Omori

So, I recently finished Omori, a game.

 My friends had talked about it a couple of times and had used some Omori gifs, but I wasn't all that interested in playing a game labeled as psychological horror. A couple of weeks though, a friend, M, built a new PC and started streaming his playthrough of Omori. I jumped in the stream and watched, and by watching that, I came to realize that this was a game I wanted to play. However, I didn't exactly have the cash lying around to spend on a game I wasn't sure I liked, so I acquired the game.

I went into my playthrough fairly blind. Now might be a good time to mention that this post will probably contain spoilers for Omori, so uh, don't read if you haven't played yet. Anyway, the only spoilers I had gotten were from watching the stream up to the first whitespace stab, and accidentally seeing an achievement on CF's steam profile that told me Mari died. Thankfully, none of these turned out to be any major spoilers for the ending. I really enjoyed my play.

Earlier in the playthrough, when the details of the story were vague, I felt that the game hit closer to home than maybe other games did. Moving away, losing friends, and trying to cherish memories has been a recurring theme in my life as I moved from state to state and country to country. I really do regret not really being a picture person. I usually don't take pictures, especially of myself. I should've taken more with my friends. It would've been so easy to do and keep track of... Like I mentioned in a previous post, sunny being lonely kinda resonated a bit too much lol. The story progressed and the plot line stopped mirroring my life (which is fine), but that first week I was playing was a special week.

When I first decided to play, I one of my hopes was that the game would bring me through the story and make me happy, sad, angry, whatever. I am glad to report that it was successful. Looking through the headspace photo album made me happy looking at all their cute pictures. Fighting difficult bosses and retrying three times on Sweetheart made me mad. Finally, sad. The first look at the real world photo album almost made me cry, and its not even supposed to be sad. It.. just hit right in the heart after getting to see what the friends had done in the four years. The stump scene and the picnic with Mari in real world also almost made me cry. Now, even some of the OSTs and a calm atmosphere can make me flush.

For the past week, the usual cycle of absorbing as much post game content has been running its course. From Omocat's twitter, to the subreddit, I've been scouring it all. It's so funny, and enjoyable. In particular, scrolling back in omocat's twitter, I found the comic about Aubrey's birthday. Let me just say I wasn't expecting tears when I opened that comic. What a blast it has been.

I got $50 as one of my birthday presents. I spent like half of it on a game called Stray that I've been wanting to play for a while, but I think I'm gonna spend the rest of it on Omori merchandise when the second wave arrives in November. I'm secretly hoping they'll restock the plushies, cause I really want one. I was in the middle of my playthrough when they dropped and I wasn't going to drop a ton of money on the game yet. My friends' orders seeming came in all yesterday, so today a bunch of people were wearing omori clothing. I want one now lol.

I finished my first playthrough on October 14th, first day of fall break. That weekend, I couldn't resist the urge to make something, so I made me and CF as omori pixel art characters. It was pretty cool. One week later, just last weekend, I decided to make my room in the omori pixel art style. When I did most of the art, I found out that I had been juked. The reference omori screenshot wasn't from the game, it was a fan recreating using Deltarune sprites. So my scale was a little off on some items. A little annoying finding out so late, but I fixed the room size. The final picture is the header picture on this post, pretty cool! I also made my friends C and F in the style and put them in the picture too. I like it. I originally wanted to battle portraits for me, but I realized that would require real digital artistic skill. Maybe I'll give it a shot sometime and be horrified at what I see.

My primary game has shifted to Stray now, but I do want to return to Omori and play through the Hikkikomori route with all the additional bosses and world. There's so much content in this game that you can so easily fly by on your first playthrough. I finished through to the good ending, but left save files at last moments in dream world and real world, so I want to play from those points too.

If you've ignored my warning and read through all of this and haven't played Omori yet, you should totally do it.