Board 8 > Playing through Omori blind. Spoilers as I go

(+) Yeah! (+)

Well, you know, blind-ish. I saw a few turns of combat and heard people recommend it. My impressions going in are that the game has a cool art style and wacky music. It's supposed to be very sad. The second O in the logo looks like a noose and when you boot up the game it warns you that it contains suicide, depression, and anxiety. It's kind of cool that your characters' starting HP is in the mid 2 digits, the numbers give me kind of a SMRPG vibe. And the mood system is neat. I have heard (probably not a spoiler but just being extra cautious) there are multiple endings. (maybe neither confirm nor deny that unless it's really not a spoiler)

Booting up the game now and I like the detuned piano and black and white pencil art on the menu. This game feels like it will make me cry lol

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I woke up in White Space, where I have apparently lived as long as I can remember. It is literally a plain white background. There is a cat, a door to nowhere, a laptop, a suspiciously noose-like lightbulb, and a sketchbook. I read the sketchbook and a door to nowhere. Interestingly nothing does anything when you inspect it. Your options on the laptop are "look at your journal" (which alternately says "i visited my friends, everything is fine" and "i hung out in white space, everything is fine") or "stare at the screen." Your option when you select the door is "do nothing." Your cat always says "waiting for something to happen?" You walk too far in one direction or another and these ghostly hands try to drag you back unless you outrun them, then white space loops infinitely.

I read the sketchbook and a sound happened. I looked around for an embarrassingly long time to find a knife. Then the door to nowhere let me open it? Cool.

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Tag

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Game is good

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Cool, the door goes to your friends' house. Their names are AUBREY, HERO, and KEL. KEL and AUBREY fight a lot and HERO rolls his eyes at them. I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be no older than middle school, which makes the content warning in the beginning extra disturbing. They are all very cute.

They have a pet snake that also says "waiting for something to happen?" There is a hole in the floor and everything in here is all rainbow-y. Also you're black and white, but your friends are in color. I feel like this says something about your character in comparison to all of them

There's a TV playing a movie with 4 boys walking along railroad tracks. I feel like this is a reference to Pokemon RBY but idk.

Now we're gonna go have a picnic with our friends MARI and BASIL. On my way out of the house the snake gives me 50 bucks.

The game points me to the south so naturally I go north. There's a beach with a long pier. There's a shadowy figure on top of the screen that vanishes as soon as it comes into frame. I tried to go into the water after it but the game says "you're afraid of drowning." To the west there is a spider web you can't cross because "you're afraid of spiders." To the right is a ladder you can't climb because "you're afraid of heights." That's cute.

So I went south to the playground. Had a picnic with MARI and BASIL. Looked through a photo album. They took a bunch of photos of themselves making flower crowns. Tried to go to BASIL's house because he wanted to show us his plants but then we got sidetracked by a game of hide and seek, which is a device the game used to introduce me to 50 characters I will not remember. Then we regroup and realize we can't find BASIL! Uh oh.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

Game is good

That's what I've heard! I picked it up because y'all were very positive about it and my tastes align very well with B8's on this sort of thing.

Turns out one of the trees was actually this mean guy named BOSS in disguise. The playground has been designated a "no BOSS zone" because he apparently caused big problems last time we all played hide and seek. He takes offense to us playing h&s without him and so he fights us.

I didn't mention it before but the weapons my party is using are a stuffed animal, a rubber ball, a spatula, and a KNIFE. Also, OMORI cannot dequip the knife. I wonder if this incongruity is eventually going to be addressed. The fight against BOSS is pretty easy; I made him sad and then attacked over and over again. He did nothing until the 2nd or 3rd time I knifed him, then he said "hey that one hurt" (you know, that one specific knife attack was the painful one) and body slammed everyone to death (except for OMORI who held on with 1 HP and the game's sound effects got all cool and stuff [also he says "why are you still moving" which is pretty metal]). I stab him again.

BOSS lets BASIL go and BASIL says "I know it must be sad to see everyone else having fun without you, but you can't ruin their fun just because." Then BASIL takes down the poster. And no one seems hurt at all. So apparently combat isn't to be taken at face value

It looks like we only have 4 ability slots. I wonder if this is a Pokemon thing where you have to choose 4 moves, or if there will be a bunch of characters (doubt it), or if the move list scrolls, or if there are only 4 moves to learn. And attacks do Juice damage as well. Crazy. I like that emotions are status effects. It seems thematically appropriate for the game. I'm sure I'll know what they do soon enough.

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NeatoAnAccount posted...

There's a TV playing a movie with 4 boys walking along railroad tracks. I feel like this is a reference to Pokemon RBY but idk.

Oh sweetie

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NeatoAnAccount posted...

Then BASIL takes down the poster. And no one seems hurt at all. So apparently combat isn't to be taken at face value

uh the poster that BASIL takes down says "no BOSS zone" btw, just realized that was unclear

Everyone else says "are you sure it's fine to remove the no BOSS zone poster" and BASIL was like "yep, BOSS was very careful not to hurt me in that fight" and BOSS gets all embarrassed and sulks and goes back to hiding behind his tree because he is an adorable large child. So now we're going to BASIL's house like the original plan was.

But first I talk to a couple of the random monsters around here. Two of them are laying in the grass and so we join them. We look at the stars for a bit since they're visible during the day and all, and that apparently teaches OMORI the skill OBSERVE. OMORI now has 3 skills, but apparently only 1 slot open in his skill menu. Then this one girl says she wants to give flowers to someone who is only interested in puzzles, so she asks us to find a FLOWER PUZZLE. I want to go back to the beach and make sand castles, because I think I'll get another ability, but I can't so I'll just go to BASIL's house as was the plan.

Well, after being stopped by the mailbox. A mysterious figure opens the mailbox flap and calls out to us. Turns out a guy in there wants to sell us stuff. I buy 3 candies and 2 apple juices and leave.

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masterplum posted...

Oh sweetie

I said idk! What more do you want from me!

Although actually now that I'm thinking about it I think it's a reference to, uh, Stand By Me or something?

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That's the one.

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TheArkOfTurus posted...

That's the one.

sweet

The path to BASIL's house is very pretty. There are flowers and bird sounds. The bird sounds in particular were really surprising. They include this one bird that I hear all the time in real life but never in stock bird sound effects. Listening closer there are lots of individually-identifiable bird calls that do not sound like stock bird effects. I bet the sound designer took a bunch of really regional birds and put them together to create exactly this effect. Big fan.

I was googling the song that plays in the forest to BASIL's house and I got unspecifically spoiled that something bad is about to happen in the next hour or two of playtime (someone used the phrase "reality crashing down" and someone else used the phrase "took a turn"). Glad I didn't learn anything specific! I should have predicted that I shouldn't search for anything related to this game until I'm done lol

There's this plant thingy stomping around to the west. BASIL says "please stop stomping the flowers." One of the party members says "what is that thing" and someone says "it's a SPROUT MOLE, they get dangerous when they're lost." And then it attacks us because it doesn't like the way we're looking at it or something. Another fight!

Oh good we're learning about emotions. The SPROUT MOLE is ANGRY. That gives it high attack and low defense. I wonder if you can help the LOST SPROUT MOLE get back home, rather than beating it up. But no, we just attack it until it dies. The SPROUT MOLE disappears and BASIL celebrates that the flowers are unharmed.

So did this one actually die? Did we actually kill something with our spatula, bouncy ball, and KNIFE? Who knows? We have more on-the-nose comparisons between flowers and characters to get through.

Roses are HERO because they have lots of colors and HERO is good at lots of things. Gladioluses or "sword flowers" represent strength of character and honesty, so they're AUBREY.

OK cool so now there's another SPROUT MOLE fight. This one is HAPPY, which increases your crit rate and decreases your accuracy. I made him angry and then killed him.

We also learn that there's apparently an RPS system. HAPPY>ANGRY>SAD>HAPPY. I also learned why I was doing Juice damage to BOSS in the beginning. I made him sad because I thought I'd decrease his attack. Turns out it didn't. Whoops! Lesson learned.

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So we come across a patch of cactus. BASIL says they remind him of KEL. "Is it because... he's a prick?" Yes, Aubrey, that too, but mostly because he is resilient and able to survive in impossible situations. KEL has literally never seen a cactus. This is weird, right? Like, I feel like you would recognize a cactus your first time seeing it in person. Maybe it's just me being a dumb American but cacti and deserts are inexorably linked in my mind. Also I would expect that a forest is not an appropriate environment for a cactus since it will die of overwatering, rotting its roots.

OMORI is white tulips. Plain, simple, and bulbous. No wonder we're depressed if this is what our friend thinks of us lol

"Hey look, this SPROUT MOLE is sad!"

cool so since it's not damaging the flowers can we leave it alone?

"Nope! Let's ~*~put it out of its misery~*~"

So now everyone's at level 2 and HERO learned MASSAGE which removes an emotion from someone. Continuing south we get to a tunnel in between some trees with a giant SPROUT blocking the way. We do a couple rounds of combat then HERO has us leave and come back saying "I need to teach y'all about teamwork."

We reenter the fight with full health and now there's a meter underneath the boss. HERO explains that this is our ENERGY meter. Each character, after attacking, had 3 speech bubbles pop up. These speech bubbles represent FOLLOW-UPS we can spend ENERGY to do. Apparently we gain ENERGY whenever we're damaged. I'm not quite sure what most of the FOLLOW-UPS do (they include things like tripping the enemy, which makes sense, and calling out to your partner, which I don't yet understand [you don't need to explain it i'm sure i'll understand in due time <3]) but when you get 10 ENERGY you can unleash a massive super move with a sick animation that does a million damage.

We won! Everyone got to level 3. OMORI learned STAB (you know, with his knife) and now we're going into the tunnel.

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Here is speculation about the thing I put in spoiler tags a little while ago. I think BASIL's aggressively cute cheerfulness is being set up for some tragic irony. It's a pretty common device to give a character with an awful home life a sunny disposition. I don't think we'll witness abuse when we get to his house; his friends have apparently been to his house lots of times so if that's happening it's under wraps. We might walk in on a suicide at his place. A suicide content warning is the first screen of the game. Or he might die; suicide would be the most ironic but his death would be tragic regardless of cause. Perhaps the house itself is spooky in some way. Or like his parents are hoarders, but they hoard *horror game* stuff like weeping souls in jars and furniture that bleeds. Or they're alcoholics. You know, a problem you're not gonna *really* notice as a kid unless your parents point it out.

I know I should go to BASIL's house but I'm reading the combat guide. This seems like a really fun battle system. It feels very Pokemon-like to me, with all the focus on turn order and stat increases and decreases, and the way the emotions have a fire->grass->water->fire relationship. I like the followups, the general symmetry is kind of neat.

RIGHT! BASIL's house. He lives in a shoe. That's cute. We go up to his front yard and he walks ahead of us. He takes a photo of everyone, which comes out blurry but that gives it character. He keeps talking about how cute we look, which is weird for a preteen boy to say about 4 mixed-gender kids his own age, even though it *is* true. There's a thing where KEL and AUBREY get in a big ol' pushing fight over wanting to see a photo (I guess they can't both look at it when they have to occupy adjacent tiles on a 2d grid) and knock BASIL over, causing him to drop his photo album. Fortunately none of the pictures got damaged, so we go inside.

Oh right, he doesn't live with his parents. And his house is a normal house with a bunch of potted plants everywhere. So now we're putting back the photos that got dropped. We're doing this from memory. Because "OMORI has a really good memory." Oh right, the story is actually things like "Putting the flower crown on BASIL" and "BASIL with the flower crown reading to OMORI" so it's pretty obvious what order that happens in lol

We finished putting the photos back in order and AUBREY and KEL apologize to BASIL for knocking him over. Then BASIL notices another photo behind him. He says he doesn't recognize the photo but it seems somehow familiar. A long, spidery web of shadows grows beneath him. His eyes get red and the text grows distorted and he says "No..... MARI?" There is some static, and a door closes, and then we're back in the White Space, where the soundtrack has been replaced by a heartbeat.

MUY INTERESANTE

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In the White Space, I go check the sketchbook. It hits different once you recognize the things inside. It's pretty impressive, honestly. Draw a hopscotch board, rotate it 20 degrees, add an eye to one square, blacken another, and now it's spooky. And it works. I wonder what's wrong with us. We like black and red. One of our bathroom wall tiles is *definitely* watching us take a bath. Cat waiter is taking care of us when we're sick; there are arms reaching up the bedspread. The last page has what appears to be a ghost shaped like one of those black hooded grim reaper costumes where the hood is actually a giant eye. I keep seeing this thing that looks like an X with circles on the corners; I don't know if it represents some object or if it's just a form we're fixated on.

I just noticed I can select STAB from the menu. It's in red letters. It's the first option. That is spooky. I don't think I will until I'm forced into it, thank you.

I talk to the cat. It says "Meow. (Not much to do around here, huh?)" I notice there's no door.

I look around. I check the light. I walk in circles around the White Space in all directions. I check the sketchbook again. I stare at my Laptop. I read every word of my journal. There's no meaning in any of it. There's nothing left to do.

I talk to the cat again. He says "Meow (...Or is there?) Meow (Are you looking for a way out?") Meow (There is one, but....) Meow ("Not much to do around here, is there?)"

The only remaining option is STAB. I prepare myself to STAB the cat, but it turns out you can only STAB yourself. I watch as I pull out the knife, hesitate a little, and plunge it into my stomach. I fall to my knees and die.

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lol I just realized you don't need a play-by-play of every stage direction, because you've played it. They are kind of fun to write but probably not to read. Also they are limiting. Like, I noticed a lot of drawings of steaks. That doesn't fit with the overall tone so I left it out. Turns out those are important!

That sketchbook raises lots of other questions too. I'm wondering if the pyramids are important or the 1235 is important or the blood on the playground slide is important. There is a black cat raining blood on a bunch of white cats, also the black cat is the sun. Why? What's with the cake and the eyeballs? Kudos to whoever drew that sketchbook. It really recontextualizes the events that just happened.

I just ate the well-done steak. It sure was well done! I followed the floating arms in the sky (kind of sucks that houses get floating arms in them at night, but they're useful sometimes). Turns out it's SUNNY's favorite food. Isn't it interesting that KEL is friends with 2 STEAK-loving scaredy-cats who can't dequip their STEAK KNIVEs? I'm sure that doesn't mean anything.

I'm pretty sure I know exactly where this is going, it's actually kind of a genre unto itself. I wouldn't be surprised if it has a name. It's a great way to get a story with horror and tragedy and you can do it a million different ways. So don't hover unless you want to read exactly where I think this is going.

The overall "Earthboundness" is because the game takes place inside the consciousness of a dying child, who is an unreliable narrator.

In the real world, Sunny is an elementary-school aged child who's about to move to a new city. He's been shutting himself away in his room recently and his friend Kel has been calling him to hang out for months.

Sunny microwaved a raw steak for 30 seconds, saw it was brown on the outside, ate it, and died. He was a very young child with a very active imagination, which explains the magically shrinking staircase, and the fact that calming down heals your injuries. I wouldn't be surprised if he actually saw the floating arms you follow to cook the steak. I also wouldn't be surprised if you could put the steak in the oven to avoid death. But he's going to be haunted by his mommy's warnings that he'll regret it if he doesn't make more memories with Kel while he can. But tragically he had already missed his last opportunity.

Earthboundville represents what's happening inside Sunny's body as he's dying, and Omori represents Sunny's concept of himself. He's in really really bad shape, which is why he's all monochromatic and everything else is all colorful. It actually makes sense that 2 people would fight to be the first to see the photo, because what if you're too late? I don't know what the Sprout Moles are but I'm pretty sure killing the big one (which likely represents some body part) was a huge mistake. I'm pretty sure the party members are different physiological processes, which is why they specialize in different emotions (but also Kel can make Omori sad and that's beautiful). I think Basil is supposed to be keeping Sunny alive at all costs. He defuses tense situations and keeps plants alive so he's good at, uh, fine motor skills

The game seems to suggest that Sunny has some kind of link between steak knives and violence, and his mind voluntarily turned itself off once it couldn't access its memories anymore.

But yeah I got sick and threw up and went to bed. Someone was knocking and I didn't answer. I hope that's not a problem!

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NeatoAnAccount posted...

Someone was knocking and I didn't answer. I hope that's not a problem!

It isn't, but I recommend answering if it happens again.

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It's interesting reading your speculations on the story so far.

What are some examples of other games in the same genre as what you're expecting from Omori? I think the game does have a definite "lineage" that's easy to see, partially from Earthbound-influenced games like you've said (it reminds me of both Undertale and Lisa at different points,) and also older indie games like Yumi Nikki.

I would definitely second the recommendation that you answer the door.

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tag

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TheArkOfTurus posted...

It isn't, but I recommend answering if it happens again.

Yeah I definitely will. Honestly don't know why I didn't, what was I expecting? I think I just wanted to see if defying the game was good since listening to it made me puke after eating raw steak

Evillordexdeath posted...

It's interesting reading your speculations on the story so far.

What are some examples of other games in the same genre as what you're expecting from Omori? I think the game does have a definite "lineage" that's easy to see, partially from Earthbound-influenced games like you've said (it reminds me of both Undertale and Lisa at different points,) and also older indie games like Yumi Nikki.

I would definitely second the recommendation that you answer the door.

It's cool how it does a lot of the same things as Undertale and Lisa. The spooky things you see out of the corner of your eye and the different-tempo music and everything. I love how Earthbound-likes have an actual vocabulary of techniques now.

Other games that have the same general plot arc I'm predicting:

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass I don't even remember if this is a twist or the core conceit of the game. I mean, it's kind of in the title. It's another RPG Maker game that is really really similar in a lot of ways. I mean, really REALLY similar. In a LOT of ways. I didn't really love the actual gameplay, so I watched it on YouTube instead of finishing it, but it's got great art and music and lots of feelings. The main character's whole thing is empathy. There's kind of a Persona-style switching thing where your stats get bonuses and you get certain abilities for being a vampire vs a sunflower or whatever. And also your moves have cooldown timers, which is interesting.

One of the stories in What Remains of Edith Finch , which is an interesting series of short walking sims about a family whose members are cursed to die young. It's told from the perspective of a small child who gets sent to bed without dinner, eats poisonous things (toothpaste and mistletoe), hallucinates, and dies. very curse. much supernatural. Totally different tone but it's still a cool story.


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It's not just video games that have that structure either. It probably came from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, an 1890 story about a guy getting hanged. It also showed up in The Black Swan (movie) iirc.

lol i'm in the space junkyard i had a whole thing written up it's gone now.

So we got a map of headspace (HMMMMMMMMMM). Also got the list of keyboard keys we need to check out. I got A and B but irritatingly not C, so I couldn't get D in the junkyard, so I'll need to go back once I can get to the specific pinwheel they want me to.

looking for the special mixtape, feeling like we're kind of getting sidetracked looking for basil, kinda feeling like basil is way too important for picnics and stuff but whatever

Saw TVGirl. This game is pretty good at signposting its secrets. Got 2 of the 3 items from the list so I think we're probably about 2/3 of the way through the junkyard.

Space pirates are cool, love the name "Captain Space Bo I Mean Space Boyfriend"

Love the Pluto aka 9th planet missing thing. Kind of makes me wonder if this is set a few years in the past.

Honestly not a fan of the different party leader mechanic. If a vine's in the way use Omori. If it's a block use Aubrey. If a character says "hey use me" then use them. Seems like it could be deleted.

Actually we're at the special mixtape now. We just chased Rosa out of the junkyard. She's not responding to us and I think it's got something to do with the massive 404-shaped formation of, uh, electronics she's sitting in. Past the DO NOT CROSS line. Guess I gotta cross that line lol

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Agreed on the party leader thing feeling arbitrary. The swapout photos are nice, though.

Just finished this game recently myself, looking forward to seeing someone else's reactions to it.

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I agree with you on the photos. They are very cute :D

Lol the boss fight against the 404 window was hilarious. Kinda wish it was harder (it did 1 attack) but still. It's insane that we're still in the prologue. We've killed ourselves, exhaustively searched an entire forest called The Vast Forest for our friend, and gotten up the courage necessary to climb a ladder in that order. I'm currently level 10 (I got lost) and we have learned like 4 moves apiece. And we're still not in chapter 1. This game is truly something.

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uh, it was a download window, not a 404 window. sorry for being dumb!

I'm starting to wonder if the whole game is the Prologue. Talk Like A Pirate Day must be different on Outerworld.

I delivered the mixtape to Space Boyfriend. Or should I say... SPACE EX-BOYFRIEND? I love this exchange, Space Boyfriend is such a cute character. I am now more confident in the stuff in spoiler tags lol.

That boss was fun too. I love the way he gets all mad the way the Space Pirates said he would. It's cool that he gets FURIOUS after getting enraged. I basically made everyone happy and then killed the crap out of him. I like that he makes your friends weak to his attacks. I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff with the emotion system.

The battle system is great. Love that each turn starts and ends with a support character. I also like all the ways your support characters can be situational damage dealers and your damage dealers can be situational support characters. Love that anyone can give any emotion to anyone at any time. Love the effect that plays when you're at low HP (especially because, well, you know). I love the choice to only have one type of damage (unless you count emotions). This number of stats was perfect. I wish I knew when dealing Juice damage was good. Energy mechanic is great. Followups were surprisingly easy to learn.


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NeatoAnAccount posted...

I wish I knew when dealing Juice damage was good.

Making the enemy sad was my strategy most of the game, and I still couldn't tell you if/when it was ever good (with one exception.)

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hey you know what i just realized mement OMORI

Went south, following a ghost now. We see a cut-in-half watermelon and a voice says "Watermelons... are my favorite part of summer." Interesting.

Also the game tells you "hey there's a watermelon up here" and as soon as the game confirms you are going to go get it (like seriously the event triggers on a square you must walk on to get to the watermelon) the ghost walks away. The ghost led me to a barn that's glowing red like the window in Sunny's house.

Where is the rest of my party? Why is everything all black and white and low-res? Why is all the sheet music scribbled out? (actually I have a guess). It's that hooded form again. Maybe I shouldn't have done that? He grabs me and I see Basil again. Teleporting me back to White Space. So now if I want to get out of White Space I have to do something. And my ability to leave White Space seems to be a finite resource, dependent on the number of Hangman tiles I've collected. HMMMM

Oh no, I have to STAB myself again. And when I do, I see a bunch of photographs fluttering away in the wind. I have a guess as to why I see this and I don't like it. I wake up as SUNNY again.

Whoa y'all are right about answering the door, there's a whole world out there. Also Sunny and Kel are older than I thought. And it's cool just how much stuff from Earthboundville exists here too. Like Hector and the pet rocks and Spaceboy and Princess. And Hero's love of cooking.

Wow there's an SNES here that is described as "brand new" and "shiny and sleek." This game takes place in the early 90's, good to know.

The Space Invaders game feels pretty thematically appropriate. You can do whatever you want to the buildings between you and the hearts as long as the buildings still exist and your ship is fine

Kel's dog has the same name as his pet rock.

We go to the park and these kids are bullying Basil. They're apparently friends with Aubrey, who we haven't seen in years, but has gotten meaner. The high damage and baseball theme make sense now. And the game acknowledged that I have a fucking knife! Battle UI is cool. Energy isn't there, which makes sense.

Love the people you fight on the way to Aubrey lol. And fighting in a fucking church, while all the church people judge her and talk about how she's all out of control after her dad left. She runs out of the church and runs to her dirty run-down home to throw her photo album away, so we dig it out of the trash.

We deliver it to Basil's house. We go to his grandma's room and Basil gives us the photo album. Hmm, talking about wanting to go back to the way things used to be and giving away your most valuable possessions? I wonder what's being foreshadowed there.

We have dinner. I love that Kel's clearly in the middle of a growth spurt with how much he's talking about his height and how big his appetite is lol

Basil didn't like hearing that Sunny's moving soon. I imagine giving the photo album to someone who is about to be far away was not part of the plan. Poor Basil. We go to the bathroom to check on him and he's standing on top of that big shadow like the one that appeared under him the first time we got teleported back into White Space

whoa basil said "you can see it too, right? something behind you" so i turn around and look behind me but i'm facing the door so when i turn around and check it OPENS THE FucKING DOOR and then basil says "no please don't leave me not again" and he looks like something horrible is about to happen and i open the door and walk out and can't go back in, god dammit

then it's time for kel and i to leave so we try to say goodbye to basil who is still in the bathroom but when we call there's no answer

fuck i do not like what is happening one bit

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So I walk back home and now my house is crazytown? I may be way off about the direction this is taking. oh wait no i just remembered, it's night right now and sunny is afraid of the dark so this is more unreliable narrator stuff

Actually when you talk to HAPPY and BROWS and BANGS they disappear. I suspect this phenomenon is related. I'll stop trying to talk to those now and just enjoy them for what they are <3

I love how the knife is highlighted here. Sure enough, you can't do anything until you grab the knife to cut down the cobwebs. Actually I remember some edgy kids who carried pocketknives even though they never used them. Steak knives are several steps up from that but still.

I love the fight where we fight the SOMETHING in the dark and then the house goes back to normal once we focus. "There's a lot going on right now, isn't there?" Yeah you're right.

So I went to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror and there was some sound. I don't know why! Very interesting.

I walked downstairs and there was a ghost in the mirror. I wonder if there is something actually supernatural going on or if I'm just seeing things. I love all the mysteries.

Going to sleep now

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sorry this one is super long because i didn't have internet and was just intermittently adding to it, like, all day

wait why tf does my shadow have eyes

why did i see a figure in front of me right before i lost consciousness

why is the door immediately there in the white space

why can i stab myself without opening the door

SEE HERO? I TOLD YOU NOT TO WORRY. OMORI ALWAYS SHOWS UP WHEN WE NEED HIM. I bet that line's never coming up again!

So now we're going to the part of the forest with the spiders in it. The spider puzzles are fun. Picked up a bunch of tracks and rode the minecart past this blockade.

I think the building is Sunny's heart; the tracks on the way there sound like heartbeats and so does the percussion before the Sweetheart performance

The road to the building is littered with sprout moles saying "go back" uh oh

The bosses in this game are so cool. I fought this giant millipede thing. I love that this one heals itself by eating Sprout Moles, so you gotta kill the Sprout Moles first. But spending this much time in Sprout Mole village and seeing them mourn Ye Olde Sprout Mole makes me sad about killing so many. As soon as the bestiary said that sprout moles "say they're smart, but don't believe them" I was worried that they're kind of "person-like," if that makes sense. I also suspect they're important somehow. Like, killing them will have some sort of horrible unforeseeable consequence that seemingly has nothing to do with killing them.

It feels like the environment is kind of a theme in this game. The story I believe this is telling would be a great backdrop for an environmental parable.

One of the sprout moles underground drew the S! You know, the one that was really popular when you were in elementary school. It also drew the cat we've been seeing everywhere (the one in Aubrey's house, not the one who asks if we're waiting for something to happen), and an arm with a face, and a watermelon, and that one-eyed hooded figure that keeps showing up. I wonder why this one is fixated on the same stuff as Omori, and keeps drawing things that Sunny sees in real life. What an interesting coincidence. There's also a purple, uh, spiky-handed guy, but I don't think that one is important.

I wonder if the show is a metaphor for something. You know, the show stopped and now we have to go look for a backup generator. Lightning from the sky deleted the one thing that wasn't a Sprout Mole, that just kind of fell from the sky. That seems... significant.

Plug in the generator and now Hero gets removed from the party as soon as we get back to the show. Uh oh.

He's a contestant! It's worse than I feared. I love that Sweetheart calls us her stupid adoring fans, and then the game calls us "stupid adoring fans."

Also interestingly Hero lives in the Vast Forest. I feel like that probably refers to the circulatory system? Or the nervous system? One of those kind of everywhere areas.

Whoa hang on. Hero just told Sweetheart that he doesn't wanna marry her so now she's going to force him to. I wonder how dark this game is gonna get with this.

lol we just get thrown into the dungeon. and turns out the dashing mustachio'd sprout mole was ROSA THE WHOLE TIME. I love how Kel says "Curses! We've been bamboozled!"

one of the switches in the dungeon blew up a mole sprout? what?

HM the prison seems to be divided into 4 quadrants. And in the top one there's a pool of some kind of red liquid. "It is not fruit punch." No, I didn't suspect it was.

I took a bite of strawberry cake that smelled like the ocean and went to the bottom of the ocean.

Maybe the masks are those, like, signature proteins or whatever that let white blood cells know if you're supposed to be there. And the guards are white blood cells. Harold = helper? Therese = T-cell?

actually the fact that the guards will engage with you after that one finds you support this theory; before you had to actually walk up to them and press A, now they just have to bump into you

Oh hey a cat pyramid! Like from the sketchbook.

Killed Sir Maximus II. Got a boatload of items from the Chambers (heh geddit because everything is heart themed)

heh i was gonna say that hero is lazy shell peach. he gets a frying pan here. of course he does.

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Sweet hearts castle music so good

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i was looking for the sweetheart castle theme to jog my memory and i got spoiled on the identity of a boss fight at a later date (the unbread twins heh) [i started this post last night and am posting it now that is why i do not remember it]

So Sunny just went into cardiac arrest

By which I mean I finally beat Sweetheart. She was fun. Sweetheart's Palace was kind of long but at least there were some good jokes in it. That minigame where you need to select every sprout that isn't wearing pink can go fuck itself. There was tons of loot. I love the strawberry cakes that smell like different things. Especially since smell is such a strong memory trigger

I killed the bears but used all my jams and most of my jam packets. BUT they left behind combo meals, which are effectively full heals to Heart and Juice, and replenished my jam packets, and there was a charm that increases your speed as your energy goes up. I put that on Kel and his Hit and Run got ridiculous. I was dealing like 200 to angry things.

The Sweetheart fight was fun. Reminds me of Pokemon. No one ever died but I still had to think about healing until I figured the fight out. I tried to keep her mad and everyone else happy. At this point my characters had moves that got better when they're happy. While she was mad, I had Omori use Mock on her to drop her attack. It was real easy to make sure she was always mad on Omori's turn because Kel was always faster than her and Omori was faster than her when she's not happy. Then when she entered her perma-happy state I had Omori use Trick on her to drop her speed so she's slower than Aubrey. Then I focused on keeping my 3 damage dealers happy and healing with Hero.

She doesn't look anything like I thought she would lol.

Aww the password is Space Boyfriend's nickname for her. She does care :3

I loved the library. I don't know why but the story about the jumping off a statue into the water made me cry a little. I think it's just such a perfect little encapsulation of the 3 things Omori is afraid of. The kid thought he wasn't strong enough to swim back to shore so he just gave up and let someone else save him. Mari had already told him that he's stronger than he knows. But if your violin teacher comes over at 10 while your friends want to hang out until 11 maybe ask your parents to reschedule? I know you're young but you're not that young.

I just met Cris. I kind of like that we have some positive associations with the beach to balance out our fear of drowning.

I'm delivering pizza! You gotta identify the houses with these really badly handwritten notes.

The home depot was cool. Seeing Basil there was surprising. I was sad when he vanished. Should've expected it. I wonder how grounded-in-reality the hallucinations are supposed to be.

I think it's possible that Basil is the one whose consciousness this game is taking place inside of lol

oh man we just fought aubrey and the rest of the hooligans and she shoved basil into the water. It's called 2 days left. I wonder what's going to happen. It's certainly not going to be good.

uh oh mari's theme is playing as we're descending deeper and deeper into the water

she died somehow

her name means sea

this is not good

oh no she leads us directly to the knife. i do not like this. did we drown

No! We didn't. We persisted and saved Basil.

whoa everything is so different now, the knife is dull

uh oh there's fog everywhere. we overcame our fears of water, heights, and spiders. now we have something bigger to overcome? and our dead sister is going to help us overcome it? uh oh I think I know exactly where this is going and i don't like it D:

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All right we woke up in the ocean!

BTW I have enough letters now that I think I know the thing at the end. I have _ E L _ O M E / _ O / B L A _ _ / _ P A _ E, which probably means "welcome to black space." Very interesting. I wonder if anything irreversible happens when I finish it. I wonder if anything irreversible happens if I complete the Hangman before finishing it.

This casino area is cool. I love that Kel plays the slots during fights. Kel starts fights happy, so I'm beating the gators by using him to Annoy them and then Hit and Run and using Omori's insane "attack again" followup.

Heh, you gotta get a water bottle to convince the security guard to let you through. Double heh, the water bottle's price is now 600 fuckin clams. I chuckled.

Aubrey's funny as a secretary. I think Aubrey freaking out and then Kel snapping her out of it and calling her boss is my favorite dialog in the game. It's this or the dialog before the Space Ex Boyfriend fight. There's some seriously good writing in this here game.

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Pizza delivery minigame might have been my favorite thing in the entire game. It was so random

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I loved the Pizza Delivery minigame. It's funny for the same reason Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is. I delivered to the 2nd and 3rd houses on my first try :D

Maybe Mari (I think that girl was Mari) is talking about our fear of the dark? That makes sense because fear of the dark is fear of the unknown. And the unknown is always scary.

Wait maybe there's a dense fog over the forest because the forest is the circulatory system (a metaphor people use because blood vessels look eerily like tree branches) and we just turned off sunny's heart so we can't travel through his arteries and veins. maybe the blockages in the heart were blood clots. I want to point out that we go north now where the brain is

The more I play though the more I feel like I have something wrong in my theory. Specifically I don't think Sunny's cause of death was the food poisoning. Also I feel like this story might be from the perspective of someone else. Or it might not be that kind of story at all. But still, it feels like it is, and I'm hearing people say it was really sad and they didn't see the twist coming, and that is a sad story and a lot of people wouldn't expect the twist.

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I just started the Mr. Jawsum fight and he's currently my favorite character. "Boys, would you two be so kind as to show them the way out?" yes please

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Can someone explain how the steam badges have more people winning against Pluto than Jawsome? Can you keep going even if you lose the fights?

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I didn't think you fought Pluto. I helped him run away from some bad guys and I've been seeing his face all over everywhere. plz don't say more about that

Jawsome is cool, making everyone happy worked really really well lol

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oh wait we're fighting pluto now nvmlol

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Yeah, the fights are back to back. Didnt even think there was a save opportunity between them so I assumed you did both

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There wasn't. I've been alt-tabbing between this and the game.

I just beat him by destroying his attack and defense stats while he's mad and everyone else is happy. I think this game would benefit from more enemies that get sad, but I get why they don't from a flavor perspective.

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Heh when you get Aubrey back the first watermelon she unlocks has a bottled water in it. That's a good joke

But for some reason i can't get the letter at the end of the tower yet D:

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Aww I love that the Gator Guys all say goodbye to Hero.

I totally called another joke, where one of the gators likes pineapple on pizza and the other doesn't.

Whoa I looked in the mirror to see what Kel looks like with his tooth missing and everything went all spooky and kicked us back out. When I check the mirror again everyone looks the same though. Hm.

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masterplum posted...

Can someone explain how the steam badges have more people winning against Pluto than Jawsome? Can you keep going even if you lose the fights?

There's an optional fight against Pluto earlier in the game. I assume the achievement is from that.

Edit: Oh, nevermind, that's for that Pluto specifically. I see 34.8% for Jawsome, and 34.7% for Pluto, though.

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NeatoAnAccount posted...

But for some reason i can't get the letter at the end of the tower yet D:

Did you have someone other than Omori in the lead? He's the only one that can grab those.

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TheArkOfTurus posted...

Did you have someone other than Omori in the lead? He's the only one that can gram those.

Thanks, I'll go get that. And the C from earlier lol

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I picked up the C next to the windmill the text when it said "4 letters left" was all weird. Then there was a hole, which I jumped down. There's a tape labeled OMORI and a tape labeled BASIL. I wonder.

I just went back and did some bosses I'm a little too overpowered for. Kel did a critical hit on Kite Kid with Run and Gun and did 585 damage. Killed the tree and got 500 experience, lol

being able to move around in the forest kind of invalidates my hypothesis from earlier though

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Hm I've gotten to One Day Left and I think I was wrong about the overall plot. I don't think we're dying, I think we're just having nightmares about our regrets.

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I think there's a bad ending and I'm on the path to it. I just stabbed Basil in the gut and walked along the floating hands to sit on my throne of floating hands. I think I was supposed to backtrack all the way to Basil's house. Oh god. Oh man. I'm scared.

In the real world Basil isn't answering us.

oh man i'm in the night mode. did someone push mari down the stairs?

holy shit i think we murdered our sister you guys

i think we murdered her and then made it look like a suicide

oh shit

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Yeahh this all hit me hard

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I hope you didn't stop playing there!

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I finished the game. It was crazy. Was not predicting that twist at all. Glad you can get the good ending in the REAL real world just by deciding to come clean to your friends. The song at the end is so sad. I was just bawling like an idiot the whole time.

I beat the Hikikomori route and it's pretty crazy how different in tone it is. The game does a good job of driving home how you're not even trying anymore. It really does feel like you're doing dumb escapist stuff when you have something more important you should be doing. But the fights are fun!

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