Uncut
Curated by taste and lineage

Find an anomaly and turn back. That is the whole rule, and you already know it. But you are a fish that can only swim one way, so turning back is the hard part.

The rule is the one everybody knows by now, and the store states it in two lines before anything else: if you find an anomaly, turn back; if you do not, keep going. Then it adds the third line, which is the entire game. That is, if a Baspis, who is bad at swimming, can manage it. You are playing a Sacabambaspis, the ancient armoured fish that became a meme for looking permanently startled, and this one cannot steer. It swims in one direction, and your only input is a single mouse click that makes it swim. Timing those clicks is the whole of your control, so the game hands you a rule that requires turning around and then gives you a body that is very bad at turning around. Knowing the answer and being able to act on it come apart, which is a genuinely funny thing to do to a genre where knowing the answer was the entire challenge. A normal clear runs ten to twenty minutes, full completion one to two hours, and somewhere in there is the legendary creature the game is named after. Made by pheniki_games, whose three Steam titles all carry the same name as developer and publisher, with their own website as the contact. There is a free browser version on that site; the Steam release is the paid one, at ¥240. Released July 11, 2024, it is at 100 percent across 47 reviews (47 positive, zero negative), a paid title, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated-content disclosure and Steam's content descriptors completely empty. Two honest notes. It is in Japanese only, and of its 47 reviews only 3 are in English, though a game whose instructions fit in two lines is about as forgiving of that as a Japanese-only game gets. And 47 reviews is a thin sample even when every single one of them is positive, which this pick would rather say than let a perfect score stand unqualified.

Published 2026-08-02

01First, the one feeling

02Who this is for (and who it is not)

For you

  • You have played enough Exit 8-likes to be bored of the corridor and want one that breaks a different joint: the rule is untouched, the body is the problem
  • You want small and self-published: three Steam titles all under the same name as developer and publisher, a personal site as the contact, ¥240
  • You want a number with nothing behind it: 47 reviews, 47 positive, zero negative, content descriptors completely empty, no AI disclosure

Not for you

  • You want length; a normal clear is ten to twenty minutes and full completion is one to two hours, and that is the whole of it
  • You want no language barrier at all; it is Japanese-only, and while the rule itself fits in two lines, the text around it does not translate itself

03The roots of this taste

100% positiveonly 47 reviewsno English support yet — yet almost no one has found it

Hachiban Baspis Buried gem

The rule is the one everybody knows by now, and the store states it in two lines before anything else: if you find an anomaly, turn back; if you do not, keep going. Then it adds the third line, which is the entire game. That is, if a Baspis, who is bad at swimming, can manage it. You are playing a Sacabambaspis, the ancient armoured fish that became a meme for looking permanently startled, and this one cannot steer. It swims in one direction, and your only input is a single mouse click that makes it swim. Timing those clicks is the whole of your control, so the game hands you a rule that requires turning around and then gives you a body that is very bad at turning around. Knowing the answer and being able to act on it come apart, which is a genuinely funny thing to do to a genre where knowing the answer was the entire challenge. A normal clear runs ten to twenty minutes, full completion one to two hours, and somewhere in there is the legendary creature the game is named after. Made by pheniki_games, whose three Steam titles all carry the same name as developer and publisher, with their own website as the contact. There is a free browser version on that site; the Steam release is the paid one, at ¥240. Released July 11, 2024, it is at 100 percent across 47 reviews (47 positive, zero negative per Steam's own review API), a paid title, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated-content disclosure and Steam's content descriptors completely empty. It is in Japanese only, and of its 47 reviews, 3 are in English.

Give it your first pass

The Exit 8 The stated origin

The origin of this taste, and again one the developer named themselves: The Exit 8, made by KOTAKE CREATE and released in November 2023. You walk a looping underground passageway modelled on a Japanese metro station, and the only thing you have to do is notice whether anything is different from the last time you saw it. If something is wrong, turn back. If nothing is wrong, keep going. Its whole difficulty lived in the noticing; once you knew, acting on it was free. Hachiban Baspis keeps the rule word for word and removes exactly that guarantee. The knowing is still on you, but so is the steering, and the fish you have been given cannot steer. It is the same test with the answer sheet intact and the hand shaking.

Give it your first pass

04Make this gem shine

If it speaks to you, check it on Steam and give it your first pass. Your push is what makes a buried gem shine.

See it on Steam

05The bloodline of this taste