ao oni
in ao oni you play as some kid who went into a haunted house with a bunch of friends that was surprise actually haunted and your character acutally says the cliche dont worry monsters dont exist thing before the thing shows up like what a dumbass way to go thats like actually summoning the monster. needless to say the monster goes and appears and breaks up the scooby doo gang and its up to you to escape the stupid mansion without dying via convenient puzzles while also dodging the oni who is one of those alien guys from the im blue music video after a thousand hours of photoshop. its supposed to be a horror game but aside from momentary jumps when the oni appears its really not and you even get used to the oni and it just blows. game lasts an hour or two assuming you dont get stuck for hours and use a guide and every moment is a trip through boringville via the tediousbus provided by mediocre inc. the puzzles arent any better and by not better i mean probably worse because its what youre trying to solve most of the time and the real reason the game slows to a halt.
anyway gameplay is standard rpgmaker puzzle aka walk around and press z on everything except they swapped x and z so now its press x on everything and that tripped me up why the forget would they do that. the big difference between this and any puzzle game that is actually good is the amount of either loving whack logic or luck that this stuff would require to actually solve like what is this stuff. this game has the worst puzzles in comparison to every game ive played so far because they are just so loving difficult and not because of skill. like if any of you played ib or the witchs house this takes those puzzles and ramps them to extreme bullstuff mode because the solutions are mostly obfuscated as forget and get stupid real quick. i actually had to use a guide because of how much stuff this game pulled out of its ass on the puzzles and i do not regret it because what the actual forget was going on in the head of the dev when he made this. like seriously i cannot understate the puzzles in this game being bullstuff throughout because of weird spots to press x on and other stupid stuff. this is not a game you should play for the puzzles and this is also not a game should should play period because the other part of the game is equally stuff and seems like someone ported the renderman mod into rpgmaker. the horror part of the game is pretty forgetin simple in that the big ass purple smurf tries to kill you and you have to run away from him. like thats it you see him and you just go away and after some time he forgets off or you hide in a closet or jail cell and he forgets off faster. there is no depth he just locks on to your ass and chases you until he forgets off this is the entire horror part of the game and it isnt scary except maybe the first time he appears and you just run from that forgeter and its like your mind suddenly realizes "oh i dont give a stuff" and the game is boring again. all subsequent appearances of this forgeter are either scripted or he just pops up and you bail into a few rooms and hes done. the only reason you will ever die from him is if you accidentally corner yourself like a dumbass or if he bugs the forget out and grabs you from the stairs because this game is terrible because you outrun him and will outrun him every single time. even if you die its just like oh no tagged you game over and then you go back to the last place you saved and there no auto saves so get ready to save constantly motherforgeter. its not scary. this repeats for about an hour or two. do not play this game.
story is like if you took a scooby doo episode except you removed the dog and removed anything interesting and scooby doo was not interesting in the first place so they had to dig real forgetin deep for this. you and like 3-4 other forgeters i forgot because of how much i dont care about the characters go into spooky's house jump scares (which i should review probably ill add that one to the list) anyway after entering you hear some stuff in another room and you come back and you friends are scattered throughout the house and you have to find them without dying and thats it we're done there isnt even some sort of enigmatic 2deep4u off backstory we have nothing to go on except if want to you really dig into the bullstuff and im sure there are fan theories about it but i dont actually care and i dont think anyone cares because the games not like here we have a secret moral message that only those of us enlightened and cultured enough will grasp there is just nothing here and im probably just stretching my word count to make the review seem longer by even writing a story section. characterization is non existent much like the story and i dont really care about it either because no one does christ this game sucks but anything in this section is unrelated to it sucking so you might as well not even read this oops too late youre here now motherforgeter.
graphics are pretty important to this game considering its whole gimmick is that freaky photoshop abomination is trying to kill you except i dont care because its not inherently scary but if someone actually made an inherently scary horror game monster i think the entire industry would stuff its pants. anyway photoshop man looks freaky for maybe 5 seconds until your brain is like oh wait a second i dont care again and it just exists. all of the gimmicks they try to pull with its face being too spooky lose their horror factor immediately because its just not a loving scary monster and its really just not i mean i think that generally i am a massive pusillanimous individual and this thing was just so boring. the other graphics in this game are like entirely pixel except for some portrait head shots when talking and the pixel art probably is the worst so far maybe because this game is old as stuff and maybe not but either way it doesnt hold up and unlike other lesser critics i dont give games a free pass just because its old but then again i also dont give a stuff about graphics unless they look loving awful and these arent awful enough to matter so they show what they are trying to portray and stuff and it works but really just play the witchs house if you ever think of doing this game. sound is i guess supposed to be spooky but i actually dont care and it doesnt help because the sound can only add to whatever is spooky in the first place and this game just isnt scary at a base level so it just sort of slides off. the only music track i remember in this game is the one when the oni pops up and its like oh the onis here better run in a circle to avoid him again and the basement track because that was like a 10 second loop and it was obnoxious and at the end of the game so i guess i remembered it better because im writin the review immediately after playing it but either way its basically nonexistent when it comes to mattering. sound effects are also nonexistent on the impact meter but at least they dont have the stupid menu sound i hate but again its sound effects no one cares.
overall this game feels like a stuff version of the witchs house in like every aspect and really should be avoided by anyone who enjoys playing games at all. theres some fan games i wont play unless like the entire thread rallys behind the and im not sure how much better they could possibly be if they build on such a broken base gameplay so i dont give a stuff if you suggest one because "its better" ill kick your ass. just avoid this game if you dont hate yourself and play the witchs house like i cannot say this enough the witchs house is way better than this bullstuff if you see anyone say this game is good tell them to forget off and then link them to this thread so that everyone can virtually peer pressure them into changing their stuff opinion.
good time waster tier
profit motive
decent time waster tier
the witch's house
sluggish morss
space funeral
mimicry man
mediocre time waster tier
ib
mogeko castle
boring tier
presentable liberty
lieat
ao oniworse than Riddler tier
the gray garden
off tier
off
worse than off tier
wadanohara
also this has a movie or something
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzfjldLTxU
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