Serial Experiments Lain is a cult classic anime from the 90s, ed fondly for its bizarre storytelling and extremely prescient view of the Internet and the future. Now, the series has been revived by a fan game, but the quality is leaving some fans extremely upset.

Serial Experiments Lain is an extremely influential series, despite not being particularly well-known outside of hardcore anime fan circles. The series opens with a high school student committing suicide, only for her classmates to receive an email from her after her death, claiming that she's still alive in "the Wired," what Lain calls the Internet. While most students brush this off as a mean-spirited prank, Lain Iwakura becomes interested in the situation and sets up a PC of her own for the first time, discovering a rabbit hole that leads to many more bizarre mysteries.

Serial Experiments Lain's New Fan Game is Flailing on Steam

The New Game is Garnering Many Negative Reviews

While Serial Experiments Lain has mostly been quiet in recent years, a fan project to create a Lain-inspired game, entitled "//signal.", caught the attention of series head writer Chiaki Konaka, who endorsed the project and recommended it to fans. However, the game's recent release on Steam has been hit with a wave of negative reviews by English-language fans who have been extremely disappointed in the release. The game, which only released on May 18, 2025, has already gained over a dozen negative reviews, without a single positive review to balance things out.

Complaints about the game largely center on the English translation, which is said to be "garbled" and nonsensical. This makes it impossible for players to determine what it is that they need to do, and the game's progression is rather opaque. Other complaints include the NPCs all having TV heads with images of characters on them, rather than full 3D models, overuse of stock images as backgrounds, and the fact that the player can walk through most objects, something that obviously shouldn't be possible. Overall, the game appears to be a buggy mess that's not up to standards.

Serial Experiments Lain Has Had a Game Before

The Series Featured in a PS1 Game in the 90s

Surprisingly for such a niche franchise, this isn't the first time that Serial Experiments Lain has had a video game. The first game, which came out in 1998, was referred to by its creators as "psycho-stretch-ware," likening it more to a visual novel that explores Lain's story from a different perspective. The game centers on gathering information and features little in the way of puzzles or challenges, making it very unusual. The intent was to put players in Lain's shoes, presenting them with info that they would then have to decide what to do with.

While that game is itself a niche work even compared to Serial Experiments Lain, //Signal. could've had the opportunity to reach a wider segment of the fanbase. With reviews like this, though, it seems that Serial Experiments Lain's new game won't be the kind of return that most fans have been hoping for.