Sankan Brings Three-Player Horror to a Japanese Mountain Gas Station in 1999

Sankan, an upcoming cooperative horror game from solo developer Dany Rexton at YTKA Games, has been announced for PC. Targeting an early 2027 launch, the game takes an unnerving workplace-horror premise and places it in a remote Japanese mountain gas station during 1999. Up to three players can share the overnight shift, but their work quickly extends far beyond serving customers and keeping the station clean.

The central threat in Sankan is a voice heard inside the player character's head. Each night, it identifies a customer who must be killed. Complying creates another grim responsibility: players must remove the evidence, clean the blood, and bury the body before daybreak. Refusal is not a safe alternative, however. The voice becomes an active threat and begins hunting the person who defies it.

That setup puts Sankan in a particularly uncomfortable space between ritualized obligation and survival horror. The danger is not simply something waiting outside the gas station's lights. It is tied to a command the players receive, forcing a decision that may affect both the immediate shift and what happens later. The game's early material suggests a deliberately moody experience built around isolation, paranoia, and the dread of having to manage consequences rather than merely escape a monster.

A Night Shift With a Deadly Instruction

At its simplest, Sankan gives its players an identifiable job: work through the night at a rural gas station. The setting is important. A mountain location naturally creates distance from help, while a gas station is a familiar and practical public space that can feel dramatically different after dark. Customers arrive, transactions need to be handled, and routine work continues--but the supernatural order imposed by the voice turns those ordinary interactions into a source of suspicion.

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The game's premise hinges on the fact that the voice names a specific customer. That means players are not facing an abstract moral choice detached from the station's daily activity. They are expected to identify and confront someone who has come through the workplace. If the group chooses to carry out the command, the practical tasks afterward become part of the horror: disposing of a body, clearing blood away, and ensuring the station is restored before morning arrives.

There is a meaningful tension in the alternative. Defying the voice may sound like the ethical choice, but Sankan frames it as its own hazardous route. The voice hunts whoever refuses it, turning resistance into an immediate survival problem. Players will therefore need to weigh what they are willing to do against a threat whose rules and limits have not yet been fully revealed.

That structure could make each shift feel like a pressure cooker. Time is likely to matter simply because dawn establishes a hard narrative deadline, even if the exact mechanical limits around that deadline have not been detailed. A task that might be simple in daylight becomes much more fraught in the middle of the night, with a hostile force lurking in the background and other customers potentially still appearing at the station.

Cooperative Horror for Up to Three Players

Sankan supports cooperative play for up to three people. The multiplayer focus is a key part of its identity rather than an optional afterthought, as the game is designed around a group of workers sharing the same shift. Cooperative horror often thrives on imperfect information and divided responsibilities, and Sankan's premise offers plenty of room for both.

One player might focus on the visible demands of the station, another might deal with cleanup, and another may watch for danger or help move through the surrounding area. Even without confirmation of specific roles or systems, the basic scenario makes coordination important. Covering up a violent act before dawn is inherently more complicated when a business still has to appear normal and customers may return.

Just as importantly, a three-player format can heighten the social tension at the heart of the premise. The group must decide whether to obey the voice and, if so, how to deal with the aftermath. If someone refuses, the threat is directed at that person. That creates a scenario where players may need to protect a teammate from an entity unleashed by their decision, or deal with the fallout of conflicting choices.

Communication takes an unusual form in Sankan. There is no voiced dialogue; all speech is presented through subtitles. This applies to the game's conversations rather than meaning that players cannot communicate with one another outside the game. The subtitle-only presentation should contribute to the title's retro-styled atmosphere, placing extra emphasis on text, ambient sound, visual cues, and the unsettling quiet of a late-night workplace.

PS1-Era Styling Supports the 1999 Setting

Sankan uses visuals reminiscent of the original PlayStation era. The low-fidelity aesthetic fits its 1999 setting particularly well, giving the game a period-specific texture without needing to treat the era as simple nostalgia. Jagged models, constrained visual detail, darkness, and stylized environmental design can all make a horror setting feel less stable, especially when players are trying to read distant figures or search a dimly lit forecourt.

The announced trailer establishes a subdued, creepy tone rather than presenting the game as fast-paced action horror. That approach suits the location and premise. A mountain gas station is not a sprawling military facility or a haunted mansion; its power comes from its apparent normality. Pumps, shop shelves, roads, bathrooms, storage areas, and nearby darkness can become threatening when players know something is wrong but do not know when the threat will make itself visible.

Setting the game in 1999 also separates it from the contemporary technology that might otherwise make isolation easier to overcome. The announcement has not outlined specific mechanics connected to the period, so it remains unclear whether the era will influence tools, communication, or story details beyond the atmosphere. Still, the combination of a turn-of-the-millennium setting and PS1-inspired presentation gives Sankan a coherent identity from its first reveal.

Actions Carry Forward Into Later Shifts

One of the most notable details shared about Sankan is that the people players encounter can return during later shifts. The same is true of the things players have done. That suggests the game will remember decisions and make them part of its ongoing structure, rather than treating every night as a fully isolated scenario.

For a horror game centered on an order to kill a customer, persistence matters enormously. If familiar people can come back, players may begin to recognize routines, relationships, or unresolved consequences from previous nights. Likewise, the aftermath of a decision may not remain hidden just because the blood has been cleaned and a body has been buried. The promise that actions return later gives the game's choices a potentially lasting weight.

Rexton has also said that Sankan includes several endings. The exact requirements for reaching those conclusions have not been revealed, but the combination of recurring characters, remembered actions, and the choice to comply with or resist the voice points toward branching outcomes. Players may have reason to replay the game, test different responses, or compare the consequences that emerge from their group's choices.

It is too early to know how extensive those branches will be, whether every decision has a lasting impact, or how co-op partners will influence ending paths. Nevertheless, the stated design direction makes clear that Sankan is aiming for more than a sequence of disconnected scares. Its night shifts appear intended to build a history--one the game will continue to confront players with.

PC Release Planned for Early 2027

Sankan is currently planned for PC in early 2027. No exact release date has been announced, and no console versions have been confirmed. Players interested in following the project can wishlist it on Steam while development continues.

For YTKA Games and Dany Rexton, Sankan stands out through the specificity of its concept. It combines a small-scale, recognizable workplace with a supernatural mandate that makes every customer potentially alarming. Its three-player co-op structure, subtitle-driven dialogue, PS1-era visual direction, persistent consequences, and multiple endings all point toward a horror game interested in what players do after they are given an impossible command.

There are still many open questions about the voice, the nature of the danger, the range of station work, and how its branching story will unfold. But the revealed premise is already clear: the night shift is not about making it to sunrise untouched. In Sankan, survival may depend on what players are prepared to do before the sun comes up--and what follows them into the next shift afterward.