Omori Review

OMORI AND THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

Through blinding shame and guilt, OMORI is a beautiful commentary on the human strength to continue and forgive.

I downloaded OMORI in December last year, directly on release day, and I must admit; before playing, I was pretty certain I was going to be disappointed. There’s just this specifc genre of games that always draw me in no matter what; this weird subculture of abstract and artistic RPGs (role-playing games), almost always made by small teams, which try their hardest everytime to weave together a tale that is just so emotionally deep and profound and just tells us so much about life and the human psyche… and then, the majority of the time, end up being underwhelming. It’s a rare thing to truly connect with a story on a deeply personal level, and I had been searching for a very long time for some kind of media that would give me that connection. My interests were waning, my passion for my hobbies dying down fast, and all I wanted was something, anything, that would spark that passion again. I kept looking for new movies, books, tv shows, and games that looked interesting to me, each time entering a new story praying that this would be the one that would make me bawl my eyes out for hours; that this would be the one that would

fll my thoughts for months on end, that this story would be the one that would stick with me forever and rekindle my love for storytelling anew. And then, completely out of nowhere, OMORI happened to be just that. This article is about the RPG ‘OMORI’, an ambitious frst-time project that took over 6 years to create, a story that has deeply afected me and many others since it’s release, and a lesson about the ‘Downward Spiral’ of guilt many of us fnd ourselves in once in our lives, allowing us to experience it through new eyes and see the many ways it manifests and grows inside us as time progresses, and most importantly, how

we can learn to forgive ourselves and move towards the future. Through this article, I hope to provide a pinpoint review on why the videogame OMORI is so efective, why it is so important and revolutionary in the realm of videogames, and why you should give it a try! Before I begin, I want to talk briefy about spoilers. First and foremost, this review is meant to help share this game and experience with as many people as possible, so this review will mainly avoid any large spoilers, as I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. However, I will be spoiling a specifc reveal that happens around an hour into the game, as without it I feel like I would be overly limited in my analysis and responses

to my three questions. If you are already interested, I suggest you hold of on reading this review and just go and play OMORI! Why is OMORI so efective?

One of the biggest reasons I think OMORI is so efective in telling it’s story is because, through its constant use of symbolism, it manages to express the main character’s perspective and story in an extremely clear level of clarity and emotional

strength.

Throughout OMORI, a large majority of the game is completely non-physical; that is, it’s all in Sunny’s (the main character’s) head. Sunny’s personal ‘Dream World’ is the main setting for this game, and even in the real world we are still constantly haunted by visions of things that aren’t there and representations of our fears and traumas. This circumstance is used to utmost efect to convey Sunny’s perspective on his world through symbolism, in short, the game allows you to perceive Sunny’s feelings in a profoundly strong way through giving them a visual and audible form. You physically battle your phobia of heights, spiders, and drowning, all three shown on screen in disturbing visual detail, accompanied by audio that conveys the unique horror of each of these encounters. While Sunny barely talks throughout the entire game, you get an extremely strong sense of his personality, his feelings towards others, his interests, and much more, all through efectively ‘exploring his mind’ through your journeys through the dream world; each character’s personality, actions and

dialogue showing a diferent part of Sunny’s life and psyche. The many unique features of video games in comparison to other forms of media also play a strong role in heightening your immersion into Sunny’s mind, using the decisions the player has to make in battle to convey diferent approaches Sunny might take to deal with the psychological ‘enemies’ he’s facing, such as strategically using a special skill called ‘Calm Down’ to remove your emotions and regain your stamina. Through

the personifcations of repressed memories, wants, desires, fears and trauma we encounter throughout, OMORI uses the videogame medium to it’s true potential to heighten immersion into Sunny’s viewpoint, through all of our visual, audible, written, and kinesthetic senses. Why is OMORI so important?

In essence, the reason OMORI is so important and revolutionary in the videogame industry, in my opinion, is because it’s such an efective story. My perception of the videogame industry and my tastes as a whole have shifted greatly through the past few years, and one thing that

has started to catch my attention is how storytelling is, in my opinion, not focussed on and/or done well enough in a large majority of games on the market today. There are only a few games

I can name that were made with the sole focus of telling an efective story in mind that actually, sucessfully, pull it of, and I think OMORI is a really important step in this direction. OMORI pours it’s soul into it’s storytelling focus with an amount of passion, thought and vigour that surpasses many stories I’ve ever read in other forms of media, be it novels, poems or movies, and furthermore it uses the medium that is videogames to go beyond what is capable in these other me-

diums; using that added level of complexity given through the player’s own ability to input alongside the visuals, audio and writing to strengthen the immersion and truly put you into Sunny’s shoes. I also often fnd that with videogames, you can almost always feel the creator’s passion for the medium itself while playing, but there is usually something that is lacking; a passionate, emotionally-driven core message. Having a strong purpose and reason to tell your story (the ‘moral’) is extremely important in creating an experience that truly sticks and emotionally efects the player, and I feel like OMORI is the frst game I have played that

has given the ‘moral of the story’ the attention it needs to make the game really shine. With OMORI gaining traction, I really hope that we fnd more budding developers making videogames with a strong and primary focus on storytelling and with their own strong personal message and morals they want to convey, exploring the diferent ways gameplay can be used to further enhance and innovate the ways we tell stories in our current age.

Why should you play OMORI?

Now that we’ve talked about why OMORI is so efective, and why it’s important in the realm of videogames as a whole, I want to talk about why the story itself is important, and why you should give OMORI a try! The best stories can help us view things from a new perspective, whether that be our own circumstances or the circumstances and actions of others, and I believe OMORI has the power to help us, the players, view our own and other people’s respective struggles with guilt and grief in a new light, showing the diferent ways people cope with these feelings and how we can learn to forgive ourselves and move on with our lives. The nature of guilt

as a feeling makes it extremely difcult to reach out about, as the shame for your actions and past can generate extreme anxiety around speaking about the issue, and I found that in my experience OMORI was my frst step towards reconciling with my personal guilt in a much less fear-inducing way. It played a really important role in helping me understand what I was going through, comforting me, making me feel less alone in my situation, and guiding me to realizing that I need to forgive myself for my past. Even for people who might not have gone through this type of ‘Downward Spiral’ of guilt before, OMORI’s lessons still apply to many

other mental health struggles that many of us go through in our daily lives, as well as provide a way to strongly understand and empathise with others who are going through these struggles with guilt and mental health. Finally, and in my opinion most importantly, OMORI can teach you how to deal with guilt at the source so that you don’t have to go through an experience like we see throughout the game. The knowledge of the futility of locking your guilt inside, how guilt can grow into something exponentially more difcult to deal with as time goes on, and the importance of self-forgiveness and making that frst step towards the future makes this game hold an extreme amount of importance and relevance for all audiences, and is why I highly recommend this game to you, the reader! In the months after fnishing OMORI, I’ve been completely foored with it’s impact on me. The emotional moments, scenes and overall story still afect me just as strongly as when I frst played, the innovation and emotional passion behind the game’s message continues to inspire me and push me forward in my storytelling journey, and, most importantly, the lessons around the self-consuming ‘Downward Spiral’ of guilt, the futility and danger of locking shame inside, and the importance of self-forgiveness continue to help me as I make my own steps towards my future. I hope that my article has persuaded you to try ‘OMORI’ out, and if you do, I hope

that you love it as much as I did!

Jack Jordan