How OMORI Was Made and Why People Thought it Was a Scam

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OMORI’s origins go all the way back to  more than a decade ago. In December 2011,   an artist with the pseudo name Omocat, created  an illustration of a boy, who she named Omori,   and shared it on her blog. Omori isn’t just the  name of the boy, it’s also short for hikikomori,   a phenomenon coined in 1998 by Japanese  psychologist Tamaki Saitō. Hikikomori is   used to describe people that have completely  withdrawn from society and choose to stay at   home in total isolation. The term refers  to both the phenomenon and the isolated   individuals themselves. According to multiple  surveys, it’s estimated there’s more than a   million people aged between 15 and 64 that  lead the lifestyle of a hikikomori in Japan. Unsurprisingly, Omori, the boy in the drawing, is  also a hikikomori and his creator kept making new   illustrations, turning it into an ongoing  webcomic that explored Omori’s day-to-day   activities. While a lot of the material seemed  fun and quirky, some of it went to darker places.   Omocat never confirmed she experienced  the need for total isolation herself,   but she did mention in her blog that the  webcomic was a very personal project,   born from a need to cope with problems  during a very confusing part of her life. Drawing has been Omocat’s passion for as long  as she can remember. Around the age of four,   her parents would play her a  lot of Studio Ghibli movies,   which started her love for anime. Since then,  she began combining her two interests. Her   mother wanted to encourage Omocat’s enthusiasm  for art and enrolled her in her first drawing   class when she was six years old. Here, she  copied anime posters over and over again,   learning the basics of drawing. While her love  for anime really started to take shape a couple   of years later thanks to shows like Sailor Moon,  Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing and more,   she felt she couldn’t openly talk about  it at school without being made fun of. Therefore, when she would draw comics of her  and her friends, she tried to push her own style   forward in an effort to hide her anime influence.  Although her love for anime was pushed to the   background, her creative side was thriving. So  much so that she became known as “the artist”   in school. “It became something attached to my  identity that I was not willing to lose.” Over   the years, she went through a variety of style  changes to find something that works for her,   but she admitted she never really succeeded.  Despite taking figure drawing classes, painting   classes and even 3D classes to learn maya, simply  drawing anime inspired art with pencil and paper,   or a tablet and Photoshop, remained her  favorite way to express herself. When   the time came to go to college, there  was only ever one option in her mind. “I ended up going to art college because  I couldn’t imagine being anything but an   artist. There was a huge stigma around drawing  anime there because it wasn’t considered “real   art.” It wasn’t so much the teachers, but mostly  the other students. At some point, I realized   that if no one else was willing to draw anime at  school, I would stand out by doing just that.” Needless to say, she leaned into drawing  anime harder than ever before and completely   rekindled her two passions. By this point, she had  started a blog and gained some popularity already   by sharing her artwork. Omocat mentioned  she was never good at making friends and   therefore used the internet as an outlet to  build up her career. The internet provided   the opportunity for her to be anonymous as an  individual and instead focus on establishing   her Omocat brand. She said in an interview she  likes that she never had to reveal her face to   get to where she is today. The character Omori  was born during her years in college and the   more she explored his identity online by adding  to the webcomic, the more she felt he needed to   leave the space he was confined in. Of course, the  irony wasn’t lost on her. Creating a bigger story,   a bigger adventure for a hikikomori character  to explore seemed contradictory. Yet, Omocat   felt compelled for him to be part of something  more than the white space he had been stuck in. In January 2013, Omocat announced she had been  working on a graphic novel based on OMORI and   would be an estimated 12 chapters long. What’s  more, an entire OMORI fashion line was also in   the works. While she was drafting the chapters  however, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the   story seemed too linear. Instead, she wanted  the audience to be able to explore outside of   the pages and help her characters make choices.  Basically, she wanted people to experience the   story as if they were the character instead  of seeing it from afar. Omocat realized all   her ideas were coming to her in the form of  gameplay. It seemed a graphic novel just wasn’t   the right medium for OMORI to be a part of, it  needed to be fully interactive. It needed to   be a video game. The only things holding her back  was the lack of time she was already experiencing   because of other projects and because she felt  she lacked the necessary skills to make a game. Coincidentally, during this time, she noticed  RPG Maker VX Ace was on sale and without much   hesitation, decided to buy it for her and  her friends. The very next day her mind was   made up and called her friends Pedro Silva and  Jami Lynne to ask “wanna do something crazy?”,   and invited them to become a part of the project.  They were both very excited about the prospect of   making a video game together and suddenly, to  Omocat at least, what seemed like an impossible   task before now seemed possible. Pedro, best  known for the project Slime Girls and Jami,   also known as Space Boyfriend at the time,  are both musicians and immediately went to   work on the soundtrack, while Omocat started  planning out the game and sketching concept art. Before we move on, I’d like to talk about this  video’s sponsor, Brilliant. Brilliant is an   online platform that aims to help people excel  in math and science by replacing traditional   lectures with hands-on, interactive problem  solving. CEO and founder Sue Khim launched the   company back in 2012 and in May 2013, she further  outlined her vision for one-of-a-kind interactive   visualizations and intuitive explanations during  a TedX Talk. By August 2013, she was able to   raise funding from a number of investors, as  well as scaling active users up to 100,000. Today, Brilliant has over 10 million people  teaching themselves to see essential skills   such as foundational math, foundational logic, and  finance in a whole new way. Lots of people are too   intimidated by math, physics and engineering,  me being one of them, but using Brilliant really   helped me build confidence by engaging with fun  storytelling that’s focused on guided problem   solving. All within a user-friendly environment  where I wasn’t worried about making mistakes.   All courses are crafted by award-winning teachers,  researchers, and professionals from MIT, Caltech,   Duke and Google, just to name a few. To get  started for free, visit brilliant.org/thatguyglen   or click on the link in the description. The first  200 that use the link will get 20% off Brilliant's   annual premium subscription. Brilliant,  learn interactively. Now back to the video. There was never any doubt in Omocat’s mind  what the right genre for Omori was. “I'm a   HUGE fan of Earthbound. Nostalgia and personal  preferences are a very big reason why I have   decided to make OMORI an RPG. I'm not a game  designer or anything. I've never made a game   before. When I was drawing the OMORI graphic  novel I kept imagining it as a pixelated RPG,   which is exactly how I plan to do it.  The reason it's not point-and-click   is because I didn't envision it  that way. It has to be an RPG.” Aside from Earthbound, the team was also heavily  influenced by games like Yume Nikki, Pokémon,   Dragon Quest, Animal Crossing, Kingdom Hearts,  The Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem and many others.   Inspiration for OMORI didn’t just come from games,  as they also found inspiration in things the   developers loved as kids, for instance anime shows  like “Fullmetal Alchemist”, “Higurashi When They   Cry” and several manga like “20th Century Boys”  and “Yotsubato!”. Works by Taiyō Matsumoto also   helped shape the look and feel of Omori. When it  comes to the soundtrack, the team drew inspiration   from Vocaloid producers such as Kagerou Project,  Mr. nekobolo, Mr. Neru and many more. As you   can tell from this list, most of the game’s  inspiration generally came from Japanese animation   and pop culture, something Omocat, Pedro and Jami  all grew up with and have a close attachment to. As mentioned before, Omocat imagined OMORI  as a pixelated RPG, partially because she   wanted to infuse the project with a  feeling of nostalgia. On top of that,   she wanted to sort of recreate the rawness  of Earthbound, Omocat explained. See,   a lot of the developers on Earthbound had never  worked on a game before nor was game development   very advanced at the time. Now, Omocat didn’t  have a lot of experience with pixel art herself,   but she thought her inexperience could hopefully  convey the same kind of charm in OMORI as it did   in the case of Earthbound. To make the project  stand out more from all the other pixel art indie   games at the time, she did plan on inserting  her signature artstyle in various cutscenes. In terms of the story, Omocat decided to tackle  subjects that most games don’t deal with,   namely depression, anxiety, fear of loss, fear of  growing up and fear of change, just to name a few.   A difficult challenge as these subjects require  a tough balancing act to convey just right,   but Omocat felt she could portray them in a  realistic and relatable manner. A lot of themes   throughout the game reflect personal experiences,  which made the writing process more visceral. In July 2013, she used her blog to announce her  plans of turning the early stages of the graphic   novel into a game. The next couple of months were  spent creating pixel art and drawings for various   assets, composing music and lastly, preparing  for the Kickstarter campaign that was originally   planned for the coming winter. It eventually got  delayed to April 2014 due to the sheer amount of   preparation that was needed to get everything  set up perfectly for the launch. For example,   the trailer alone took a ton of work according  to Omocat. She drew all the animations by hand,   took all the photos and edited the whole video  frame by frame as a giant gif in Photoshop. That’s when she started to realize that  the workload from OMORI would put too   much stress on her body and mind considering  her other projects and the timeframe she had   planned to release it. Creating all the  art was one thing, but also taking care   of the programming was something else entirely.  Despite choosing RPG Maker as the game’s engine,   which is one of the more user-friendly development  tools, it would still require a ton of work to   complete the project, especially because Omocat  had no prior programming experience. Luckily,   right around this time, she met an  experienced RPG Maker specialist,   called Archeia. Archeia has had experience  with the engine since she was 13 years old   and is also an active contributor to the  community by sharing resources and helping to   create games. She agreed to join the project  and became the main programmer for OMORI. Omocat was really relieved about Archeia’s  addition to the team, as it was really important   to her to develop the game using RPG Maker. Not  only is she a fan of games made in the engine,   she also wanted to promote the platform, because  it supports and provides the tools for DIY   storytelling and game development. According  to her, people look down on RPG Maker and   don’t consider it a valid authoring platform,  at least back in 2014. Omocat wanted to prove   the engine was just as valid as any other game  dev engine, in the hopes to inspire others with   no programming experience whatsoever to just  go for it and make the game of their dreams   anyway. Furthermore, she wanted to show people  that video games are more than just products. “Having gone through art school, I’ve always  felt that games were viewed as money-making   products instead of art; but just because it  is commercial doesn’t mean that it’s not good:   in fact, I would argue the exact opposite.  Games do everything that art is supposed to   do and beyond. It mixes visuals, writing, music  and sound, storytelling, and interaction and puts   it all in one package. Games are so successful  at what it does that there is a whole culture   based on them. As creating games becomes easier  in the future, I want to get across the idea that   game-making is an art medium. I am creating an art  piece called OMORI and my medium is a video game.” Omocat kept the team as small as possible.  It meant more work for everyone involved,   but she believed a smaller, more focused  team would better keep the original vision   intact. Early on in development, she came  up with the idea of adding a jukebox to the   game that would play songs made by various  artists. During her search for musicians,   she stumbled on the song My Time by bo en and  immediately she felt like the song was made for   OMORI. After contacting him, the song became the  accompanying music to the first OMORI trailer,   which was released on April 21st, 2014 along  with the launch of the Kickstarter campaign.   Within a single day, the team had reached their  funding goal of $22,000. The following weeks,   every single stretch goal was funded as well,  except for the last one which featured a PS   Vita port. In the end, 5,910 backers pledged  more than $200,000 to see OMORI fully realized. Initially, OMORI was intended to be a small  one-year project, with backers receiving the   game and other perks in May 2015. As time went  on, the game kept growing in scale and the team   quickly came to the realization that they needed  more developers. Fortunately, Archeia, thanks to   her involvement with the RPG Maker community, knew  plenty of people that could help and Omocat didn't   hesitate contacting them. Omocat mostly spent  the rest of 2014 organizing Kickstarter rewards,   rewriting the story, writing dialogue, planning  in-game quests, drawing concept art and in-game   assets, as well as creating drafts for the  in-game animations. It’s also around this   time that she started to seclude herself more and  almost stopped playing video games altogether. She   didn’t want anything influencing her original  vision for OMORI from this point onward. By January 2015, it was confirmed the game would  officially miss its initial launch date and was   now scheduled to be released in late 2015-mid  2016. In May 2015, Archeia updated the community   about major changes under the hood. For example,  GPU support was now implemented to make everything   run much smoother. Additionally, a custom map  editor was now in the works and the game’s   emotion system was also being reworked. Later  that year, she also clarified the team had been   very busy porting the game to the newest version  of RPG Maker, which was RPG Maker MV at the time.   While this was a very time consuming process, it  would greatly benefit development in the long run,   especially for porting the game to MacOS.  Unfortunately, something unexpected happened. The next public progress update wasn’t until  April 2016. At this point, backers were starting   to express their frustration about the lack of  communication and even began accusing Omocat and   the rest of the team of taking people’s money  without the intention of ever completing the   product backers had paid for. These accusations  continued until the game’s release and only grew   in numbers from here on out. The fact that the  devs weren’t replying to people’s comments on   Kickstarter and social media only led to more  frustration. Omocat clarified that the lack of   communication was due to the fact that she  wanted to keep certain portions of the game   under wraps. Furthermore, the newest version of  RPG Maker had been suffering from a memory leak,   as well as sound lag and kept the  team extremely busy and on edge.   While the creators of the engine were busy  rewriting core scripts to fix these issues,   the OMORI team had no choice but to  halt certain aspects of development. The new release date was now set to  fall 2016, but Omocat had already   acknowledged how difficult it was to gauge  how long development will actually take,   because she keeps coming up with new ideas to  enhance the game. She ensured the community   how hard everyone on the team was working and  disclosed some big changes behind the scenes.   A new programmer named Yami had joined the  OMORI team and was assisting them with the   new and improved turn-based battle system.  Originally, battles looked very similar to   those in Earthbound, but eventually the developers  wanted to create something more unique that would   make better use of their emotion system by adding  new features such as a heart rate bar and combos. Additionally, Omocat herself had  been very busy implementing many   types of media such as watercolor,  pencil, acrylic paint, clay models,   photographs and many types of digital  art, all while managing to make it look   and feel cohesive. The decision was also made  to change all cutscenes to a first-person view,   causing her to scrap a lot of art she had been  working on. On top of that, the enemy art was   changed from pixel art to hand-drawn animations.  Lastly, they made some alterations to the story   and instead of having multiple endings with very  tight-knit routes, it was now changed to be more   open-ended and focused on smaller individual  stories rather than one story as a whole. The months leading up to fall 2016 were spent  hiring more team members to assist with artwork,   programming, level design, balancing stats and  so on. Moreover, no less than 150 unique NPCs   and a high number of quests were completed at  this stage in development. In December 2016,   the team informed Kickstarter backers that they  needed more time to flesh out the game and fix   older plugins that were now incompatible with  the updated RPG Maker engine. More information   about that game’s release was revealed early  2017, along with a brand new trailer that   showed off a lot of the games' improvements.  While the new trailer was a good indicator   OMORI was making progress, Omocat had to  confess things weren’t going as planned. “When the Kickstarter was launched, I  underestimated the amount of time to create a   video game and I now know pressing such a short  deadline on myself and our small team was naive   and placed an incomprehensible amount of pressure  on us as the release dates kept getting pushed   back.” She proceeded the Kickstarter update  by going into detail about all the technical   issues they were still experiencing with RPG  Maker and ended the message by reiterating   how dedicated she and the whole team was to  give players something that’s worth the wait. “We hope that everyone understands that we are far  from slacking off on this project and have been   extremely busy working on the game while keeping  up-to-date with everything technically. As we   have mentioned before, some of us have even been  developing health problems related to overworking   and stress. I am aware that another release date  delay will come with a fair amount of backlash,   but we can’t just “pump out a game”, especially  one that performs inadequately. Our team is   extremely dedicated and has been working on  this game almost every day for the past few   years. We want to give you something that  shows our work to its fullest potential,   so we will continue working every day  this year to bring you that experience.” And that’s exactly what the team did. In  fact, to keep up with the amount of work,   more developers joined the team in 2017. It gave  Omocat the opportunity to transition more into   the role of a director and writer, as other team  members were now creating the bulk of the artwork.   Although this was good news in terms of speeding  up development, certain people were worried the   developers were running out of money. It had been  three years since the Kickstarter campaign went   live and the team had grown quite a bit since  then. Not to mention the ever expanding scope of   the game. However, Omocat addressed these concerns  and said that funding was not an issue and later   clarified that yes, the Kickstarter money had been  completely drained, but she was using the earnings   from selling her clothing and other merchandise to  keep development going for as long as necessary. The first half of 2017 was mainly spent fixing  all the RPG Maker issues and making sure all   assets and plugins were successfully converted  from version VX Ace to MV. Meanwhile, the members   in charge of the art and gameplay systems took  this opportunity to overhaul and improve certain   elements. For instance, multiple level designs  received a makeover, new pixel-art animations   were added and the battle system received a new  mechanic (Active Chain Skill) to make combat   more dynamic. The latter half of 2017 saw the devs  working hard to organize a live event in October,   where people were welcome to play a demo of  OMORI. It resulted in lots of useful feedback   which proved essential to create not only a better  version of the demo, but the whole game in itself. In April 2018, the upgraded demo was released  exclusively for Kickstarter backers. Bugs were   fixed, cutscenes were polished and enemy  encounters were better balanced. As for the   full game, the developers mainly focused on  cleaning up the battle system and menu code,   as well as updating their technical  documentation with the aim of improving   performance and smoothing out future development  tasks. Releasing the new demo to almost   6000 backers naturally produced even more feedback  that once again proved to be vital for a number   of changes that were revealed in 2019, such as  implementing a hotkey for switching party members,   improving the UI layout to be more stylistically  consistent with the rest of the game, fleshing out   several dungeons and puzzles, adding more sprites  and hand-drawn animations, the list goes on. Even though the team was making very good  progress, they didn’t want to make any   promises regarding a firm launch date just yet and  instead only mentioned they were aiming for an end   of 2019 release. When December rolled around, the  devs revealed OMORI was finally finished. Though,   it wasn’t going to be released just yet as they  needed more time to test and polish up the game.   Months went by with no sign of a release date.  The growing number of people that felt betrayed   and abandoned by the team was now at an all-time  high. The presumed narrative that Omocat stole   the Kickstarter money without the intention  of producing and releasing a game with it,   was now unavoidable on social media. Despite  updating people on the development progress as   much as possible and releasing a working  demo, OMORI had become sort of a symbol,   a meme for making fun of games  that would never see a release. Fans luckily didn’t have to wait too long for  another status update. In March 2020, the creators   assured development was still on track and they  were still focusing on ironing out bugs and adding   extra animations, extra content and other final  touches. On the 30th of November, a new trailer   revealed Omori’s launch day: the 25th of December,  2020. It marked the end of a string of delays,   because on that day, after 6 six long years of  nothing but hard work and dedication, Omori was   finally released. For many backers, the wait had  been worth it. The game received many positive   reviews that praised Omori’s depiction of anxiety  and depression, although some people criticized   the story for sometimes being too dark. All in  all however, the quality of the writing and tone   were compared to those of games like Earthbound,  Undertale and Yume Nikki, with a good balance of   funny and serious moments that make for a gaming  experience that players will never forget. Additionally, the art direction was perhaps the  most critically lauded, with Destructoid’s review   describing it as “nothing short of phenomenal”.  Criticism aimed towards the turn-based combat was   mixed as some found it boring once you find a good  strategy, while others called it well-executed and   applauded the way it makes your party feel like  a cohesive unit. Overall, the game turned out a   big success and delivered on its promises back  during its Kickstarter campaign and then some. Obviously, it was a big relief for anyone that  was looking forward to OMORI all these years,   but it was an even bigger relief for Omocat. She  shared a heartfelt message on Twitter three days   after the game’s release that goes as followed:  “I dedicated everything to OMORI. For the past   few years, I’ve worked on the game from the  time I woke up until the time I slept and on   most weekends. I could not let myself rest until  the game was done. Even through difficulties,   I powered through and dealt with my feelings  by funneling them into OMORI. And though   some parts of the experience were incredibly  stressful, when I actually worked on OMORI,   whether I was programming, writing, or  making assets, I truly felt at peace.” “I’ve had a lot to say, but I haven’t shared very  much so I feel bad for that. I’ve always felt   horrible about grossly underestimating the initial  release date and not being able to post updates   frequently enough. Because of that, when people  started accusing me of things left and right, I   felt like I deserved it even though none of it was  true. OMORI was never a scam. I always intended to   fulfill all Kickstarter backer rewards. I’m  happy I can say that with confidence now.” It’s important to remember that Omocat had  never developed a game before OMORI. When   development started back in 2014, she was still a  teenager going to college to become a professional   illustrator. This, combined with the fact she  had zero game design and development experience,   shows how impressive it is that she was able  to direct and deliver such a high quality game   at all. Omocat has mentioned it’s unlikely OMORI  will ever receive a sequel or other game-related   spin-offs, but many other ideas outside the world  of gaming are being considered. As for Omocat’s   own future is concerned, it’s uncertain she’ll  step back into game development any time soon,   but her creative spirit is still  very much alive. “After all this,   I know without a doubt that I still want  to create even more things… and even better   things… That part of me hasn’t changed. It’s all  I ever wanted to do and I want to do it forever.” Before I end the video, I’d like to announce  I started a Patreon where you can get access   to exclusive content like Q&A videos and  commentary tracks that explain in detail   how I make my videos. If you support me at the  2 dollar tier, you’ll also get access to the   community Discord. My goal with the Patreon is  to try and create a stable income so I can take   the plunge and start doing YouTube full time.  Therefore, any support is highly appreciated.   You can go to patreon.com/thatguyglen or  click the link in the description to check   out my page. Thank you for watching this  video and I’ll see you in the next one. Cheers.
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Channel: ThatGuyGlen
Views: 1,760,985
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: how omori was made, how omori was developed, how omori was created, omori behind the scenes, omori video game documentary, how it was made, making of omori, omori making of, video game documentary, behind the scenes, pixel art animation, hand drawn animation, omori documentary, omori development, video game, 2D animation, indie game, kickstarter game, hand drawn, yume nikki, omori, omocat, kickstarter, indie, illustrator, earthbound, undertale, documentary, drawing, thatguyglen
Id: 4yb9cx83K20
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 25min 30sec (1530 seconds)
Published: Wed Nov 23 2022
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