art sqool's strengths hit a very touching, subconscious part of my soul, but its weak points were fucking embarrassing and egregious.

just exploring around the weird abstract campus and drawing stuff with an extremely limited toolset evoked a lot of memories and fears surrounding my childhood and my current experiences at college. all the little islands are super charming. i was really happy with a lot of the things i made in the game, and i'm glad they give you a folder of your drawings as shareable pngs. nothing about its execution feels cynical or dramatic, it's just there to let you take your own experience from it.

but goddamn fuck the grading system on this game, i have no idea what these prompts are checking for. i got stuck on one where they wanted you to draw your first memory, and it rejected 10 drawings before finally accepting a grease brush blob.

also the main character design looks like someone that would emotionally manipulate me

overall i don't think this will do much for people who aren't already into art, but it's a nice 2-3 hour trip for people that wanna break their art block or get a neat change of pace. recommended.

I can't play this game anymore lol. The concept of doodling works just fine, but there are a lot of problems. The color scheme of the overworld is absolutely nauseating for one. The camera has a lot of problems too; the FoV is way too small (and there's no slider or way to adjust from what I can tell) so you're often uncomfortably close to your character, and the camera is way too sensitive and rotates a ton every time you try and mess with it. There's no map on the overworld to try and guide you when you need to submit assignments (I later learned that you can just fall off the overworld to auto-submit). There are more tools to work with so you can expand your doodling ability, but these tools all seem to be scattered between isolated isles, with no real way to travel between them except hopefully respawning randomly on the right isle. And finally, I have no idea how the scoring algorithm really works to get a gauge of how in tune this is. The concept is fine, but the lack of attention just about everywhere else is a huge problem.

It's symbolic of actual art school: The main character has anxieties about what he's doing, the assignments are random and the judgement feels completely random at times. It's true to life. Fortunately, the assignment prompts never fail to entertain and make me think about what to draw. The game also saves every drawing you make in a folder, so you can view them at every time!
Just wish the game had a drawing focused mode that would go through all the prompts so you can take them all on.

But moving around to get supplies and navigating this world is really boring. Had it either cut that out or provided better movement options, navigating the dream-like world would have been actually worth doing. Not only that, but the game's camera is janky. It's not true to life because getting supplies and going from place to place in art school was the easy part.

On one half it's a true story idea executed in a silly way, and on the other half it's a slog to play. But if you think a game giving you drawing prompts is a fun idea like I did, you'll like this then.

In a few Discord servers, I've stated, usually in very chide one-off statements, that this game sucks. I've never actually spent time elaborating why it sucks, and I realize that just saying it does doesn't really help any conversation whatsoever, or really have anything new to put forth.

Because, to be honest, to say this game is all bad is missing the mark just as much as saying “anime is for weebs”... which is largely true but still missing some information that could point a different direction..

So what is DDLC? It’s a very, very short VN that lampshades what happens in most VNs, where you meet a handful of characters and deal/handle their personal issues, except without a lot to say about it. It uses its runtime to poke fun at the laughable traits of the worst of VNs while then proceeding to put some valid criticism of unconditional attachment, while peppering its runtime with enough shock value to make streamers freak the fuck out and thus become a touchstone of Twitch culture with its reaction and memes such as “just Monika”. I highly doubt that all of that was intentional, but the impact can’t be disregarded, because it did become a part of online video game culture as a whole… for better or for worse.

There is something I need to outline. While I agree usually that a game should not be based on its toxic fanbase, DDLC is so big that it’s tough to ignore. It is extremely hard to detach the community and fanbase as a whole from the game. We can agree to disagree from there.

Let’s be clear, the shock value fucking works for one key moment. I am a wimp and autistic and find very emotional attachment to video games that is borderline unhealthy, and thus the very infamous first shock rolled me over like a lawnmower and I still have nightmares thinking about it. If there’s one thing to give credit to DDLC, it is that it’s very unpredictable, although at the expense of pacing or having a good kind of shock value past the first moment.

Everything else is very standard and frustrating to go through, particularly a moment where you have to “auto-skip” for a moment that abuses its time to the fullest extent. I don’t care if it’s not supposed to be fun, it’s nauseating. It doesn’t have anything to gain for its inclusion OTHER than shocking the player and to hammer harder how messed up Monika is, which would have benefitted from a tighter pace. Subversion, especially when it’s creatively done like DDLC, is fine, but its pace and execution despite its concept hampers this to an extreme.

DDLC’s good, however, comes in two things: a general and well done understanding of depression and the pain it causes through its first introductory character arc, and the danger and toxicity of parasocial relationships represented via Monika’s rampant fascination with the player. The latter unfortunately…. is not even knee deep. It does not deconstruct how it comes to exist but rather comments on its existence, which is fine but doesn’t leave a lot to take away.

So what anecdotal interactions poison the game for me? It is that it has massively poisoned talking about VNs and the Western reaction to VNs as a whole. The game is definitely pointing at a very particular subgenre of VNs, but its popularity has created a vacuum of using the game as a point to how “all VNs are bad” and how ridiculous the genre is. Yes, people can sometimes be dumb and stupid, as can I, but I’ve seen it happen EVERYWHERE.

I’m not an expert on VNs (in fact I’ve only started recently to delve into the genre with games like Umineko, The Silver Case, and Nekojishi), but it’s insane how much DDLC has colored VN’s image that the games themselves have been not at all what’s expected. I don’t even… know of any game DDLC is really pointing out here. In the end, it feels like it has a blanket “VNs bad” side to its conversation around the medium where the tropes it is subverting in its runtime a mainstay more for anime as a whole rather than VN dating sims instead. Am I missing something? Maybe I need to play more VNs.

Trust me, it’s not that there aren't bad VNs. I can go to fucking TOWN on Nekojishi for its disgusting moments with its true ending and in the end having zero to take away from other than… the tiger guys are adorable.

The biggest struggle comes from where, when I enjoy a VN (or when other big friends of mine do), it’s tough to recommend, because the image that DDLC has created in popular culture casts a big enough web to catch SUVs. There are other barriers to entry such as price and it not being as “video game” as other genres, but this to me has been the biggest barrier now.

My hope is to understand where I come from now when I say “Fuck DDLC”. It’s partly the game but way more because of the culture that surrounds it.

At least it’s free.

There's a really interesting through line of this where Aya knows her father is a monster and keeps finding ways to justify it. Time and time again, she sees the horrible things that he's done and keeps trying to convince herself that its okay and he can change. Its only when his rampage turns against her that she's forced to recognize how conditional his love is. That even his "good side" is filtered through his violent, dreadful worldview. That there's nothing that can justify the way that he treats others and nothing that'll stop him from hurting you if you violate his inner rules.

I'm not necessarily sure how I feel about the new modes in the remake and the character reveals going on there. I sort of feel like it betrays the original theme for the sake of shock value. On the other hand, it doesn't end completely miserable for everyone, even if its still real grim. Sometimes, you just gotta accept the weird cheesy rpg maker as is and roll with it.

you've turned to page 56 in our lovely gamedev cookbook--wanting to create a smash indie hit yourself? not to worry, i have you covered. first, you'll want some hyper friendly, super inoffensive art. really smooth those edges. "wait, i want a dark twist to it!" of course you do, because your indie darling isn't taking off without one. now what you're gonna do is contrast the inoffensiveness with, i don't know, edgy scribblings found on an eighth grade desk or somewhere in the 2008 archives of deviantart? obviously we can't have anything ACTUALLY visually disturbing or raw, because then you're going down the hylics path, and noooo one cares about hylics. no, it needs to be scary in the same way a hatsune miku vocaloid music video about a "serious" subject is scary--draw a circle a bunch over itself until it's got a tone of lines and looks super disoriented. creepy, right? yeah just do that for everything.

well, that's pretty much it! with the cutesy sparkle artstyle contrasting just the right tint of edge to unnerve slendermen veterans, you just need some basic, serviceable writing and to hire a musician better at music than you are at game dev, and you've got a real shot at things (but make sure it's real easy, too, or your players are gonezo)! what, don't believe me? just take a look at undertale, OFF, super paper mario, doki doki literature club: cute presentations, horror twists, easy to beat. except... you know... every single of these games (okay, maybe not doki) does omori's job better in just about every single way. see, these games have biting writing and make bold, aesthetic decisions, and they all do it in brevity. off, hylics, space funeral, and undertale may all be inspired by earthbound, but their developers each understood that aping its absurd, overly stretched out game length is a BAD idea. hoh, but not omocat!

no, in fact, omori is actually longer than earthbound.

and to what purpose? because after over eight hours, i'm completely checked out of this endurance tester designed to absolutely waste your time. and i'm not saying that in like a "every second of this game sucks" way, but a "no seriously, there is so much garbage and fluff in this game designed to waste your time". backtracking plagues omori like a virus as you juggle tasks and side quests that amount to a lot of holding one direction forward while running for five, six, twenty screens. worse, the game lacks the grace to let you run up and down ladders, so those to-and-fro journeys are best aided with a phone in your free hand. there's this minecart section where you slowly drift down a lane for two screens until coming to a missing piece that then... slowly sends you back another two screens. but perhaps the absolute most grating time and effort waste comes from trying to navigate absurdly inefficient menus.

no, seriously. here's how many actions i have to get through just to heal a party member with another member's heart spell.

1) b button for menu
2) 3 analog clicks to the right
3) a button to select "skills"
4) 3 analog clicks to the right
5) a button to bring up health character
6) a button to select healing spell
7) a button to select "use"
8) 1-3 analog clicks to the right to select character to heal
9) a button to heal
10) 4 b buttons to get out of all the menus and back into the game

holy fuck.

i'm being really hard on the game's pacing because it really, truly is miserable. it's annoying that nearly every object has a useless description attached--does pressing A on, what, a fire hydrant need to give me a text box that says "fire hydrant"? no shit. tell a joke or don't have the box at all. enemies respawn every new screen catching you in a battle with whatever variation of rabbit you're definitely sick of fighting by a certain point. the dialogue's the worst, though, and i'm not even yet discussing its actual quality: it's just so much. there's so much of it (like this review). there is so many words used and a fourth of them are to any actual merit. so much dialogue is wasteful, unfunny, flat, basic, and bloated, and you just sit through it hoping someone will say something interesting.

they never will. omori's a game that decides earthbound wasn't insufferably quirky enough and proceeds to ham it up to infinity but with little purpose, and it results in writing and a world that feels disingenuous. not always, of course--there's a very specific interesting contrast that occurs in the dialogue when you first go from real world back to dream world, and it feels poignant and interesting. this feeling also lasts a very limited amount of time as you realize, yes, you really HAVE been ripped from the curious part of the game and sent back to a creative wasteland, the game proceeding to hammer in a point you already got two hours ago.

let's talk more about that real world dream world contrast more but, first, the combat. it's actually pretty clever and i enjoy the synergy between your characters and how to manipulate that to take on even the biggest of challenges. but then, the game presents a different problem where MOST battle encounters will not actually involve using the system in any meaningful way, the simplest and most straightforward (and successful) way of fighting through your enemies being a mash A fest a la OFF. why? because nothing in this game has any fucking health. and you know what's really crazy about that? the people who play this game do NOT fucking care about the combat. oh, what, you think that's presumptious of me? at the time of writing this, only 29% of players bothered fighting and beating two optional minibosses early in the game. meanwhile, 60% of players finished the first dream world day (taking place post-minibosses)... which means another 40% didn't even bother to get that far.

what this tells me is that half of omori's actual playerbase don't understand the combat system and don't care enough to learn it, and they're just here for the very syrupy soft pastel story. oh, and i'm saying that with confidence because i'm among the only 10% that did not return a character's high five. it's telling.

additionally to combat, i really enjoy the effort put in to give several enemies different "mood" states that may reflect new animations and designs, and that's really cool. the battle ui is sharp, even, and its a great use of colors all around--easily beating out the utterly generic world design otherwise. but getting back to the real world/dream world contrast, what really bothers me about omori is that the game rips this system out of your hands and gives you something immeasurably boring to work with in the real world. but the thing about said real world is that it has the more "interesting" narrative going on and so, when you're sent back to the dream world, you've got the fun(er) combat back but are trapped with a half of the story that you don't care about or don't really need to hear. additionally, the real world shows just as much creative prowess as the dream world in its design--all a series of hallways. it's really flat.

there's moments of charm, like the sound effects similar to animal crossing on the gamecube, pushing over a cardboard dumptruck, and a character that holds a trophy for "most horse second place". and there are moments of complete reverse charm where the intention is inept, like a list of "whatchamacallit"s to collect, a character named smol, and that entire cheese rat segment that just goes on and on and on... like the game. like the game does. the game goes on and on.

i don't know, i've written SO much about this game i clearly don't enjoy, and a majority of where this is coming from really is in response to critical reception i can't understand whatsoever. and i didn't understand the reception undertale got six years ago and felt annoyed by its heavy presence on the internet, but then, well, i started playing it and the experience was instantly lovely, and there was no "oh dude just play thirty hours to get to the cuhrazey part!". it was fun from the start, like a video game should be, and half the length of omori, too. as is OFF, and hylics, and barkley, space funeral, ib, yume nikki--all of these brief indie rpgs i would recommend to anyone over playing ape inc's sloppy seconds.

when i look at omori, i certainly do see omocat in its design: bland, easily digestible, inoffensive, and round edged--just like those t-shirts. and then i realize what this game really is.

perfect example of a "7/10 game"

a game of memorable highs, uninteresting lows, but ultimately a lot of forgettable middles. this game feels a lot like someone's first game and the fact that it is shows. it's about 10 hours too long (it took me about 20 hours to beat with avoiding a lot of the random encounters, not doing much side-content), the stuff happening in the dreamworld doesn't really have any bearing on the story 95% of the time, and most of the characters feel very ignorable, superfluous, and slightly annoying due to their constant presence.

that being said, the game is VERY ambitious in its scope, which i appreciate. it feels like a few interesting ideas and discussions that are weighted down by the game's need to feel "gamey" and long due to typical RPG bloat. can't wait until people fully abandon the RPG genre as the de-facto means to tell a story in a narrative game!

I finished Omori thinking it was an alright 3 hour game that stretched itself into 12 hours, but the more I thought about the game and its story, the more those 3 hours lost their value and the weakness of its execution came to the forefront of my mind. It's a game that I wish was less afraid of showing its unique aspects, but it plays it safe and refuses to dig deeper into all the touchy subject matter that it brings up. The game is spends most of its time indulging in the escapist fantasy while leaving the meat of the story feel undeveloped, held back by the game's desire to fit into the mold of Earthbound-inspired RPGs.

Much has been said about the game’s pacing issues, the hours and hours it spends on tedious progression in the dreamworld before letting you get tidbits of real story. That content was probably meant to be fun for its own sake and that’s probably the biggest disconnect between me and someone who likes the game. As charming as the visuals were at first, they weren't exactly carrying the weight for me given how standard most of the areas feel for a place rooted in imagination. The quirky humor also fell flat for me as I found it to be missing good gags or any unique bite, most of the jokes felt kinda played out to me before they even started. The various “puzzles” and collection quests didn't do much but waste time when I wish they acted as space for compelling character interactions or story development. I only have good things to say about the music though, which was great throughout.

The combat also took a big chunk of the game, with most of the content geared around it given that the primary reward for all the sidecontent is items to make combat easier.
I’ve never been a big fan of turn based RPG combat and Omori did little to change my mind, as I found it an easy and boring exercise in attack/heal for most part. The emotion system, which gives party members unique effects such as using their mana pool as an extra hp pool, increasing crit chance, e.t.c was badly used IMO. I had hoped the game would allow me to use those emotions creatively to solve problems, but instead, the game explicitly states that it's an RPS system where certain emotions will inherently win against others, turning it into a glorified element system.

It doesn’t help that the story bosses were mainly a knowledge test of whether or not you guessed which emotion they would be inclined to. The only time I ever died was to Kite-Kid, who locked himself into a happy state early in the fight, and I lost because I already had some party members set to Angry. Restarting the fight with this knowledge in advance and setting my party members to sad preemptively made the fight a cakewalk. It was hard to get anything out of the combat for me when it operated on such a simple knowledge check.
That one death also exposed me to an oversight in the game’s design that would make it a chore even if it did attempt to leverage its systems to be challenging. If you lose, it's probably because you don’t have the right skills equipped to take advantage of the emotion you are meant to use. Unfortunately, if you die, the game will restart you right at the fight without giving an opportunity to change your build, forcing you to exit the game and reload your save to do so. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that most bosses were preceded by long unskippable dialogue scenes, so I can’t imagine how miserable the experience would be if you weren’t as lucky as I was with the equipped skills.

Now unto the story, and this is where my feelings with the game get complicated.
The game’s biggest disappointment to me is the criminal misuse of its setup. The game introduces a dreamworld that our depressed protagonist escapes to in their sleep, where he gets to hang around with “dream” versions of people he knew, and then switches gears to the real world, where most of the plot progression happens, and continues to alternate between the two. I think it's a no-brainer that one would use the dreamworld to explore the boy’s deeper psyche and issues through the metaphor and symbolism offered by the flexibility of the dreamworld’s visuals, giving us perspective into his personality, thoughts, and the way he views the world and people around him. Then, that internal struggle that he goes through in the dreamworld would then affect his behaviour and actions in the real world as payoff, right?

Unfortunately, the application of this idea is extremely limited in the game. I get that the dreamworld is meant to be an escapist fantasy, and that is well established within the first hour of the game. We spend a lot of time interacting with characters in the dreamworld, who’s antics and storylines end up being shallow and unfulfilling and fail to give any insight into the real story that’s going on. I can attempt to read into it by saying that SWEETHEART’s antagonistic antics are reflective of Sunny’s negative view of self love, Space Boyfriend’s heartbreak as his fear of relationships, and the whale as his fear of...water? Even with these interpretations, it all feels incredibly weak, at best tangential to the game’s plot, and not nearly enough substance to justify the sheer amount of time spent in the dreamworld.

The reading that makes most sense to me is that the time in the dreamworld was simply meant to depict the protagonist's escapism and how he used it to avoid meaningfully confronting his problems. Maybe it was just that I didn’t find that ecapsim to be fun and worth escaping to in the first place that made it not work for me, but even if it did, I feel like this use of the dreamworld falls so short of its potential that I can’t help but be disappointed.

I understand that the warning posted on the Steam page and the start of the game is a trigger warning for people who are sensitive to those subjects, but the way it's presented almost makes me feel like its the game flaunting what it’s really about before it even gets to pull the rug on you in its intro. It’s unfortunate then, that the game seems to shy away from exploring any of those subjects meaningfully, especially given how ripe the dreamworld setup is for that purpose. I am not asking the game to give a clinical examination or intense psychoanalysis, but the game struggles to use its dialogue and characters to give us a lens to how our protagonist is affected by and parses all his trauma. Instead, much of the game is about him intentionally forgetting the source of his trauma amidst his dreamworld escapism and the conclusion of it being him finally remembering.

The game’s clearest thematic throughline instead, is that of communication, everything else feels like fluff that is only lightly touched upon. The protag’s want to save one of his friends who direly needs him, but his fear of communicating with him and acknowledging what they have done is what drives a major part of the story. Given this theme, I expected Sunny’s position as a silent protagonist to be deconstructed or at least acknowledged, but it's often ignored in a way that is customary of the genre but feels ill-fitting for the game’s themes. On top of that, the game does little in most of its run time to give us his perspective on those fears, and instead is content only implying the depth the character might have.

There is one section of the game however, where the theme and setup is used incredibly effectively, and that is the Black Space chapter. The game homes in on its Yume Nikke inspirations and presents a series of horror vignettes that represent the protagonists darkest thoughts and fears. Not all of it was a hit, as seeing the protag’s friend die gruesomely from neglect loses its shock factor after the third time in a row, but the way it was presented was very captivating to me and I appreciate that the game finally decided to use its visuals to effectively communicate something. It felt like the game was finally delivering in these scenes, but then it ends very quickly and doesn’t feel worth all the tedium of the 8 hours preceding it. I would have preferred if the storytelling of Black Space was something that was spread all around the dreamworld, perhaps delivered with varying levels of subtlety, rather than the way it used now which feels too little and too late.

The biggest victim of the game’s unwillingness to explore its protagonist is the ending. By the time the protag finally confronts his friend and overcomes his fear of communication, it feels undeserved as I never got to know how he parsed through that fear and what he did to overcome it, given that most of the game is spent avoiding the issue entirely. The journey in his mind fails to meaningfully reflect on his actions in the real world, making its “power of friendship” way of solving things feel rote and unimpactful by the end.
Instead, most of all development happens very quickly with him rediscovering the reason behind his trauma. In retrospect that story beat really hurt the game for me, as the reason ends up being so overdramatic and extreme for an otherwise grounded story that it impaired the story's ability to approach these issues in any relatable manner.

Given all that, I have to confess that a big part of my disappointment with this game is likely my fault, given the issues I was tackling when I played the game and still do. I too am afraid of communicating and the hurt I can cause, I’ve spent many nights crippled by my inability to reach out to people who really cared about me. A part of me wanted the game to tell me something nice and inspire me to get better, which is unreasonable to expect from any piece of media, but it's what happened regardless.
Despite all I said about Omori, I do think it has a heart and the strong impression it makes is not a fluke. It hurts for me to dislike this game knowing how personal it must have been to its creator. To tell someone that their depiction of their mental struggles was weak and unimpactful is so awful that I’d rather believe that it’s my own fault for being unable to appreciate what the game does, but to me the game itself feels like it's afraid of communicating too. It feels like a declawed version of itself, afraid of opening up about the issues it wants to talk about and too scared of hurting anyone with its content.
There is a strong chance that I’m just projecting, but regardless, I hope the devs don’t take any of what I said as discouragement. While it didn’t work for me, your game has earned its recognition and popularity for a reason. It might not have left the most positive impression on me, but I can appreciate its heart, the captivating imagery, and the sentiments it wanted to stir. I just hope the success will empower you to be more honest and more daring with your future projects.

The thing that piques my interest with Idol Manager is that the developers seem to have a genuine interest in painting the idol industry as something that brings joy to a lot of people, but has a number of less glamorous elements to it - the exploitation, the scandals (and non-scandals), the fact that a lot of these idols are still just kids and bullying is a real thing that you will need to address. There is a surprising amount of work that you and your staff will have to do, split between doing things that are financially rewarding and things that you need to maintain the wellbeing of your idols. Given that you as a producer/manager need to touch everything that goes out the door in some form or fashion, you really begin to feel stretched thin as you are increasingly unable to maintain a personal relationship with each one of your idols. This becomes a complaint of mine as it means as your operation grows in scale you will have several things being held up while you personally put the finishing touches on every project, but it also makes for some of the most effective moments in the game when you realize you’ve been lost in handling business, haven’t paid much attention to your idols lately, only to get the pop-up that one of them is having a birthday that she’s spending alone in the break room.

These small moments of drama are obviously intentional or the game wouldn’t bother showing you the specific girls at a birthday party, or who is using the break room (and how) during the course of a normal day. While the focus on the joy the idols bring makes sense and makes moments like the one above more impactful through juxtaposition, there are a few elements of the game that detract from the experience due to a conflict in tone. The scandals are the most notable example of this, often referencing real life incidents - there are events referencing Japanese VTubers saying the N word while playing GTA V, and some events that might be references but are already so ridiculous as an inclusion to this game that I have to wonder why they decided this was appropriate.

Perhaps the most bizarre inclusion to me, though, is the inclusion of a whole visual novel-style dating subplot that you access by flirting with one of your idols (only possible if they’re over 18). The game seems to be of two minds about this, given how often it reminds you that dating an idol is a bad idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that you’re their employer. However, there’s still a LOT of writing dedicated to dating an idol (most of which is your employee GF coming up with absurdly profound small talk) up to and including marriage, where the game forces one of you to leave the company and gives you a random Fallout-style slideshow ending that tells you all about life after marriage. If you pursue this route and the idol quits the company instead of you, the game continues on as if nothing happened, save for (hilariously) replacing the enormous “Flirt” button with an enormous button that now reads “You are faithful to your wife”.

It frequently stumbles, but the game is still engaging, and if you’re trying to be successful you’ll always have enough plates spinning at once that it’s hard to find a clear stopping point. While there’s always a lot that needs done and there’s never really a big single moment of triumph, the fun comes from sitting back and realizing that you have successfully turned a handful of recruits into genuine stars, and almost being proud as the ones who have been there the longest decide its time to graduate and move on to better things. There’s not enough at play here to be a proper tycoon game, but as a blend between tycoon games, visual novels, and like… a particularly intense clicker/idle game, it works well enough that I don’t regret spending 20 bucks on it, but I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to recommend it to anyone.