 | |
| OMORI | |
| Name | r/OMORI |
| Description | A community for fans of the indie game OMORI |
| Subreddit | OMORI |
| Website | https://www.omori-game.com/ |
| @OMORI_GAME | |
| Artwork | White Space, Title Screen |
OMORI is an indie role-playing game with psychological horror elements developed by OMOCAT LLC, a team of developers led by graphic designer OMOCAT. Originally conceived by OMOCAT as a short webcomic about a young hikikiomori boy, she would eventually announce a Kickstarter for the game in 2014. Built in RPG Maker and inspired by games such as the MOTHER series and Yume Nikki, the game underwent development for six years before being released on December 25, 2020, to critical acclaim from both critics and fans. OMORI takes place in two worlds: Faraway Town, a small town where players control a young reclusive boy named Sunny, and Headspace, a dream world where players control his counterpart Omori. Despite its often colorful exterior, the game features a number of disturbing imagery and themes as it explores the psyche of its protagonist.
Since its release, the game has built up a considerable and dedicated fanbase. The subreddit r/OMORI would garner over 75,000 members by the time of r/place 2022, leading to the addition of a number of elements from OMORI being featured on the campus during the event. These efforts would be greatly aided by the large OMORI Discord server made by fans of the game. r/OMORI was also a founding member of the Indie Alliance, an alliance dedicated to supporting various indie video games on r/place, alongside r/CelesteGame.
r/place 2022
History
The First Day
OMORI had an extremely early presence on the canvas after an early rally to create a game accurate sprite of Omori toward the then-far right of the canvas. This attempt was successful and gave OMORI very early footing that would be used to expand far more later on. As the early canvas stabilized and borders became more obvious, sprites based on mysterious entity Something, Mari's cat Mewo, and Kel's pet rock Hector would all be added near Omori. The light bulb from White Space would also be added above the trio along with text crediting r/OMORI. While not technically a part of OMORI, r/PictureGame would end up building art to the left of Omori that would remain in the section even through various expansions later on. Both would also be joined by a logo based off Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition, a Roblox game based off the popular Warriors series of books.
After around eight hours had passed, a sprite based off Basil as he appears in Headspace would end up suddenly being created around the top of the canvas, to the left of sprites of Niko from OneShot and Lea from CrossCode. This sprite would end up being protected by the two and managed to stay surprisingly safe throughout the course of the event.
The First Expansion
Around the end of the first day, the r/place canvas would end up expanding to the right, doubling the amount of available pixels and space. This ended up being highly in OMORI's favor, as the expansion occurred past their right border. This was taken advantage of immediately, greatly expanding the available space taken by the game's primary section. With this new territory available, several new projects were constructed. The first of these was a more detailed logo for OMORI, followed by sprites of deuteragonist Kel and an individual Sprout Mole. After all of these had been made, there was a push made against the German flag that had quickly expanded from the right. This was followed by an attempt to create a sprite of Omori's sister Mari from Headspace, but Germany soon led an attack to reclaim territory. After several minutes were spent fighting over the territory, there was eventually a truce made between OMORI, Germany, and Celeste to the south. After this transpired, the sprite of Mari was completed alongside one of Kel's older brother Hero.
Several related developments occurred alongside this. The most notable was the addition of Brad Armstrong from Lisa the Painful RPG, another indie title made in RPG Maker. He would end up taking the place of the Kel sprite featured in White Space and remain for the rest of the event. r/fuckcars, the neighbor to the north of White Space, would end up building a road that would encompass the right border of White Space. Outside of the main territory, another sprite of Kel had also been made further right early into the expansion, near new art by allies such as Warrior Cats and (later) Germany. This spot would remain largely ignored by attacks.
Around 38 hours into the event, large streamer xQc would begin the first of his infamous attack on r/place. While initially targeting further to the left, he would soon lead a charge right near OMORI. This ended up causing the first casualty of r/PictureGame, but r/OMORI ended up leading a very strong defense to ward off the attackers. Unfortunately, the attack was soon redirected to both Scotland and Celeste to the south, causing major damage. Once the attack had ended, OMORI aided their neighbors in repairs.
Several hours later, xQc would lead a second attack, this time targeting purple art. This made Mari and Hero ideal targets, causing a second and more direct attack on OMORI. This one was far more effective, leading to the two being erased along with the Red Hand and minor damage to other parts of White Space. Once this attack was fended off, a conscious decision was made to redesign Mari and Hero after their real world counterparts in order to counteract against any potential color targeting in the future. The two were eventually finished and would remain mostly intact for the remainder of the event, holding hands with one another. Following this, they were soon joined by miniature sprites based off other main characters Aubrey and Kel to the right of them, stacked on top of one another. A miniature Basil was originally planned to be featured as well to complete the main cast, but was eventually declined due to tight space.
Title Screen and other later additions
Shortly into the third day, the canvas expanded a second and final time, once again doubling the entire canvas. This later expansion was far more predictable after the first, thus leading to many factions quickly working to plot out territory. r/OMORI was among these, managing to claim a decent chunk of space. The initial idea was to have it include a blue sky with clouds along with a full recreation of OMORI's logo, in reference to one of the game's title screens. This was quickly worked on once the borders were complete, with a lot of care being put into making the clouds mostly accurate. There would be yet another attack by xQc during this process, this time pushing right through the middle of this territory. This led to minor damage, but was quickly fended off and repaired as xQc's attention went elsewhere. This would mark the final major attack against OMORI.
Several ideas were considered as to what would go into the space after the background and logo were completed, including various characters from OMORI being added or even small additions from other indie communities. In the end, it was settled that a large sprite of Sunny would be recreated under the logo. Later on, it was joined by OMOCAT's logo to the right and composer bo en's logo to the left. Worth noting is that bo en asked about his logo earlier in the event, which led to many fans being motivated to include it in some capacity.
Outside of this large expansion, there were a few more small projects made before the event came to the end. One of these was an icon as part of the taskbar on the bottom left of the entire canvas to represent the game. Two additional characters were added to White Space towards the end: the whale Humphrey above Omori and the strange being Omoli on the far right instead of the Sprout Mole. Another of these revolved replacing Kel's sprite to the right of White Space with one of Aubrey. The final project was to move Kel to a new location to compensate, although it was never completely finished due to the arrival of the whiteout. OMORI's contributions would survive for a decent amount of time before fading away along with the rest of the canvas.
Artwork
White Space
- Main article: White Space
This was the primary area based on OMORI, ending up right above the very center of the canvas. The name comes from White Space, the first area explored in the game where Omori often spends his time. It originally began as just a sprite of Sunny, later being joined by Something, Mewo, and Hector. After the first expansion, this area would be over doubled in size. Aside from the aforementioned, it would also end up including a full logo, alongside sprites of Mari, Hero, Aubrey, Kel (all based off their real world counterparts), Humphrey, Omoli, and Brad Armstrong from fellow indie role-playing game Lisa the Painful RPG. Full sprites based off Mari and Hero in Headspace, a regular Sprout Mole, Kel, and a Red Hand were all added at different intervals before later being removed and replaced. On the far left of the section is art created by r/PictureGame and a giant logo based on Warrior Cats: Ultimate Edition. Both of these would be accepted and protected by r/OMORI throughout the course of the event.
Title Screen
- Main article: OMORI Title Screen
After the final expansion, r/OMORI made a deliberate effort to claim a piece of territory on the new bottom right quadrant. This was successful, and after some brainstorming it ended up becoming a recreation of one of the title screens in OMORI. It includes Sunny in the center, under the logo for the game. Later on, the logos of creator OMOCAT and composer bo en were added.
Basil
A head sprite of Sunny's best friend Basil as he appears in Headspace was surprisingly built toward the northwest of the canvas (or the northeast of the initial quadrant), being built alongside sprites of Niko from OneShot and Lea from CrossCode. These two would help to protect the sprite for the remainder of the event. A funny occurrence kept happening from confusion over making Basil's flower crown accurate to the game, especially the leftmost pixel.
Kel / Aubrey
In the middle of Day 2, a full sprite of Kel as he appears in the Faraway Town portion of OMORI was built in the new space granted from the first expansion near allies Germany and Warrior Cats, a little to the right of White Space. It remained largely unaffected until the final day, when it was replaced with a sprite of Aubrey, also based off her Faraway Town appearance. This was followed by plans to make a new Kel sprite elsewhere on the canvas. This entire location was very surprisingly unaffected by larger entities like xQc or The Void, despite not being far off from several volatile targets.
Second Kel
After the new sprite of Aubrey was built, there was another attempt at building Kel on the German flag towards the top of the bottom left quadrant. This attempt was never completely finished due to the surprise occurrence of the whiteout, although it was featured as part of the Final Clean version of the canvas.
Taskbar Icon
Towards the end of the final day, r/OMORI and the OMORI Discord would push to include an icon in the Windows Taskbar made by r/PlaceStart. It is based on the black light bulb featured in White Space. Worth noting is that this does differ from the official desktop icon for OMORI, which is simply of Omori's default idle sprite.
Sprout Mole
A giant Sprout Mole was built on top of a tree within Germany's flag as a sign of friendship between them and OMORI after the latter helped to aid in attacks during the late night for Germany. It was built shortly before the second expansion and would remain mostly intact afterwards.