Ao Oni again

So a lot has happened in the world of Ao Oni since the last time I posted. Ao Oni is now at version 6.22, so the game is completely different again, with a new mansion layout, new puzzles, and new ending. It requires RPG Maker XP RTP, and to set your non-unicode language setting to Japanese. In addition, the 6.xx series of the game lets you name the main character.

Most importantly, there is an official English and Italian version of the game, which shows just how popular Ao Oni has gotten. I think the creator of the game owes Gami and Fuhiki a lot, as I doubt this game would have gotten anywhere near as popular without their legendary jikkyou play.

I’ve actually played through 6.22 already, and I think it’s pretty good. Compared to the earlier versions of the game, the difficulty level of 6.xx is relatively easier and the mansion is a bit smaller as well. There are some cool new things added in 6.xx, but there’s also some things that I wish were preserved from older versions, especially 5.xx.

Something I mentioned earlier was the new option in version 6 to name the main character. There are actually some cool easter eggs with this. Everytime you beat the game Hiroshi tells you a different name to input that can change the game in some way. One particular name is SOUTHPARK which leads to this…

I’ve also found a really funny English Let’s Play of Ao Oni 6.22 by MikeNnemonic on Youtube. Unfortunately he’s not actually playing the game for the first time in the videos, but he brings a very unique interpretation to the game that I think is worth watching through haha.

Finally, since the game has gotten so big, someone has gotten around to archiving all of the previous versions of the game. Pretty nostalgic, if you want to go back and play the version that Borzoi Project did or want to see how different(and ghetto) ver 1.0 is compared to what we have now.

Ao Oni

Another hilarious jikkyou play on nico, this time it’s a poverty horror game made in RPGMaker called Ao Oni, or blue demon. The premise of the game is pretty similar to Clock Tower: you and your friends get lost in a big mansion and you have to solve some puzzles and find the way out, all the while getting stalked by a monster.

The guys doing the commentary on their playthrough are がみ(Gami) and ふひきー(Fuhiki), who are part of a group called Borzoi Project. They do a lot of jikkyous, but this is undeniably their most popular one by a large margin. They also have a fairly popular jikkyou of another RPGMaker game called Doraemon Nobita no Biohazard, which as its name suggests, is a crossover of Doraemon and Resident Evil.

The demon in this game is a big blue man who kind of looks like Obama if he was part of Blue Man Group. Sounds silly, but the game is surprisingly scary and the Ao Oni has quite a bit of personality. Gami and Fuhiki’s reactions are priceless and their screams of terror transcend linguistic boundaries.

It’s also been mirrored on Youtube
Playlist

FadedLily on Youtube is also doing an English translation of the Borzoi Project jikkyou, but so far he’s only gotten the first 3 parts up.
FadedLily

Ao Oni has actually gone through several revisions. The version of the game that Gami and Fuhiki are playing is 2.xx, while the newest version of the game right now is 5.2. Every version of the game is extremely different from the others, too: different characters die, the endings change, and even the layout and size of the mansion changes. I remember in Ao Oni v1.0, three characters actually survive in the end, and there’s a really scary segment where the main character look down a well and sees the Ao Oni frantically climbing up the rope with all its teeth out.

Ao Oni has apparently gotten so popular among English speakers that there’s now a full English version of the game! It’s for version 5.2, and requires RPGMaker to run properly.