn’t mean anything to you: games like these are basically always about escaping a girl who’s way too obsessed with you. More often than not, your pursuer is carrying a huge knife and, in the worst case, will slice you to bits—so you run, hide, or, like in Shards Of Solitude, set traps for her.

But first things first: the story, as bare-bones as the genre usually likes it, starts in an abandoned and suitably huge factory, where your alter ego, a ghost hunter, is snooping around for supernatural activity. Once there, he runs into Miyuki, a deeply mysterious girl in a black latex-and-leather outfit.

She doesn’t tell you much about herself, but the notes scattered around from her earlier victims fill in some of the blanks. Going by those, she’s an absolute demon—a hellish woman you need to get away from no matter what. At the start of the game, on the easiest difficulty, there’s barely any sign of your new fan’s demonic side. But depending on how you behave, Miyuki can switch up in an instant.

As long as you do what she says and give her a hug every now and then, things stay calm. She’ll just clomp along behind you, repeating her rules like a weirdo. But grab a weapon or pick up items for building a trap, and Miyuki instantly shows her aggressive, deadly side. The game revolves around escape, a possible ritual, and the mystery of what went down in that factory.

Seven core features for fun cat-and-mouse horror

Shards Of Solitude is a pure single-player game played from the first-person perspective. To keep things entertaining for more than a quick scare, developer Chilling Designs puts seven core features on the table:

• Running and hiding from Miyuki
• "Neutralizing" your pursuer with traps or a weapon to buy yourself time
• Trap and hazard management, because watch out: Miyuki sets traps too
• Searching for keys and codes to escape
• An optional ritual instead of simply making a run for it
• Seven endings, depending on your choices
• Three difficulty levels that shape Miyuki’s behavior at the start and later on

If Steam achievements matter to you, that’s covered too: there are 37 in total to unlock. The developer also promises that no two runs will ever play out the same, which is exactly what a game like this needs. Right now, Shards Of Solitude is only available on PC; whether console versions or a DRM-free release are planned is unknown.