Saiko no Sutoka: Halloween Edition

**Saiko no Sutoka: Halloween Edition**, or **Saiko no Sutoka no shiki**, is a survival **spin-off** of the game Saiko no Sutoka, created by game maker Habupain. It can be downloaded from itch.io and Google Play, and is an upcoming game on Steam.

## Description of plot

You play as Akira Ishida, a ordinary Japanese school student. He wakes up in a forest near Saiko-chan, lying dead with a strangely pounding heart nearby. The goal of Akira is to revive Saiko, fix her and control her hunger until she helps him to steal the key, while not letting Yui kill him.

There are difficulties in game:

* Easy Mode. Saiko's hunger is twice slower, and Yui appears only after interacting with door, allowing player to roam in the forest safely.

* Normal Mode. Recommended by developer. Saiko's hunger is growing normally and Yui is already present in the forest.

* Hard Mode. Yui is present in the forest, and Saiko is already revived, but her hunger is at maximum, so the player has to calm it down before Saiko eats them alive.

## Characters

* Akira Ishida, the protagonist and playable character of this and the original game. He is the one-sided love interest of Saiko-chan, who is obsessed with him to the point of kidnapping and murder.
* Saiko-chan, Akira's stalker. She was killed by Yui and resurrected by Akira as a zombie. In this game, she is a deuteragonist that plays the role of a "dangerous ally." She is necessary for making progress through the game, but if her hunger gets too high, she tries to kill and eat Akira.
* Yui Ichikawa, Akira's crush and Saiko's rival. She is the main antagonist of this game. There isn't much information about her personality in the primary game, but in this spin-off she is a sadistic psychotic murderer who attacks as well as verbally abuses Akira.

## Gameplay

This game is a first-person survival horror. Before the game starts, you are presented with a "menu" of 3 modes. At the moment (alpha version 1.0.2) only three difficulty modes are available - Easy, hard and normal mode. The fourth mode ("Yangire") is still in development.

The overall objective of the game is to get the exit key and leave the forest. The exit key is in Yui Ichikawa's possession, so you have to cooperate with Saiko to get it. Yui, however, will interfere by temporarily killing Saiko as well as trying to kill you.

## Endings

Halloween Edition have only one ending (in version 1.0.2), but more additional endings will be added in a future update.

* **Good Ending**. Akira desperately tries to open the door with the key, but the lock doesn't cooperate. In the meanwhile, the zombie Saiko behind him struggles to restrain Yui, until she throws Saiko back with a powerful elbow blow. Freed, Yui begins to approach Akira, but Saiko clings to her leg. Yui breaks away again, but Akira has already opened the door and is preparing to leave. He turns around and sees Saiko, who asks him to run as fast as possible. Yui looks at Akira, but then, catching his gaze, turns her attention to Saiko, grabs her by the hair and defiantly lifts her in front of him. Saiko asks Akira not to worry and tries to say that everything will be fine, but Yui pushes her hand through the hole in Saiko's body and rips out her heart. Saiko falls to the ground, and Yui lifts her heart above her head, proudly showing it off. Saddened, Akira leaves through the door, and the heartless Saiko dies again.

## Trivia

* Originally, Habupain has made this edition as a **sign** that he IS working on Nightmare mode of the original game.
* The feature in which Saiko could chase the player along the traces of blood, licking it off the ground, was not originally envisioned; Habupain added it at the last moment.
* There are two skins of Saiko in a file of the game: "Clean face", that is used in game, and "Bloody face", which was shown in trailers to this edition but not actually employed.
* Given the randomly generated map of the forest, the door to the cave standing "out of place" and the space behind it, visible in the ending, and comparing them with some of the ImaginationClash videos, it can be assumed that the action of this game takes place in Akira's dream. This gives the events taking place during the game a metaphorical meaning: the heart inserted by Akira into Saiko's chest reflects the first meeting of Saiko and Akira, in which he "breathed life" into a girl who lives in constant stress. However, despite the fact that Akira in the Halloween Edition can take care of Saiko (as far as possible), he is not a professional psychotherapist: his care (body parts) does not make Saiko a full-fledged person, which she perceives as "her fault" (She expresses it while holding hands), and eventually he either turns the girl, obsessed with love, into a bloodthirsty monster, or inevitably leads her to a new "death" when Yui "breaks" her heart. Unfortunately, all this is nothing more than speculation. As the game is updated, and ImaginationClash will post new videos on the game's lore, this information will be supplemented, overwritten, or deleted altogether.