Games like Omen Exitio: Plague that consist mostly of text tend to be among the most enjoyable games to play; the more interpretive way they allow you to experience their worlds makes unfolding events feel uniquely personal by asking you to fill in the blanks with your imagination. They’re also among the most difficult games to review, as the mechanics are generally quite simple, and it’s incredibly difficult to explain what makes a great interactive story work without giving away too much and spoiling key plot points. Suffice it to say that Omen Exitio is a surprisingly engrossing adventure that hits several different story beats without ever losing steam or outlasting its welcome, and it’s the kind of game that sees both you and main character Jake Huntington go from wide-eyed military camaraderie to constant paranoia at every single (in-game) knock on the door. This is a game with abundant monsters, both literal and figurative, and every display of genuine human kindness is an oasis in a sea of misery. More than anything, though, Omen Exitio: Plague is a story so well constructed and paced that it’s easy to get wrapped up in what’s happening and continue playing until you’ve seen it through to its end.

Kicking off the 20th century with some eldritch horrors

Jake Huntington is a doctor who begins the game enlisted with the army in a futile attempt to distract himself from his inability to cure his now-deceased wife. Starting in 1896 (according to the Steam page; the only explicit in-game indicator of the time period I can recall is Jake’s birth date in his profile, though the limited medical knowledge and other such clues do a more than adequate job of grounding you in the time period regardless), his military service causes him to come into contact with the game’s titular plague, and his desire to solve the mystery of this plague in order to save lives—and by proxy, make up for his failure to cure his wife—leads him to a multitude of different areas.

Of course, the game promises Lovecraftian influences, and there are indeed monsters. Part of the fun, at least early on, is attempting to figure out whether Jake’s frequent nightmares are merely the fever dreams of someone potentially infected (which would be bad), or a supernatural harbinger of an evil beyond his capacity to understand (which would be worse). Without saying too much, I found this part of the story to be explained/resolved satisfactorily, though many of the figures who factor into the myths and nightmares are by nature incomprehensible and thus left shrouded in mystery.

For the vast majority of the game, other people are what you have to fear. Apart from a small number of friends who can be counted on (and even then, only if you don’t fail them horribly when they need you), no one can truly be trusted. A mysterious figure continually sends Jake letters to warn him about incoming danger, but vague hints aren’t always enough to stay out of trouble, and it’s impossible to tell what their motivations are for helping him. Beyond which, there are near-constant betrayals that range from the incidental to the explicit, as Jake has caught the eye of some dangerous people with an exceedingly long reach who aren’t willing to take “no” for an answer.

Decisions, experience, skill checks, and reactivity

This being an interactive story, the text sometimes gives way to several choices you can make. These can occasionally have noticeable repercussions—such as allowing you to produce an antidote to the titular plague that becomes helpful later on, or get away from enemies who intend to steal your research—while other times they’re not mutually exclusive and accomplish little but to provide you with a little extra experience. Speaking of which, you gain experience as you make your way through the game (and an inquisitive attitude helps to pick up small chunks of extra experience), and this can be used to upgrade any of Jake’s 5 skills provided you have enough.

Jake’s skills (fighting, observation, medicine, agility, and speechcraft) are important because some of the most useful choices require proficiency in them. Going up against enemies is much easier when you have points in fighting and/or agility, naturally, while putting points into medicine allows you to more easily evaluate plague victims and save characters who are on the brink of death. Not only that, but succeeding at these skill checks provides you with extra experience, meaning that being mindful of what you’re good and bad at can make it easier to branch out and succeed at other tasks. This isn’t realistic on a first playthrough where you have no way of knowing which skill checks come when, but later attempts can be greatly optimized to allow you to finish the game with 4 out of 5 skills completely maxed out.

Really, I can think of only one flaw Omen Exitio: Plague suffers from, and that’s a lack of reactivity. Granted, there are multiple endings (though they mostly boil down to variations of a good and bad ending), but you really get railroaded at points. You can be the greatest fighter who ever lived, but you’ll get knocked unconscious despite your best efforts whenever the plot demands you be in a different place. You can obtain a weapon, but the option to use it in a key moment may never come because its use would change the story too much. Even when I went back and shot a key character in the gut, all that changed was that he was slightly injured in a later scene. This becomes frustrating in an even later scene when Jake suspects him to be a masked, shirtless character, but never thinks to check for the bullet wound or scar. That’s not to say that nothing can be changed, though—while some characters can’t be saved and you’ll hit all of the same story beats regardless of how competently you act, other characters can be rescued and this can have some pretty rewarding results. There are also one or two hidden scenes that you can get by making a specific series of choices (and the achievements are designed to gently guide you to many of these), though experimenting with different combinations can be frustrating since the sole saving mechanism is an autosave that kicks in at the end of each chapter. Once you figure out where the saves are and start making your own backups, however, it becomes much more possible to experiment and figure things out. This rarely accomplishes more than allowing you to succeed in a slightly more amusing way, but it’s fun nevertheless.

Understated graphics and music that both work

Let’s just get this out of the way: Omen Exitio is a story-centric game, and it succeeds because the story is so thoroughly interesting that everything else is drowned out. The minimal graphics and music could be an issue if not for how captivating the end experience is, but it’s easy to become so absorbed that very little else matters. That’s not to say that either are bad, though, because they’re not. The whole game takes place in the pages of the same book, though you can also dart around to the map, Jake’s character screen, and a list of inventory items/characters met. You’re mostly reading text on the left page while a charcoal drawing on the right hints at the surroundings, and the music is similarly understated. In fact, no music plays at all for a sizable portion of the game, instead focusing heavily on sound effects to build atmosphere. The rest of the tracks are likewise atmospheric, with one in particular featuring a strong melody that cements it as a kind of recurring “ominous” theme, and all of this just kind of works. Most games with atmospheric tracks use them as a crutch, but this is one of those rare cases where a more diverse soundtrack with more musicality wouldn’t have worked as well.

*A Steam review key for Omen Exitio: Plague was provided for the purpose of this review

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