Speedrunners are glitching their way through The Exit 8 in less than a minute 

Over the last few weeks, gamers have been uploading increasingly faster and bizarre runs of walking simulator The Exit 8, surprising and puzzling viewers.  

The Exit 8 is a Japanese indie game where you must escape the seemingly endless Japanese subway passages by successfully spotting anomalies in your surroundings. The rules are simple; you must turn back immediately if you find an anomaly. If there are no anomalies, you can proceed. The unusual game has attracted a bit of a cult following since its release on November 29, and has been quite popular with streamers. 

According to the game’s Steam page, The Exit 8’s estimated playtime is around 15 to 60 minutes but that normally depends on how good you are at spotting anomalies, as some players have been taking over an hour just to spot one infamous anomaly. 

Over the past week or so, players have been shaving seconds off their times. At the time of writing, the top time for beating the game is 01:09, and the record for finding all the anomalies is 08:18 (Speedrun.com). Contenders must start timing themselves from the first frame where the game starts and end when the screen goes white after going up Exit 8’s stairs (or when the “Residents of Underground Passage” trophy pops for “All anomalies” runs). 

The first published attempt of a player speeding their way through seems to be Youtuber ND606’s 01:33 real-time run below (uploaded on December 1), with the game’s developer Kotake Create commenting on X that it was “too fast.” 

In the video, the player seems to spot anomalies extremely quickly before running back. Commenters speculated on the strategy behind speedrunning The Exit 8, commenting that you need to hope for a run with anomalies that are easy to spot at a glance (like fluorescent lights at a strange angle and the fast-moving salaryman) and reset the game if major failures occur (like the tide of blood or power outage).  

In a separate category, players have been performing glitched runs, racking up times of under 1 minute. In response to people’s confusion as to how this is possible, a commenter explained that it is achieved by exploiting the fact that the boundary where the anomaly is generated is different to the loop boundary.  

Game developer Kotake Create has been actively discussing bugs found in the game with players on X, and it seems they fixed the above glitch in Version 1.01. 

The Exit 8 is available on PC (Steam).