I almost missed one of my favourite lines from the game due to this, a friendly ghost in the corner of a library who ponders out loud: “Is a ghost a gas?” It’s almost funny that in this vibrant world, you play as the titular Omori, our silent protagonist whose apathy is borderline creepy. Sprites for chatty characters, objects to smash, and readable notes often get lost in visual translation, looking like background decoration instead of things I could interact with. I missed a lot because of the sheer volume, but I overlooked others because the RPGMaker visuals made them hard to spot. Surprisingly, it’s a beast of a game, and despite finishing a 20-hour playthrough, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface with all the extra side-missions and mysteries. Aside from the main mission of finding your missing friend, Omori is full of little secrets and rewards for exploring every part of its world. The boss characters also provide some laughs, like Sweetheart, an obnoxious pop star who wields a giant heart-shaped mace and cackles like an anime supervillain. Then there’s Life Jam Guy, a riff on the Kool-Aid mascot, whose enthusiasm for health items knows no bounds.

There’s Pluto, the ultra buff planet who loves to flex and teaches you powerful battle abilities. It’s very much like Undertale in this respect, and much of the comedy comes from the kooky characters. When these horror elements reveal their distorted heads it’s pretty scary stuff, but the majority of the time, you’re exploring the dreamy fantastical world full of jokes and puns. Each character is unable to escape the fallout of what happened and soon these fears begin to creep into Omori’s dream world. I’m going to have the skirt around the real-world horrors to avoid spoilers, but an event happened several years ago that ties the group together. Unable to control or face certain events in the real world, Omori conjures up this fantastical headspace to escape, like a safety blanket. Doesn’t sound like much of a horror game, right? There aren’t any scary monsters and existential horrors in the colourful dream world, but that’s the entire point. The majority of the game takes place in this dreamworld where the group is searching for their missing friend, but there are also parts that are played in reality, specifically a quiet suburban neighborhood where all the kids live. Omori follows the childhood antics of a group of kids during the Summer break, but instead of discovering the wonders of the real world, the group is exploring a fantastical dream world conjured by a sleeping boy, the titular Omori.

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