Remember last month when Nine Sols developer Red Candle Games started teasing… something… related to the Metroidvania? That something leaned much more into the studio’s horror origins, and as it turns out has developed into a whole entire ARG. I won’t dive into every last detail of said ARG, you can go down that rabbit hole yourself. However it has led to something interesting: Red Candle Games have hidden an entirely new game within Nine Sols.
To unlock this game within a game isn’t particularly complicated. After making sure you have the game installed, head to the Betas tab in the game’s properties. Here, just type in “shanhaiarchive” and a download will start letting you play what is essentially a completely different, relatively short, first-person horror game. According to the devs themselves, this strange little game tasks you to save someone called Yuuki – the beta branch itself is titled “yuukimindscape.” It’s also worth noting that this appears to be a limited-time event, so if you might want to carve out some time for it.
Also worth noting is that this game-within-a-game may spoil some story elements of Nine Sols, so if this has you so curious that you want to play it even if you haven’t played the original, keep that in mind if you’re particularly spoiler averse. I’ll avoid going into any of that here so that you can experience it all as fresh as possible.
It’s still not particularly clear if this is leading to something else, like a sequel or a spin-off of some kind, but I’m deeply into it. Nine Sols felt like quite the change in tone for Red Candles Games, their first two works Detention and Devotion both sitting in the horror genre, so I’m finding this quite a clever use of their own skills.
In any case, Nine Sols is half off on Steam from now until October 6th as part of the autumn sales, so it’s a good time to get on board the mystery train.
