The era of the hyper-difficult game is here to stay, and OMUT is proof. Many new releases don’t just push your skills; they make you test them at every possible moment. They make you fight inch for inch to progress the game. Indie games, in particular, continually find new ways to push the already grueling envelope in innovative directions, while also telling deep, passionate, and dark stories. And what’s darker than a child’s nightmares? Limitless imagination is trapped in experiencing untold horrors that only they can come up with. OMUT, by Madame Cyclone and Megabit Publishing, puts its spin on a nightmarish 2D bullet-hell.
With just a demo, OMUT shows so much while saying so little. We are dropped into a world where you control a child trapped in a bleak world. No matter where you go, a fresh new horror is always waiting to stop your path. Even potential allies abandon you to give you your only chance of survival. With just a rifle, you’ll help this child survive hell and escape.
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The player is a fish out of water from the first tastes of early bosses. However, for as bleak as OMUT is, it still has a humorous side. After each boss, a guard tries to stop you from moving on. Every new ability you gain helps you to get past them. For example, after obtaining the dash, this guard with a shield can be bypassed, allowing you to go on your merry way with a humerous quip. These moments themselves help lighten the mood in stressful situations. Not everything is bad. Not all is out to get you. This balance helps relieve the frustration of the bosses.
Where this game succeeds most in just a short time is by making you learn on the fly. It doesn’t tell you how reloading the rifle works. It doesn’t explain in a tutorial what to avoid, what attacks can be deflected, or the window to dodge attacks. You’re just dropped into each fight and left to figure things out alone. The icing on top is that the game keeps track of every death.
The trial-and-error design only succeeds here thanks to a quick respawn. And each fight does not last long. So, once it all clicks, that near-insurmountable hurdle quickly dissipates because it feels so easy in retrospect. A fight that led to over one hundred deaths only lasts twenty to thirty seconds.
OMUT constantly makes you want to go for just one more attempt.
And it all feeds on the feeling of “okay, I’ve got this now. Just one more attempt and it’ll all click.” It’s like a puzzle. Deaths are meaningless. You’re put right back into the heart of the action, where you must react quickly to not die again right away. OMUT screams at you to learn by doing. It makes it clear when you’ve made a mistake because one hit is instantly a death. And you may not even know what caused you to die until you learn the boss’s mechanics.
Take the first boss you fight. It’s a blob that bounces around the arena in the sky. If it touches the ground, you die. So you must learn to juggle the boss in the air while avoiding attacks. Any gaps in your attack, the blob will quickly try to fall to the ground to kill you. My first ten deaths were just from trying to figure out why I was dying when the boss didn’t touch me. That with fights evolving into at least three different phases creates an ever-growing challenge. Apply what you’ve learned quickly to newer, faster, more demanding situations.
Trial and error is so satisfying in this way. No guide can describe how to help you get your aiming skills, master dodging windows, and when exactly to deflect without being hands-on. If you learn best in this way and love a difficult puzzle, OMUT is the game for you. Its design is beautifully bleak, where you’ll always feel hopeless, but you won’t be able to walk away. Victory really is only one me time away, and I can’t wait to play more to see how much can be done in a game that gives you so little.
OMUT is coming soon to PC.
