I'M DEFINITELY IN A BASEMENT

At least Earth has basements. Right? You wake up tied to a chair. The door is locked. In the corner, a camera turns toward you, and two voices — Morrow and Venn — take notes on how you try to get out. Above the door there are tally marks scratched into the wall. A lot of them. Some of them are yours. Dig. For real. Volumetric digging: the earth has real geometry and collision. Carve your own tunnels, dig around obstacles and come back through the passages you made yourself.

Climb with your hands: grab the ledges your digging leaves behind and ascend a shaft of five strata, each stranger than the last. The red thread (赤い糸): if you get lost, hold H and a red thread will lead you to your next objective. A hand-drawn map fills in with everywhere you have been. Something hears you diggingThe Digger is blind. It hears your cuts, your screams and your footsteps, and opens its own tunnels to reach you.

It stays still while you look at it... until you look away. Stone jizō line the galleries. When you look back, they are facing you. There is a konbini open underground, its fluorescent lights buzzing and a vending machine that gives you what you didn't ask for. At five in the afternoon, a loudspeaker tells all good children to go home.…