Okaeri
Official Description (Ad Blurb)
Okaeri is a Japanese horror game about a middle school girl and her mother who recently moved to a new house.
It's 6:00 pm, coming back home expecting a welcome from your mom, instead, she finds unexpected things happening before her eyes.
The game is inspired by short omniverse Japanese horror films.
Key Features:
Immersive experience: An atmospheric photo-realistic graphics intensifies the horror experience. The minimalistic design makes the player fully immersed in the ambiance.
VHS film aesthetic: VHS aesthetic emulates look and feel of CRT screens including phosphor screen trail and bleeding, VHS tape noise, interlacing, and jitter in the analog video signal adding extra immersion to the horror experience.
A short narrative exploration: An exploration heavily focused on ambiance and narrative. Collect pieces of the past and present to find out what's going on from the protagonist's perspective with native Japanese voice acting which enhances the player's experience. People who love games like Gone Home and The First Tree might love this part of the game. The testers played for about 20-40min.
Gameplay: This game is played primarily like a "walking simulator."
Psychological horror: You are alone, but feels like someone is watching you. Keep going and you'll find out.
Controls:
Move: WASD + Mouse
Interact: E
Options: ESC
Source: Steam Store Description
Spellings
- おかえり - Japanese spelling
Promos
Reviews
Players
Average score: 2.5 out of 5 (based on 2 ratings with 1 reviews)
Rushed take on a disturbing story
The Good
The sound design in this game is delightfully creepy and genuinely unnerving. The gameplay and aesthetic choices - like slow character movement, very limited vision (especially if you don't disable the filter), and vague directions - are far more uneven. On one hand, they do create a bizarre feeling of isolation and being lost in a bad dream,
The Bad
on the other hand they also get tiring relatively quickly. The one exploration-based puzzle you have to solve is extremely simplistic and doesn't really have much to do with the game's themes and atmosphere.
When it comes to the story, it feels like its serious themes were treated rather half-heartedly and mostly just as an excuse for creating creepy atmosphere and shocking the player.
The Bottom Line
And while the simple, exploration-based concept for the game might have been a good idea in itself, it doesn't provide the psychological depth for the ending to really work. 4/10
Windows · by Pegarange (296) · 2023
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Kam1Kaz3NL77.
Additional contributors: Rik Hideto.
Game added January 3, 2020. Last modified February 5, 2023.