Omori

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Omori is an RPGMaker videogame based on the webcomic of the same name, created by Omocat. While the webcomic has become obscure online, archives can help one find the original pages.

Trigger warning: Per the game's own warnings, there are mentions of depression, anxiety, suicide, self-harm, and trauma. There are also flashing lights, so take care if playing or watching a video if you have photosensitivity.

A boy named Omori in a blank room called Whitespace wakes up; after some fiddling with the computer and sketchbook, he can leave and enter a colorful world called Headspace. His friends are there: Hero, Mari, Kel, Aubrey, and Basil. They all want to play, but monsters keep stealing away Basil. Everyone goes on a quest to find Basil, but Headspace itself is full of hazards, dangers, and sidequests. Also, Omori is sometimes banished back to Whitespace. The only way to leave is to stab himself. Wait, what? Surprise Creepy doesn't begin to cover the depths of this game.

Another boy wakes up; his name is Sunny unless you change it when given the option. Sunny hasn't left his house since he was twelve years old. His father has long left, while his mother is away from the house, preparing for a move to another city. Sunny has a choice to make: either spend his last few days in Faraway Town finding his old friend group and face a great tragedy that happened years ago or retreat into his dreams, where he can imagine himself as the hero. Either way, the past has some words to share with him, and he has a great mystery to solve.

There are two routes for the game: either the Main Route, where Sunny goes out into the real world and the fan-named Hikikomori route, where Sunny remains a recluse and dreams more of being Omori.

Omori was supposed to come out in 2016, after a Kickstarter. Following about six years of miscommunication and Omocat asking for more funds to cover engine and crew changes, it was released in December 2020. At minimum, there is 26 hours of gameplay on the Main Route, so it is perfectly fine to watch a Let's Play or videos that give the cliffnotes.

Tropes used in Omori include:

• Adult Fear:
  • Aubrey's home life is less than stellar, with her mother implied to be neglectful and her house is in shambles. After a great tragedy struck the group, she felt they abandoned her and become the leader of a local gang, the Hooligans.
  • The scene where Aubrey in a fit of anger pushes Basil into the nearby lake, forgetting that he couldn't swim. She stands in shock, as Sunny on Kel's orders jumps in to try and save him. Only Sunny can't swim either, and also nearly drowned. Hero has to save them both, and Basil is semiconscious.
  • Kel is somewhat estranged from his parents, who treated him as The Unfavorite. He recalls bitterly that following Hero lashing out at him, they moved to comfort Hero rather than a crying Kel. While his mother is guilty about this and trying to make it up to Kel in the present while Hero is at college, Kel hasn't forgiven her. He does, however, eventually forgives Hero when Hero apologizes four years later.
  • The Truth: on the last night in the true ending, Sunny dreams about entering the tree where Mari ostensibly hung herself. He-- and the player-- find out that it wasn't a suicide. What happened instead was Sunny was practicing for their duet recital, got frustrated as he heard Mari scoffing at his mistakes, and smashed his violin down the stairs. Mari saw, and got into a fight with him, and wouldn't let Sunny go to cool down. In a fit of anger, he pushed her down the stairs. She collapsed on the broken violin and lay still, her neck at an odd angle. Going My God What Have I Done?, Sunny ran down, begged her Please Wake Up and dragged her into bed, hoping to make her better. He broke down, believing it was a dream. Basil witnessed all this with horror; rather than dial 911 or get the neighbors, however, he ordered Sunny to drag Mari outside, and grab the jumprope. They strung her from a tree, making it look like a suicide.
• Age Lift: Omori in his original comic is an older teen, who reads porn and smokes. Omori in the game is still mentally twelve years old, meaning he doesn't have time for that. Sunny, however, is estimated to be around 16 years old.
• Cerebus Callback: During a fight in the first day in Headspace, Aubrey accidentally knocks Basil over. She helps him up and apologizes as Hero chides her. We find out in the real world that Aubrey is badly bullying Basil, and pushes him into the lake.
• Darker and Edgier: Blackspace, and Blackspace II in the Hikikomori route are much more horrific than the rest of Headspace, even when factoring in the Truth. Each room shows horrific images or plain creepy ones, where you can only escape by interacting with disembodied hands or finding key figurines. There are also about five versions of Basil that ask for help, but each one dies. What's worse is the last death happens when Omori repeatedly stabs Basil and walks over his dead body.
• Dead All Along: As Aubrey in the real world reminds Kel and Sunny, while dropping a bombshell on the player, Mari has been dead for four years. And this was after we may have opened the door for who we thought was Mari!
• Driving Question:
  • In Headspace, where is Basil? And why is it so hard to find him? It's almost like Headspace is deliberately hiding him from you. That ends up being the truth: Dream Basil knows that Sunny killed Mari by accident and keeps poking towards the truth. Omori hides him away so Sunny never has to face reality.
  • What was the great tragedy that broke up the original friendship group in the real world? Mari died, and everyone thought it was a suicide since her body was hanging from a tree in her backyard. Sunny actually killed her by accident, and Basil took initiative to string her up so as to stop his best friend from being implicated
• Her Code Name Was Mary-Sue: A plot point as to why Omori in Headspace feels more vibrant than Sunny does in the real world. Omori is the leader of their little group, and the girl he crushed on as a kid is still infatuated with him. The friends all band together, even when their memories start fading.
• Groundhog Day Loop: It's revealed that this happens in Headspace during the quest to find Basil, every time. Omori resets every time Sunny gets too close to finding the truth. The move to a new town has broken the loop, if you choose to have Sunny step out of his comfort zone and face reality.
• Hypocrite: Aubrey in the real world picks a fight with Sunny and Kel when they see her bullying, wielding a baseball bat with nails. She's also not afraid to use it. While Kel resorts to whacking her in self-defense with his basketball, Sunny has a steak knife and is not afraid to use it. When Sunny gives her a nick, however, Aubrey retreats and calls him a maniac for using a knife. Meanwhile, she's still holding the bat.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: One of the reasons why Sunny and Basil feel intense guilt for Mari's death, and faking it as a suicide. Everyone speaks of how brilliant, kind and caring Mari was in life towards her little brother and their friends. No one mentions that Mari was a perfectionist that often locked herself in her room to study or practice piano while ignoring Sunny, prankster, who used Hero's bug phobia to mess with him, and showed No Sympathy about Sunny's frustration as he tried to master violin to her level. Part of the reason why she and Sunny got into a fight was he was unable to communicate this, and she didn't realize her scoffing at his mistakes caused him to smash his violin, a Christmas gift from their friends.
• Parents as People: There are no role models for parents in this game. It's why the friendship group had Mari and Hero as the parents, essentially, in real life in the past.
  • Sunny's mother has spent days away from home, leaving voicemails for him. His father left a while ago. It's also implied they favored Mari over him, which didn't help at all after she died.
  • Kel and Hero's parents favored their eldest son, the golden child, while treating Kel as a goofball and an annoyance. In the present, his mother is at least sorry for that while being a better mother to their baby sister, but we don't know how his dad feels.
• Sudden Downer Ending: There are four possible options for this on the Main Route after the friendship group reunites the final foray into the Dreamworld that reveals the Truth:
  • You choose not to confront Basil and go back to bed, when you wake up, it's too late. Basil has stabbed himself with kitchen shears and bled out before the kids could get help. Hero tells Sunny it's best for him to leave and start a new life. Sunny does this, erasing the room where Basil died from his mind.
  • You go back to your home and sleep, wake up the next day, and move with your mother. Something follows you.
  • You go back to your home, pocket the steak knife, and sleep. When Omori stabs himself to exit the dream world, Sunny stabs himself in bed. The game ends by showing him lying in a pool of blood.
  • After facing Omori, you choose to succumb, after helping Sunny relive his happiest memories no less. What's worse is that you could be trying to quit the game and figure out how to beat him. Sunny drops his violin and fades away, while Omori takes control of his body. You think you're returning to Headspace, but instead, Omori compels Sunny to jump off the hospital roof where he and Basil are receiving medical treatment.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Omori is not happy when you realize he's not real. He's a defense mechanism of Sunny's, to hide the truth about Mari's death.
• Tomato Surprise: At the end of Blackspace, Omori ascends a throne of red hands after killing Basil. He gives us a long look, a cold stare. Slowly, we realize he's not the hero of the story but the villain.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: This applies to everyone in the friendship group before the great tragedy that hit them. Kel is the only one who remained the same, albeit with chips on his shoulder. Aubrey in particular used to be a nice girl that would affectionately spray Kel with watermelon, and she has become a gangster.
• Video Game Caring Potential: There is one option in Headspace and one in the real world:
  • After Basil goes missing, you can start each dream by watering his flowers and plants. Do this every day, and the game ends with a bonus scene where Basil wakes up, Sunny smiles at him to show all is forgiven, and both of their Somethings fade.\
  • In the real world, you can do sidequests around town, running errands for your neighbors. In the best ending, you find out if you've helped them, they send you failures and wishes to get better.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • One room in Blackspace has Mewo, Mari's cat, strapped to a table. You are asked if you want to cut her open, several times. If a player has the sense to check their Menu options, they can exit the room by stabbing themselves. Most players, however, feel they have no choice. Cutting Mewo doesn't allow you to leave. You have to stab yourself anyway, making the cat death all for nothing.
  • Another Blackspace room has Basil collapse like watermelon chunks. If you are in a state of shock or have a sense of dark humor, you can walk over the pieces and hear a squishing sound repeatedly.
• Villain Has a Point: What's sad about the real villain in the story is that he is completely right during the final boss fight of the Main Route. Sunny killed Mari, and though it was an accident, he and Baail lied about it for years. She loved him, and everyone loved Mari. The only way to get the happy ending is to acknowledge that Omori is right, but Sunny will persist regardless.
• Wimp Fight:
  • Sunny is not as strong as Omori, and the game is quick to point that out. When you spend four years as a recluse, forgetting to eat, not exercising and spending most of your time sleeping, it's not going to do wonders for your physical health. As a result, when he participates in a fight, he can lose easily unless wielding a "borrowed" steak-knife or pepper spray.
  • At first, the penultimatee boss fight starts at this if you make the decision to save Basil. Then we remember something that subverts the trope: Basil has kitchen shears, and Sunny is unarmed since Kel took his steak knife. Basil gets Sunny in the eye, and the fight ends in a draw as Sunny faints from shock and blood loss.