Author's note: part of the composition team of this project, Pedro Silva (known by the handle Slime Girls), has been accused and admitted to emotional and mental abuse of partners. They have also been accused of predatory behavior in the games-space, particularly towards women of Asian ethnicity. While this piece has little to do with Silva's work on the project, I felt it necessary to mention this as any art that is made either by or in partnership with abusers is compromised in some manner, and audiences should be aware of these factors before engaging with a work. For more information on this, you can read Silva's statement on their twitter handle (@SlimeGirls).
This piece contains spoilers for OMORI.
I was not a good person in my early twenties. I wouldn't consider myself a bad person, but absolutely a selfish one. Becoming an adult is an exciting time. The college era of one's life is so often immortalized and idealized in fiction because it is not only a massive period of growth, but represents a massive and fundamental shift in the ways many people navigate the world. The new sense of freedom and the access to new pleasures previously inaccessible to a person exiting their childhood in their high school era can be as overwhelming as they are exciting. The other side of this scale, however, is the responsibility. Not just maintaining finances, paying taxes, making your own schedule, etc., but the responsibility with how we treat others and maintain emotional honesty. I failed tremendously at the second half of this shift in my life. I often disregarded the feelings and safety of others to chase the moment-to-moment highs that were now available to me as a new adult. Sure, I didn't actively seek to harm others, but the idea that my actions might cause another harm (emotionally or otherwise) didn't stop me from doing what I wanted. I was a free agent, after all. I lied to partners, I found myself in a tangled emotional mess of sloppy hookups turned web of "well I'm not really looking for a relationship" and "maybe we can keep things casual but kind of exclusive?" It was rough stuff. Nothing I'm proud of. I spent much of the period from 19-21 writing a check that it would take years of work to cash.
See, the problem with behaving for so long in a way that is so outside of the moral compass that I had adopted as a young person and have readjusted to reattain, is that the truth is often buried under layers and layers of self-loathing, guilt, shame, and embarrassment. I thought I deserved to "punish" myself. I didn't deserve friends I made at the time. I didn't deserve to feel OK about myself. I read about bad relationships and wondered if I should feel as ashamed of myself as those people did. Was I an abuser? Was I someone who deserved to never feel love again for mistakes and lies I told as a young adult? If those people that I hurt didn't forgive me, then I didn't deserve to be happy again until they did, right? Isn't any attempt to forgive myself an act of self-righteous selfishness, the same kind of lack of self-awareness that landed me in those situations in the first place? I feared admitting to my mistakes would cost me the friends I had. I feared that opening up about my past mistakes to new friends and partners would stain me in their eyes. What if they thought that I would make the same mistakes with them?
OMORI is a game by Omocat, inspired by many of the JRPGs that decorated the childhood of someone who grew up in the 90s and early 00s, but also borrowing so much from so many modern spins on the genre, like Undertale, Yume Nikki, etc. The game is a split between the real world of the player-character (SUNNY by default) and their alter-ego in their dreams (also called "Headspace"), OMORI. Most of the game takes place in the headspace, as OMORI and their friends Kel, Hero, and Aubrey search for their missing friend, Basil. The journey takes them to several different idyllic childhood fantasy settings: a psychedelic kaleidoscope of anime and video game references, deserts made of sweets, literal space camps with cats and castles and larger-than-life creatures. OMORI's greatest magic trick is almost its greatest weakness -- there's always something in the corner of the Headspace, a dark presence, a tickling at the back of your neck that indicates that something much more sinister is going on just below the surface. However, as quickly as the game shows you an eerie shadow looming, a flash of dark, horrifying imagery, it's back to distracting you with a shark in a suit called "Mr. Jawsum". The saccharine sweetness dragged on for so long that I nearly quit about halfway through OMORI. I knew there was something bigger going on, but the "heckin' doggo" twee-ness of it all was starting to grate on me, even as someone who has a tolerance for that kind of thing. But then it all comes crashing down. The "truth" of the game is revealed, and those cutesy cats and watermelon treasure chests and the obnoxious pop-star-turned-space-princess are re-contextualized by the real-word trauma and pain that created them. To proceed in the game, OMORI must conquer his fears of heights, spiders, and drowning, but these are all surface-level. The real fear is what lurks beneath, the truth that these every-day phobias hide.
OMORI understands that all emotions, even the ones we'd rather not feel at any given time (anger, fear, sadness, misery, rage, etc), are all part of the complete picture of a person, and can even be useful and healing to feel and engage with. It then incorporates these concepts into gameplay. The battle system has a simple paper->rock->scissors mechanic with its three base emotions (angry, sad, happy), meaning that it can often be advantageous to make your party members feel deep depression to succeed in a battle. The way the game uses JRPG battle conventions to draw a thematic throughline is a masterstroke. In the real world sections, the battle system remains, but it's re-contextualized within a much more grounded setting. A section has the player character and the real-world Kel picking a fight with six kids and engaging in (I assume) and unwinnable battle. Afterwards, Kel remarks "I don't know why we thought it was a good idea to fight six kids at once", a feat that is easily achievable in the dream world segments. To master the emotion system is not only part of conquering the challenges presented by the game, but also to understanding a motif of the game: to grow and heal we must allow ourselves to feel all of our emotions, to engage with them and use them as part of the whole experience of moving on.
I won't spoil the central tragedy of OMORI, nor its conclusion, but I am in awe of the achievement in story through game design. As your journey continues over 30+ hours, the bonds the player forms with the central characters of OMORI are nearly as solid as they are with each other, and the game successfully manages to create a sense of dread in the player. How will the characters react to this tragedy? Will they still accept you when they know the truth?
The concept of "home" is well tread in fiction of all kinds, and also here. Each of the central characters has a different kind of literal, physical home. Some loving, some absent, some broken entirely, but these children who grew up together have found home in each other. The game feels like it overstays its welcome at times, but this length is critical to establishing the trust that these characters have for each other, the unconditional familial (and romantic) bonds forged over years of memories and growth together. OMORI takes the idea of a terrible mistake, an undeniable horrific accident to its fullest potential, and dares you to have the courage to face that anyway, to grow, to heal, to face that tragedy head-on with the people that love you most, the home that you have made. You can always go home.