Omori is the long-awaited project from artist Omocat: a clothing designer heavily inspired by Tokyo-esque pop culture. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014, the game was heavily delayed until its release in December of 2020. Now that it is finally out, how is the game?
Omori is a psychological-horror RPG (role-playing game) in the style of Earthbound. It features a cast of colorful characters based on Omocat’s tumblr art and music by English musician bo en. Like the 2004 cult-classic Yume Nikki, Omori’s gameplay takes place primarily within dream worlds and switches to gameplay in the real world when you wake up.
The game features a turn-based battle system based on three primary emotions: anger, sadness, and happiness. Each emotion will affect stats like strength, defense, and speed. The game gives you different options for weakening your enemies with emotions or buffing up your allies with emotions.
During the battles, you’ll get a taste of the best part of this game: the art. During battle, Omori and his friends each have beautifully expressive portraits that change depending on the direction of the battle. This is complemented by the variety of enemies in the game, including: a rat scientist, a living planet, a tape recorder, and a literal loan shark; each of the many enemies in the game has a dynamic sprite of their own.
As a whole, Omori feels like a game designed by an artist. The childlike innocence of the dream areas, the monsters in the horror areas, and the mundane real world segments, all feel distinct but nevertheless unified by a unique artstyle and character designs that convey so much personality.
While Omori’s aesthetic and gameplay qualities are fantastic, the game has several irritating flaws. The most glaring issue for me was the pacing; the dream world segments and the real world segments don’t transition into each other all that well. There were times when I ran into a dramatic story revelation in the real world, and a few moments afterwards, the game would make a jarring cut back to the wacky nonsense of the dream world.
Along with the pacing issues, I was bothered by the game’s flat attempts at humor. While we do get some funny conversations amongst the main cast (the interactions between Aubrey and Kel stand out in particular), the majority of “humor” comes from the wacky nonsensical, nature of the dream world. While it has its charm at first, the zany factor starts to become irritating after the nth anthropomorphic food item you’ll encounter.
Finally, I want to give my thoughts on the story. Similar to Silent Hill 2 and Undertale, I predict the story of Omori will be the subject of hundreds of hours of discussion and analysis in the future. I won’t go over any major endgame spoilers, but if you’re intending to go into the game completely blind (which is arguably the best way to play), I recommend you skip the rest of this review and purchase the game immediately.
At the surface level, Omori is the story of a young boy named Sunny (the character you play as) going through the trauma of losing his older sister—a trauma that has caused his friendships and social life to deteriorate.
In a reduced mental state, he creates a dream world filled with exaggerated, ideal versions of his friends (Hero, Kel, Aubrey, and Basil) as well as his late sister. Yet even in his dream world, a mysterious creature haunts Sunny’s psyche and causes him to play out dark fantasies of death and isolation.
At the start of the game, this creature takes away Sunny’s friend Basil, setting up a quest to find Basil in the dream world. Meanwhile in the real world, the actual Basil seems to be suffering from a similar mental trauma as Sunny. As the game progresses, the mystery of why Sunny and Basil are unable to cope with their grief is unraveled.
On a deeper level, Omori is about depression, self-hatred, and the dangers of shutting out the world. As I played through the dream sequences, I noticed many parallels to the story unfolding in the real world. In the real world segments, hallucinations would sometimes appear, giving a reminder of Sunny’s weak grasp on reality.
Themes of guilt and depression pervade the game, but there’s also the theme of friendship. The photo album unlocked midway through the game showcases the happiest moments of the characters’ childhoods spent together and ultimately provides the game with some heartwarming moments.
The last third of the game hits you with twist upon twist. All of this leads up to one of the most emotional final boss fights in recent memory.
Omori is by no means perfect. It comes short in many respects compared to other, more-polished, RPGs in recent years.
However, Omori gives a rare experience you rarely see in games—one that’s fully sincere and reflective. Unlike other horror games, Omori doesn’t try to get you with cheap shock value or jump scares.
You can fault the game for being slow. You can fault the game for being unpolished. But you can’t fault the game for being insincere.
Right now, Omori is still a relatively hidden gem, but it’s starting to gain a cult following. In the following years, a lot of weirdos will definitely start calling this their favorite game.
Like other small indie games, Omori has minimal marketing and is only getting popular through word of mouth, and I’m glad it’s starting to get the recognition it deserves. If you’re patient with story-driven games and occasionally slow-paced gameplay, I can definitely recommend this hidden gem of a game.
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