Omori (video game)

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Video game fandom
NameOMORI
Developer(s)OMOCAT
Publisher(s)OMOCAT, LLC
Reveal date2014; 2017; 2020
Release dateDecember 25, 2020 (PC); June 27, 2022 (consoles)
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows (Steam), Macintosh, Nintendo Switch, XBox One, PS4
Genre(s)Role-playing, Psychological Horror, Exploration
External link(s)Website
Xitter
Instagram
See alsoYume Nikki, Earthbound (video game), OFF (video game)
Related articles on Fanlore.

Omori (stylized OMORI) is a surrealistic psychological horror role-playing video game developed by OMOCAT and several people. In it, players follow a young teenage boy and his alter-ego as they go about and slowly unravel the mysteries surrounding an expansive dream world, as well as a traumatic past. It has been critically acclaimed both for its narrative, its handling of sensitive themes, and the soundtrack, which serve to reinforce the dual theming of the game, both by its fandom and the greater gaming community at hand.

It had a six-year development cycle, and amidst internal struggles and a notable lack of communication coming from the developers themselves, accrued a small fanbase that snowballed into a larger, albeit an understanding, one once the game was finally ready for release, spawning various fan content and theories on the way.

Canon

(As the entire story contains minor to major spoilers all throughout, one is recommended to play the game first.)

Gameplay

As the game was made using RPG Maker MV, usual conventions follow in the genre's context, with the exception of the battle section. While the majority of gameplay revolves around exploration, obtaining items and weapons, accomplishing quests, and levelling up, amongst other things, the battle system becomes notable by both employing human emotions (Joy, Anger, Sadness, Fear) and the Rock-Paper-Scissors game into the formula, as follows:

Happy is strong against Angry, while being weak against Sad;

Angry is strong against Sad, while being weak against Happy;

Sad is strong against Happy, while being weak against Angry.

Only in certain occassions and locations, such as encountering dark-toned, ghoulish entities referred to as Somethings, does the emotion of Fear manifest itself in battle.

Story

The entire storyline occurs within a local surburban area somewhere around the late 1990s (although its exact date and location have been extensively debated amongst various fan circles to this day), in which a group of former childhood friends, named Sunny, Aubrey, Kel, Hero, and Basil, all have to contend with the first one moving out of town in a matter of three days and the unfortunate tragedy that befell one of their friends, Mari (also Sunny's older sibling and sister) around four years ago. As such, it's up to the player themselves how the group, including the real-world protagonist himself, will cope with the situation at hand.

Characters

Main

Secondary

Soundtrack

The majority of the tracks in the game were composed by Pedro Silva, followed by Jami Lynne, and lastly, three (or four) tracks by Calum Bowen (whose in-stage name is bo en). Aside from that, the real-world Jukebox tracks were submitted and composed by various musicians, including Toby Fox with his own Merry CD entry.

Overall, the soundtrack by itself has been universally well-recieved, especially with a few standout tracks that capture the game's whimsical-horrific dual theme; amongst them is a version of bo en's "My Time", specifically remixed by the artist himself for the game, although its first known appearance was in the original 2014 Kickstarter trailer[1]. Due to its instrumentation and lyrics, both of which neatly fit into one of the game's endings, fans have regularly joked and memed about it being a theme for when someone falls from great heights, including staircases, and even at great lengths, with even a comment containing "Close" (the first word in said track's lyrics) under Omori-related videos instigating a further chain of comments spelling out the rest, word by word.

The soundtrack has been also recently subject to a particular audio meme activity known as ripping, pioneered by Youtube channels such as SiIvagunner and TimmyTurnersGrandDad, of which the instrumentation and composition of almost all of its tracks were swapped or mashed up with those of different ones for the sake of humor; one notable example is the track "100 Sunny" by Pedro Silva, in which it became a minor crossover meme with the ripping community due to the simplicity and adaptability of said track's samples.

Fandom Overview

Despite its already-dark themes covered throughout the game - most notably, depression, trauma, and suicide - the fandom that grew around OMORI mostly revolved around its characters, especially their dream world counterparts, as well as its surface-level whimsical and playful atmosphere, ever since in its original drawing and susequently, webcomic form. On the same same year it was publicized, a subreddit with the same name was set up, fostering thread upon thread of discussion, fanworks, and theories about the then in-development game. Naturally, once the game had been fully released, the fandom exploded in popularity, as well as the amount of fanworks dedicated to the aforementioned game, much like Undertale's case.

Shipping

Much of the game's fandom centered around the characters themselves, and the possible pairings they could make out of it, in any way; thus, the resulting dynamics revolve how the shipped pairs work out in terms of their personalities and hardships; while most fanworks involving these ships typically verge on the platonic angle, some verge onto the romantic.

As such, Sunny/Aubrey (referred to as Sunburn) is the most popular F/M ship, followed by Hero/Mari (HeroMari by canon).

In much the same way, Sunny/Kel (Suntan) and Sunny/Basil (Sunflower) are the most popular M/M ships.

In contrast, Kel/Aubrey is mostly seen as a polarizing het-type enemyslash pairing by the fandom, owing to the two characters' contrasting dynamics and their status as former childhood friends in the game's canon.

In a more general context, many fans regard pairings (both canon and fanmade) in Omori as "endearing", as put upon by this Twitter post below:

omori ships are actually adorable tbh.. i love seeing fanart of basil and sunny just being kids and holding hands (same w aubrey and kel, mari and hero, etc etc) like the way the fandom portrays the characters sometimes is honestly better than how the game does

— stanleyrific (puppington), Twitter/X, August 7, 2022

Fanon Nicknames

Some fannish nicknames for certain characters caught on, be it through intention or pure hilarity. Snuuy (for Sunny) is by far the most recognizable one, due to his naming convention being similar with "bnuuy", a alternate name for "bunny". Aside from its typical reference, it has also been used in most fandom circles to describe something with affection, or being enamored with cuteness. For the same reason, Auby has been used as an alternate name for Aubrey, itself a contraction of her fan-given real first name Aubergine.

Memes

Humor and memes connected to the game in some form or another are also massively prevalent within the fandom, even a few years after its release, with a majority of them referring to either Kel or the rest of the gang; a major example is "Kel being canon", which as it might suggest, refers to the aforementioned character being able to manifest himself into real life, and other related shenanigans, due to his hyper-positive and unwavering personality. This also extended towards the official release of the Omori Headspace plushie and vinyl figurine collections around January and June 2023, respectively, which also sparked even more humorous vigor regarding the Kel plushie itself[2].

Oftentimes, the game itself would see a number of fan-induced memetic crossovers with other video game fandoms, including Pizza Tower (with the With Special Guest meme[3]) and Rivals of Aether (through fanmade character ports).

Controversies and Drama

As expected of recent larger fandoms, especially those surrounding video games with fleshed-out characters, bouts of drama and controversies, large or miniscule, tend to break out from time to time.

Basil as a Complicated Character

It's no secret to everyone within and (to a slightly lesser degree) outside the fandom that Basil is one of the most divisive characters ever encountered, not only due to his underlying personality, but also on his role in framing the sudden death of Mari, Sunny's older sibling and sister, as a suicide, prior to the events of the game itself. Some have also implied him as gay, owing to speculations inferred from his own dialogue and portraits within the game, which depicts him as a flower boy, both in his Headspace and real world counterparts, and of which hints at his connection with Omori/Sunny as his best friend. Thus, accusations of homophobia and the like abound within certain packets of the fandom, combined with the issues of character shipping, with the Sunflower (Sunny/Basil) fan relationship itself criticized for its implied problematic angles, most notably on the LGBTQ angle.

NSFW Fanworks

Another aspect denoted as a negative within the fandom was the prevalence of NSFW fanworks, especially fan art, ever since the game's eventual release, of which a number of them depict some of the characters as performing non-consensual sexual acts or posing in certain suggestive positions. With the fact that the main cast (barring certain older characters, such as Sunny's mother and Polly, Basil's caretaker) are primarily teenagers, and that the majority of the fandom's audience are around the same age range, pedophilia and incest became one of the pressing primary concerns, alongside rather limited guidance and advice regarding content warnings on such fanworks online, especially on Twitter/X. Some fans also took their perspectives on the matter, with one musing about these fanworks' legal implications, pointing to countries and cities with strong child protection laws, on a Youtube video titled, "The Omori Fandom has a MASSIVE Problem...", in which they state the following:

The inclusion of such themes in fictional content, including fan fiction and artwork, isn't very deeply concerning to me. (...) ...it's crucial to draw a very clear line in the sand between what's acceptable and what crosses into harmful, disgusting, unacceptable territory. (...) It is our collective responsibility as [the Omori] fandom to denounce and disencourage the creation and propagation of content that glamorizes and romanticizes pedophilia and incest.

—Basil Rose

Example Fanworks


Fan Fiction

  • Endless Dreaming - by otomerson; a post-Good Ending OMORI canon diversion fanfic about Sunny promptly still finding Omori inside White Space (2023)
  • "It Really Works!" - by Wrongful; an OMORI crack fanfic in which Kel accidentally splatters some strawberry jam onto Mari's grave, reviving her in the most hilarious way possible (2021)
  • Noi Mei Oblivsci[AO3 port][4] - by delicatetomb, a post-Good Ending fanfic which posits the following question and beyond: What if Sunny's Headspace, as well as Omori and gang, somehow made it to the real world instead of just fading upon the former telling the entire truth?
  • The Dreamer - by stormoftara; a canon divergence fanfic in which Mari's tragedy never occured and Sunny confesses the truth to her (2021)

Fan Games

  • Autumn Break - an OMORI mod that explores the events that have transpired days before Mari's untimely tragedy
  • DOOMORI - an FPS fangame which humorously combines elements of DOOM (1993) and OMORI together, altering the latter's storyline by a fair amount; it has a more expanded, more bizarre sequel titled DOOMORI ETERNAL
  • DAY 224 - by Phamility; an OMORI fangame about Hero's eventual overcoming of his grief, situated within a single dark room in his and Kel's house
  • Reverie - a post-Good Ending OMORI mod which attempts to solve unanswered questions regarding Sunny's dream world, as well as the fates of characters Doughie, Biscuit, Sweetheart, and Captain Spaceboy

Fan Vids

Music

Fan Zines

Archives and Fannish Links

Fanfiction

Social Media

Wikis

Other

  • mods.one (fan-run website for custom Omori mods)

Meta/Further Reading

References

  1. ^ The original Kickstarter trailer for OMORI. (Published April 21, 2014; accessed November 14, 2023).
  2. ^ "🏀". omocat_. (Published September 2, 2022; Accessed December 11, 2023).
  3. ^ "Has anyone made this joke yet? #pizzatower #OMORI" VantaViolet_ (formerly VantaBlack). Twitter/X. (Published February 12, 2023; Accessed December 11, 2023).
  4. ^ Was later ported into AO3, and then rendered fully complete as opposed to the original FanFiction version, by Rhymeus.
OMORI
Characters Omori (character) • Sunny • Aubrey • Kel • Hero • Basil • Mari • Something • more
Ships Sunny/Aubrey • Sunny/Kel • Sunny/Basil • Aubrey/Kel • Aubrey/Basil • Aubrey/Kim • Kel/Basil • Hero/Mari • more
Locations White Space • Neighbor's Room • Vast Forest • Otherworld • Pyrefly Forest • Orange Oasis • Deep Well • Black Space • Faraway Town •more
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