🎮 Thoughts: Omori

Credit: OMOCAT, LLC.

Disclaimer: These thoughts are entirely my own!

Total hours played: 30

My first encounter with Omori came through conversations with my coworkers. They had finished it and spoke about it with high praise. Around the same time, Omori kept showing up week after week on Tumblr’s Fandometrics video games list. Naturally, as a member of the team that creates those weekly rankings, I was thoroughly intrigued.

The art style of the game immediately caught my attention. I’m not an avid indie gamer, where top-down perspective games are more common than in big AAA titles, but Omori stood out. The illustrations and animations I saw in GIFs were striking, with a refreshing contrast to the polished 3D styles I usually gravitate towards in the PlayStation store.

What drew me in the most, though, were the strong elements of psychological horror. It wasn’t just about jump scares or loud sounds that startle you but the eeriness and the feeling of someone watching you that pulls me in instantly. When horror is done well in any form of entertainment, I’m instantly intrigued and want to learn more.

I was also looking for something to play between my intense 90-hour games (something of a palette cleanser, if you will) and with all of that in mind, I picked up Omori.

Some spoilers ahead so if you’re planning on playing the game, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The ART DIRECTION 🎨

There’s a lot to unpack here, but if I had to summarize the visual style of the game in one phrase, it would be intentionally unsettling. The combination of stylized 2D illustrations and realistic photographic assets, though fundamentally different mediums, creates a constant sense of unease. The two styles don’t quite belong in each other’s dimensions, and that dissonance is exactly what makes the visuals so effective and haunting.

Map of Headspace

One of the most interesting and important artistic choices in Omori is that Omori himself is rendered in black and white, while everyone else appears in shades of purple. Visually, he blends in more with White Space (the empty, sterile space where the player begins the game). This design choice reflects the “safe space” Sunny has constructed for himself in sleep, but it also symbolizes avoidance and emotional repression. White Space contains almost nothing: just a door, a cat, a tissue box, a lightbulb, a TV, and a journal. The sparse environment mirrors Sunny’s emotional detachment. As you flip through the journal, you find pages filled with unsettling illustrations in black, white, and red. The palette evokes immediate feelings of dread and anxiety. The overwhelming whiteness of the space adds to the sense of unease. Right from the beginning, you can feel that something isn’t quite right. It’s a subtle but powerful way for the game sets its psychological tone.

The color palette used for Headspace is incredibly fun, filled with bright purples, blues, and yellows that emphasized the joy and lightness of the atmosphere, creating an immediate contrast with the earthy, realistic tone of the real world. Headspace makes you forget about the real world. It also feels very childlike. Its surreal characters and whimsical settings offer an intentional escape, perfectly aligned with the game’s underlying theme of running away from real-life problems. The characters you encounter in Headspace are all purple, which help to distinguish the difference between each character’s Headspace self and their real-world counterpart, who not only look older but also have distinct color palettes and character designs.

As you play the game, you find black keycaps scattered across Headspace, which eventually unlock Black Space. I really appreciate that these keycaps were black, as it brings back the feeling of dread and uneasiness back into the player, no matter where on the map these keycaps are found. The visuals in Black Space take things to an entirely different level. As you fall into Black Space, the dark, disturbing imagery behind each door symbolizes Sunny’s repressed trauma and despair following the events with Mari. These haunting visuals quite literally follow Omori through each fragmented space, building an atmosphere of dread as he’s forced to confront what he's buried deep within himself.

I love how every space is distinguishable from each other. The horrific art direction in Black Space starkly contrasts the dreamlike, vibrant world of Headspace, which in turn contrasts the blank yet unsettling canvas of White Space. Where Headspace is colorful and clear, Black Space is fragmented and disorienting. It is a visual reflection of grief, guilt, and the unraveling of memory.

One more thing I have to mention is how excited I was when I discovered you could change the background image to your liking. That little detail gave me an instant hit of serotonin. I probably spent way more time than most people just deciding which one I wanted to keep on screen. It’s a small feature, but the extra care in the art direction really elevated the overall game experience for me.

The Storytelling 📖

I’ve noticed that the games I usually play tend to center around charismatic characters who rally their friends to save the world, so to speak. Sunny is far from that archetype. He’s a reclusive teenage boy who has experienced profound trauma—so much so that he hasn’t spoken to his friends in years. In fact, a specific event caused by Sunny’s actions leads to the group’s complete falling out.

Headspace polaroids

The story of Omori is layered and emotionally intense, accompanied by numerous trigger warnings. It begins with Omori waking up in White Space, a blank, surreal void, with no memory of what came before. Upon stepping through a mysterious door, he enters Headspace—a colorful and whimsical world where he finds Aubrey, Kel, Hiro, Basil, and his older sister, Mari. The group makes their way to Basil’s house, where they begin looking through a photo album. However, when a disturbing photo slips out, Basil start to panic and Omori is suddenly transported back to White Space, and the only way forward is for him to stab himself. At this point, the player is jolted into another reality. A boy named Sunny wakes up in the middle of the night, revealing that Omori is actually a dream-world projection of Sunny himself, and that everything that just unfolded was part of Sunny’s subconscious.

As the game progresses, you gradually piece together the pivotal event through dialogue, character interactions, and subtle visual clues. One of the things I really appreciate is how you can become so immersed in the cheerful, whimsical vibes of Headspace that you momentarily forget the underlying tension, until Something happens (hehe). It’s a brilliant reflection of Sunny’s own avoidance of the painful reality he must eventually confront.

That confrontation, however, also depends on the player’s choices, as Omori has multiple endings. The butterfly effect begins right from the start of the game, meaning that to fully experience everything it has to offer, you’d need to play through it multiple times from beginning to end. Did I personally do that? No… but I did look up the different endings afterward.

I absolutely love how the game uses polaroids as visual storytelling devices. The different sets of photos you discover and collect throughout the game beautifully illustrate the dynamics between characters. They also capture key moments that had a significant emotional impact on both Sunny and Basil. The Black Space polaroids, in particular, are an incredibly powerful storytelling tool and, for me, the most impactful part of the game. The buildup to that sequence is masterfully written; you can truly feel the weight of Sunny’s (and Basil’s) trauma and how deeply it shaped their lives in the aftermath.

Gaming system visuals

The GAMEPLAY 🗡️

Turn-based games usually stress me out because the rounds can feel long and drawn out, but in Omori, the stress comes from the storytelling itself. The gameplay isn’t just there for challenge; it’s a tool that pushes the narrative forward in emotionally impactful ways.

One of the most interesting narrative–gameplay mechanics in Omori is the use of emotions to influence battles. Each character’s available moves reflect their personality and role within the group. For example, Hiro is the main healer, which aligns with his role as the responsible older brother who looks after everyone. To succeed in combat, you need to understand how emotions are triggered, how they interact (like which emotions are strong or weak against others), and how to use that emotional logic strategically to defeat enemies. It’s a smart system that ties gameplay directly to the characters’ inner lives.

The multiple endings in Omori also stem from the choices you make throughout the gameplay. Do you keep fighting the enemy, or do you give up? These decisions shape the path you take, unlocking different scenarios, dialogue, and ultimately, different endings. The gameplay and narrative are deeply intertwined, which keeps the experience emotionally engaging and high-impact all the way through.

The MUSIC 🎶

The soundtrack in Omori is a powerful storytelling tool on its own. It ranges from dreamy, playful tunes that evoke childhood memories to unsettling ambient pieces that create a creeping sense of dread, sometimes within the same track, like “Photograph.” Each space in the game has a distinct sonic identity that reinforces the emotional tone, whether it’s the warmth of friendship or the overwhelming weight of trauma.

Many tracks use non-conventional tempos to subtly destabilize the listener, heightening unease. The use of static, distortion, and horror soundbites creates the sensation that Something is crawling just beneath the surface, watching your every move. I especially appreciate how some tracks are variations of earlier ones. Each time the melody returns, it feels slightly warped or suffocating, mirroring Sunny’s growing anxiety and dread. The music doesn’t just accompany the story, it amplifies the game’s central themes at exactly the right moments.

waiting for something to happen? 🚪

The story of Omori is truly incredible, easily one of the most memorable narrative experiences I’ve had in a game. The visuals are not only stunning but incredibly distinct, creating an aesthetic that immediately sets it apart from anything else I’ve played. The game’s art direction is both charming and haunting, often switching between the two to mirror the emotional highs and lows of the story. That contrast really helped ground the experience in the protagonist’s fractured sense of reality.

What impressed me most was how every component of the game felt purposeful. The music, the mechanics, the pacing (even the seemingly small details like customizable backgrounds) were all used to enhance and deepen the storytelling. The emotion-based combat system, in particular, stood out to me as a brilliant narrative device. It wasn't just about strategy, it was about understanding the characters’ emotional states and how they influence one another. Each music track, visual transition, and design choice layered together to create an immersive, emotional atmosphere that stayed with me long after the game ended.

I would wholeheartedly recommend Omori to anyone looking for a meaningful, emotionally resonant experience, with the important caveat that it contains heavy themes and multiple trigger warnings. It’s not a light playthrough, but it’s absolutely worth it. If OMOCAT ever releases another title, I’d definitely be on a lookout for it!

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Thank you for reading! Want to read more game thoughts? Check out my other entries here!