Joining a number of other titles that have put themselves into the psychological horror category on Switch, Ikai is at least consistent with many of them in terms of overall quality. Unfortunately, to my mind, that doesn’t come off as a compliment. When you put anything resembling the word “horror” into the description of a game, while you certainly don’t want the game to throw everything at you too quickly, the worst thing that can happen is that you spend quite a lot of time up-front with nary a scare in sight. Instead, for me the opening of Ikai involved quite a bit of wandering, not quite sure where things were, and honestly being a bit bored. Even if you’re not being confronted and chased right away, most titles in the space at least throw you a bone with the music or something that lends to giving everything an ominous feel. Throw in some puzzles to slow you down a bit and there just doesn’t seem to be a sufficient sense of urgency to things either, further throwing a wet blanket on whatever hope of creeping dread and uneasiness there could have been. If you stick with it, things do get more interesting, but without giving some appealing hints at excitement that’s coming soon the road to the scares in this case just feels bland.