A Passing in the Night is an upcoming dream-based surreal horror title developed by .iris ("Dot Iris") and published by PLAYISM.
The game is currently set for release in 2026, but ahead of its official launch I was given the chance during Tokyo Game Show 2026 to speak with the developers to learn a little more about the project.
Here is what they had to say!
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| (Photo provided by PLAYISM) |
Hello, and thank you for taking the time to speak with me! My name is Joonatan (also known as CheerfulJonsku), and I'm one of the founders, writers, and graphics designer of our little gaming site, Netto's Game Room. To start things off, could you tell our readers a little about yourself?
Ans: Hi Joonatan, thank you for having us! We're Eunice and Hiro and we're a team of two working in Japan as .iris ("dot iris"). Eunice is in charge of the story, art, and music, and Hiro is the programmer who also does technical art and 3D design. We are two years into making our first game "A Passing in the Night", a supernatural and psychological narrative-driven, dreamlike adventure game in which you take a timed night walk in a surreal neighbourhood.
A Passing in the Night looks to emphasize the surreal and more psychological horror rather than outright action. What is the main idea behind making it an exploration horror game?
Ans: The initial idea probably came from a desire to slow down in a world of fast-paced storytelling and media. We love action games, but we felt that there's a different, more slow-paced and contemplative angle through which you can enjoy an in-game world. You can see this sensibility in walking simulators, but it can even exist in action games (if you've seen videos by Any Austin on Youtube you'll know what we mean). This urge inspired us to make an adventure game that is a walking simulator but also takes elements from action games, like being in third person or having timed events, to aim for something slightly more reactive and immersive.
There's no combat, inventory system, or even puzzle solving in the classic sense in APITN. We like going on walks and wanted to encapsulate that feeling of wandering freely through intuitive and open-ended gameplay.
Would you want to share with us what the main inspiration sources for the game? When I think of surreal, walking-in-a-dream kind of games, I can’t forget LSD: Dream Emulator for the PlayStation 1. Was that also an inspiration source? Was some of the dreams that developers themselves had an inspiration source?
Ans: LSD: Dream Emulator and the general PlayStation 1 aesthetic as well as liminal spaces is definitely a point of reference, as well as some of the darker free-to-play games of the early Internet era like Yume Nikki; but when developing the look of the game, we studied the grainy texture and visual noise you see on printed media and analog photography. We're also always inspired by our favorite film directors like David Cronenberg, David Lynch, and Andrej Tarkovsky, as well as by our favorite music. And yes, Eunice especially has a lot of strange dreams in general.
It was mentioned on the Steam page that the game will have multiple endings and multiple choices; how deeply will each interaction affect the outcome at the end? And if I am allowed to ask, how many endings are there?
Ans: There are six endings. There is one main choice at the end of your night walk that will always affect the outcome, which is whether or not to give Kai's most precious memory to the demon Bellow. There are some endings that are harder to get that depend on your interactions in certain events. We hope players are able to discover how to achieve these endings themselves, but there are some hints in the game world, as well as a save slot system so that you wouldn't need to start all over if you want to try something different.
Could you tell us a bit more about the main character, Kai? There isn’t currently that much available about him other than that he has a tough choice in front of him.
Ans: Kai is a young person who is lost in life. He feels alienated from other people and is in a dark place emotionally after a traumatic family incident, and he comes to a motel in a suburban town one day just to be alone. At the beginning of the game, he is unable to sleep and decides to go wander outside, where he meets a demon who offers him solace from pain in exchange for his most precious memory. He has always been able to sense spiritual entities, although sometimes it's hard to tell whether what he is seeing is real or psychological. A major theme is about his detachment from reality.
With the story mentioning that you have one hour to decide, does this mean, in-game, an actual full hour only before you get one of the multiple endings?
Ans: There is a clock in the game that progresses with one real-time hour; however, the clock stops during certain events, so the actual time it takes for one playthrough is probably closer to two hours (unless you choose not to do anything, in which case the game will end in about an hour.) But yes, in-game, Kai is given one hour between 3AM and 4AM to make his decision and reach one of the endings. One of the main reasons we put in the time limit is because we wanted to convey the feeling of the inevitable passage of time.
I can imagine it would be quite difficult to balance the exploration and interactions the player can have with the mindset that, presumably, the player will play through the game multiple times for different outcomes. How challenging was this specific aspect for the developers?
Ans: We are designing the game so that hopefully any one playthrough and ending will be sufficiently engaging. You don't need to understand the backstory and see every ending to be able to enjoy a night walk. We do want the choices you make during your walk in interactions and dialogue to be meaningful, so it was a bit of a challenge to control the amount of branching without having the things we need to make grow exponentially. For example, making even a small open world was rather infeasible so we had to limit it. We ended up designing the map like a loop, which was more realistic for us, but it's still difficult to think about what happens to some events if you move clockwise in the loop instead of anticlockwise. Basically, there will be things the player will miss in one playthrough, but that's part of the experience.
If I may ask, is there going to be a reward for the players who take the time to find all the endings in the game?
Ans: Hmm… the endings themselves are the rewards! Maybe we can add a Steam achievement? We can say that there is a “best” ending.
As of right now, what was the most difficult challenge the developers had to face when it came to A Passing in the Night’s development?
Ans: Since it's our first game, it can be difficult to pace ourselves and make progress within a reasonable timeframe. We've learned a lot while making the game and we're definitely more efficient now than we were a year or two ago. The other thing that's been difficult is designing a game in which you can’t run and doesn't have clear goals or a questline and can still be interesting. There are a couple of things we've done to address this, and we hope we've done our part to reduce potential frustration for players.
Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
Ans: "A Passing in the Night" tells a story of darkness and hope through both fully voiced dialogue and nonverbal, atmospheric and symbolic storytelling. We designed the dialogue and the environments to be understated and to have an abstract and surreal element to them, so that they can be interpreted both literally and figuratively, blurring the boundaries between reality and psychological states. With the exception of some store-bought assets of things we have no idea how to design (like cars and traffic lights), all of the visuals and audio in "A Passing in the Night" are original designs that we made by hand with love and care. We really hope you enjoy the game when it's out! Wishlist it on Steam to stay updated!
As a fun last question, if you could live in a dream, where would you want to be or to meet?
Ans: It would be nice to be a child again back in the 2000s when Blockbuster still existed and the Internet was fun…
For more on A Passing in the Night, player are invited check out the Steam Page, and for more exclusive interviews like this, feel free to visit our Interview Page!
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