Off-site from PAX West 2024, I wait in a hotel lobby for Tom from Megabit. It is not unusual for some publishers to opt to show their games to press off-site, but it feels different. I’m going to see OMUT, a game from Madame Cyclone about a small boy following a dark and twisted trail, on a mysterious quest. And as I am shepherded into an elevator and then into a side suite, I can’t help but feel just a little bit like the small boy.
The suite in question clarifies little. I’ve done my homework on every game I’m seeing during PAX West 2024 but, though I was able to find a “prototype” for OMUT on Itch.io (then called Alder Choke), my other on the title came up fruitless. Madame Cyclone is an unknown developer. There is no easily accessible press kit. And while the Marketing Manager for Madame Cyclone is present – one incredibly helpful Aimee Michie-Sanjari – no dev is. At this point, I don’t even know the name of anyone on the game, or what country they are from. I’m going in blind.
The game used to be called Alder Choke, and it once looked much different.
“So,” I say to Aimee as Tom sets up the game to run. “I have played the prototype of OMUT on Itch, but that doesn’t exactly show much. And I can’t find much else on the game. So… what exactly is OMUT?”
Aimee, a trained PR professional who knows the game inside and out, responds: “It is… hard to describe.” A perfectly normal response from someone who isn’t familiar with elevator pitches who is caught off guard. But from Aimee? It’s an incredibly fascinating response from someone who works closely with the game and its develepors, and who knows what she is doing. And her other answers to my questions were uniformly clear and complete. She wasn’t tripped up, she was just correct.
The look of OMUT is stunning and disturbing. There is a muddiness to it, like the images are burning through the screen.
To put it another way: OMUT is indescribable. In the sense that the author H.P. Lovecraft often meant it: beyond description. And, as I sit down to play, I can tell this to be the case.
The First Boss: Fat Man
OMUT is not a horror game, not really, but it does evoke fear and dread. In the opening moments, I walk through a dark forest. The graphics are pixelated, but the effects on the screen practically rip and tear at the dim colors, in a way I hadn’t seen before.
In this techno-sludge nightmare of a forest, I encounter a strange being. It knows that I am searching for something, and it offers to help. Though it is clearly nefarious, and its crinkled audio fills me with anxiety, I accept. And then I’m given a gun.
Naturally, I trusted this creature immediately. It’s the only way, after all.
Aimee pops over, and explains that they are working on the transitions, and so we will just skip to the first boss I’ll be seeing. OMUT is a kind of boss rush game, so she assures me that I won’t be missing too much.
A moment later, I am in a field, wielding a gun. Across from me, furious and insane, is the “Fat Man”, a huge, naked behemoth of a man whose tiny head fits oddly on his bulbous body. A second later, he is charging at me. A second later, I am dead. More than that, I’m filled with questions, despite apparently “not missing too much.”
And so, as I die, time and time again, to “Fat Man”, I ask the questions. I’m told by Aimee that a lot of the game is inspired by Slavic Folklore and Russian literature – and I do pick up on a few connections there. But as for specifics? She doesn’t have answers. She wonders if the developers do.
After the event, I asked Tom to reach out to the co-founder of Madame Cyclone, who I eventually learned is named Sergey Titov (No, not that one), so I could ask some questions. My first: “What inspired the world of OMUT? What are these creatures?”
The bosses are just as odd and disturbing as they are difficult.
The response? “We’ve decided to not discuss them at this stage and hope players organically pick up on these influences as they experience the game.”
I shouldn’t have expected anything less. The game is cryptic, so of course the developer is cryptic, too. It makes sense, especially considering the sadistic difficulty of the game.
And, about that difficulty… Now, listen, gaming journalist jokes aside, I’m good at challenging side-scrollers. I’ve beat every recent metroidvania you can name to 100% completion. I cut my teeth on troll platformers like I Wanna Be The Guy. I eat precision platformers for breakfast.
In 15 minutes, I never beat Fat Man, and I only saw phase 3 (which I deeply hope is the final phase) once. And Fat Man is one of the first bosses of OMUT, and the first one I’m shown. This is what they want the press’s first interaction with the game to be.
When Aimee beat it, it apparently took her hours. So, yeah: the game is hard. Extremely hard. And hard in just that perfect way where you know the mistake was your fault, but you can’t help but say, “I know I dodged there!” Even when you didn’t.
The Second Boss: Bomb Guy
At some point, after my tenth “just one more try” in a row, I ask Aimee to show me the next boss. This one doesn’t have a name, but it is a bomb-dropping orb in the sky with a malevolent face, set against a wicked backdrop.
Playing OMUT is a nightmare, in all the most interesting ways.
The things in OMUT, like so many of the monsters in Slavic tales, radiate evil and malice. Their designs are grotesquely beautiful. But something this boss says before combat – the specifics of which I’ve forgotten – prompts me to ask, “That isn’t what I was expecting it to say… It makes me wonder, what are the themes of OMUT? If you know, of course.”
Aimee doesn’t know for sure, and doesn’t want to speculate on Sergey’s behalf, especially when OMUT’s presentation oozes high-mindedness and deep references. But, Tom has me covered. He asked Sergey. And this time, the response was more substantial:
“Delusion, dreams, hope, hallucinations, delirium, obsession, self-doubt, neglect, betrayal, denial, whirlpool, nightmares, childhood, hysteria, deception, abyss, social and emotional isolation, addiction, trauma, freedom and death.”
There are a lot of deeply philosophical and psychological messaging even in just the parts I played and have seen.
Rattled off like a shopping list, or like a set of trigger warnings, the typhoon of terms above seems to fit with what I have seen of OMUT. After all, I can’t imagine the narrative going in pleasant directions, but I can imagine it going in many unpleasant ones. But the cascade of terms also leaves me with a sense of unease, the same kind of unease I felt while playing. The feeling that things were chaotic, out of order, illogical. That OMUT displays some kind of rabid dreamworld, the kind where things are scattered, like puzzle pieces, but ones that you can never piece together when you wake up in a cold sweat. Where you remember dreadful concepts and horrifying things, but not the things that linked them together.
My musings are cut short when I die for the third time in a row without reacting much. The second boss, which utilizes the gimmick from the prototype where you are meant to shoot it so that it stays in the air and doesn’t touch the ground. It’s hard, and I need all my concentration to even have a chance. This boss — which is actually intended to be the first boss of the game — is easier, and it feels that I just might be able to manage it. But…
As it turns out, all that concentration is for naught; and after dozens of attempts, I have admit defeat so that I can see the last boss that Aimee can show me. I would’ve probably gotten Bomb Guy eventually, but not without significant effort. And, as a reminder, Bomb Guy is the first boss of the game.
The Last Boss: Fish Man
To finish, I am presented with something almost comical: Fish Man. Fish Man is a big fish. It flops at you, and you have to avoid its fishy flops. The artstyle is still dreary and odd, but now it feels almost absurdist. And, in that light, so do other parts of the game. The Fat Man. The mysterious dealer at the beginning of the game.
The world of OMUT isn’t with whimsy and comedy, and some fairy-tale charm seeps through the darkness.
Hidden beneath inky layers of horror and tragedy and surrealism, there is a dark comedy, I realize. It’s something that is hard to see behind the dark curtains and punishing difficulty, but it is there. Somewhere at the intersection of unfairness, darkness, and surrealism, it can all wraps back around to being funny, in a manner of speaking. It’s very… Russian. But, despite myself, and despite the overwhelming, oppressive atmosphere of the game, I chuckle. Because what else is there to do?
The bizarrely humorous nature of the boss didn’t make it any easier. I never beat Fish Guy. Didn’t even get to phase 2. But, as I was finishing up with the game, I did ask Aimee final question, one which I’d also ask Sergey later. Just a boilerplate question, making sure I could do my job later: “Is there anything specific that you want our audience to know about OMUT? Something that deserves to be highlighted that I might otherwise miss?”
Intercut with the burning pixel art, there are also even more abstract segments featuring fantastic red-on-black animations
First, Aimee’s response (paraphrased here) is the one that makes sense: “There is nothing like it, truly. It’s hard, but it’s rewarding. The folklore-inspired world has all sorts of things to explore, things I wish I could show you. It’s a big game, with a lot going on, and it will bends players minds in ways that aren’t always comfortable, but are always interesting. Sometimes even a bit funny.”
Sergey’s response? Well, I think we should end with it. From one of the lead developers of OMUT, this is what he wants everyone to know about the game:
“By the lake of crimson sorrow, Nameless child, no hope to borrow, In this tale, there’s no tomorrow, Doomed to rebirth, lost and hollow.”
If you’ve ever wondered Slavic poetry, literature, and darkest folklore would look like if they were splattered onto a dreary, surreal, and masochistically hard game, you owe it to yourself to make sure OMUT, which can be found on Steam here, is on your radar.
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Graves
Graves is an avid writer, web designer, and gamer, with more ideas than he could hope to achieve in a lifetime. But, armed with a mug of coffee and an overactive imagination, he'll try. When he isn't working on a creative project, he is painting miniatures, reading cheesy sci-fi novels, or making music.
