Ao Oni (2007) - MobyGames (2024)

Another strong point of Ao Oni is the design of the titular antagonist. In a game so serious in tone yet devoid of character development (because of scarcity of dialogue), the bizarre, grotesque face of the demon adds an interesting dimension placed somewhere between scary, funny, and simply confusing.

The Bad
Unfortunately, exploration and puzzle solving are often interrupted by annoying chase sequences involving the blue demon. They might be short, but they're frequent enough to become boring and repetitive, and since the main character dies from just one hit, there's hardly any room for error, which might lead to frustrating amounts of trying and retrying to beat a specific segment.

While it's nice to see the creator of Ao Oni referencing survival horror classics, those references become a bit too on the nose. The chase segments are pretty much just inferior echoes of the Scissorman encounters in Clock Tower, a blood-stained piano hiding the solution to one of the puzzles is a not-so-subtle nod to Silent Hill, while finding keys in bathtubs and a blue gem in a broken statue are elements taken directly from the Resident Evil remake. This might seem like a fairly minor detail, but with a game as short as Ao Oni it can overshadow some other aspects of the experience.

The Bottom Line
Overall, Ao Oni doesn't live up to the potential of its puzzles and environments primarily because of the frequent, repetitive, and annoying chase sequences. 5/10