OMORI (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.0.2 Update

OMORI is a 2020 role-playing video game developed and published by indie studio Omocat. The player controls a hikikomori teenage boy named Sunny and his dream world alter-ego Omori. The player explores both the real world and Sunny’s dream world as Omori, either overcoming or suppressing his fears and forgotten secrets. How Sunny and Omori interact depends on choices made by the player, resulting in one of several endings. The game’s turn-based battle system includes unconventional status effects based on characters’ emotions. Prominently portraying concepts such as anxiety, depression, psychological trauma, and suicide, the game features strong psychological horror elements.

GAMEPLAY

Omori’s gameplay is inspired by traditional Japanese role-playing games. The gameplay is split between two settings: the imaginary world of Headspace and the real world. In Headspace, the player controls a party of four characters: Omori, Aubrey, Kel, and Hero. In the real world, the player begins with only Sunny. Each party member possesses unique skills for use both in battle and in overworld traversal. The overworld portion is played from a top-down perspective.

The game features side quests and puzzles for the player to solve, bestowing them with various rewards and skills upon completion. In Headspace, many beneficial weapons and items can be obtained, with some being purchasable using the currency of Clams. In the real world, the effects of items are more limited, and the player uses dollars. Battles are played out in a turn-based format in which each party member performs a move. After attacking, party members can work together to perform “follow-up” attacks, which come from a shared pool of energy that accumulates upon taking damage.

Characters and enemies have Heart, which functions as health points; if damage is taken, it decreases, and if it reaches zero, the character is defeated and turns into toast. The Juice meter is used to perform skills and special abilities that aid in battle (i.e. pass to Omori). Outside of battle, the party can heal and save by encountering a picnic blanket, associated with Omori’s older sister Mari. Unlike most role-playing games, status effects are based on a three-pointed emotion system.

A party member or opponent’s emotion can change throughout a battle, usually due to moves by another party member or enemy. Neutral is the baseline and has no effects; Angry increases attack but lowers defense; Sad increases defense but lowers speed, as well as converting a portion of damage to Heart into damage to Juice, and Happy increases luck and speed but lowers accuracy. Emotions are either strong or weak against each other – Happy beats Angry, Angry beats Sad, and Sad beats Happy. Additionally, higher-intensity variants of each emotion also exist.

PLOT

The titular main character, Omori, awakens in “White Space”, a barren void he has lived in “for as long as [he] can remember”. He enters a door to the vibrant world of “Headspace”, where he meets his friends, Aubrey, Kel, Hero, Basil, and his older sister Mari. They peruse Basil’s photo album, containing pictures of their shared memories, and decide to visit his house. Once they arrive, Kel and Aubrey scuffle, damaging the album. Upon seeing an unfamiliar photo fall from it, Basil panics, and Omori is abruptly teleported back to White Space. He stabs himself with his knife, revealing the previous events to be the dreams of a teenage boy, Sunny, as he wakes up in the middle of the night. The player discovers that Sunny and his mother are moving. He goes downstairs for a midnight snack but is confronted by a nightmarish hallucination. He dispels the illusion by taking deep breaths and returns to bed. Awakening once again in White Space, Omori reunites with Aubrey, Kel, and Hero. They discover that Basil has gone missing and set out to rescue him. The four explore the various regions of Headspace in search of Basil, with Mari assisting along the way. The group is continuously diverted from their search by various situations, leading their memory of Basil to gradually fade away.

Meanwhile, in the real world, it is revealed that Mari committed suicide four years ago, which led to the friend group diverging. Although Kel and Hero managed to recover to varying degrees, Sunny became an estranged shut-in, Aubrey a delinquent, and Basil an anxious recluse. Kel knocks on Sunny’s door in an attempt to reconnect one last time. The player can either ignore Kel or answer the door: if they choose the former, Sunny stays inside for the remaining three days, immersing himself in housework and his dreams. If the latter option is chosen, Sunny and Kel venture outside to find Aubrey and her new friends bullying Basil. The two discover that she has stolen Basil’s real-life photo album, ostensibly to stop him from vandalizing it. After confronting Aubrey, they return the album to Basil, though some photos are missing. As he believes Sunny needs it more, Basil lends the album to him. While eating dinner together, Basil becomes mortified as he learns of Sunny’s impending departure and runs to the bathroom. Sunny finds him in a hallucinatory panic attack but leaves him alone. The next day, Kel and Sunny encounter Aubrey and her gang surrounding Basil at their old hangout spot. After they confront her, Aubrey angrily pushes Basil into a lake. Sunny dives in to rescue him, but both boys are saved from drowning by the arrival of Hero.

On the last day before Sunny’s departure, the others reconcile with Aubrey, discovering she had kept the photos containing Mari from the album. Coming to terms with Mari’s death, Sunny’s friends decide to spend their final night together at Basil’s house, despite him refusing to leave his room. In his sleep, they return to Basil’s now-dilapidated house, where Omori is transported to the more disturbing “Black Space”. Basil appears in different areas, repeatedly attempting to talk to him about something before dying gruesomely each time. In the final room, Omori kills Basil and places himself atop a throne of massive, red hands.

Eventually, Sunny finally confronts the truth about Mari’s death: in an argument before their recital, he accidentally pushes Mari down their staircase, causing her to die. In denial that Sunny did it, Basil helped Frame her death as suicide by hanging her corpse. As they finished, they glanced at Mari’s body and saw an open eye staring back at them, shaping their subsequent hallucinations. While Basil was consumed by guilt and self-loathing, Sunny’s suicidal depression led him to create Headspace and his dream persona Omori to repress his trauma. To hide the truth, Omori reset Headspace every time memories of the incident resurfaced. Sunny then wakes up in the middle of the night, leaving the player with the choice of either confronting Basil or falling back asleep.

ENDINGS

If the player chooses to confront Basil, Sunny enters his room and is cordially greeted. However, Basil quickly loses his temper over Sunny’s absence after Mari’s death, and the two boys enter a delusional state and start fighting. After Basil stabs Sunny’s right eye with his garden shears, both of them pass out. While unconscious, Sunny remembers his childhood memories with his friends and Mari, giving him the strength to face Omori. Refusing to die, Omori defeats Sunny, causing the player to receive a game over the screen.

• If the player opts to continue, Sunny gets up and performs the recital with Mari. Omori then disappears and a hospitalized Sunny wakes up in the real world. He encounters his friends inside Basil’s room, and it is implied that Sunny confesses the truth about Mari’s death. Additionally, if the player watered Basil’s garden daily in Headspace, an after-credits scene will depict Basil waking up to the sight of Sunny in the hospital. The two smile at each other and their hallucinations disappear.
• Should the player choose not to continue, Sunny disappears rather than Omori. After Omori wakes up in White Space and goes out to Headspace, the scene instead cuts to Sunny jumping off the hospital’s balcony, plummeting to his presumed death.

Alternatively, if the player ignores Basil on the final day, Sunny and his friends will wake up to discover that he has committed suicide. Depending on the player’s choice, Sunny can then either kill himself with his knife or move away with his guilt still unabated. This ending also occurs if the player has chosen to remain inside and avoid Kel.