Kuro Oni

Kuro Oni is a 3d horror/puzzle game made as a tribute to the widely popular Ao Oni. The story is very similar to Ao Oni, except for the fact that you're a scientist (and not a student like in the original) that goes to a haunted house to prove that there is no such things as monsters, but is proven wrong once confronted by a Kuro Oni (which means black demon in Japanese).

There is no story mentioned in the game, it's only mentioned on the games 'moddb' page, but in no way did not having any story in the game affect how I thought about it. If you have a basic understanding of Ao Oni's story then you'll understand Kuro Oni without having to read up the story.

The game has a very silent atmosphere to it, but does play some horror-like music from time to time when playing. Most of the time you'll be quite scared, most of the time there’s nothing; it'll be just the music getting to you. Once you do encounter the Kuro Oni, you never see it at first; it’s the original Ao Oni chase music that tells you that it's after you. It never pops up in front of you or jumps out of something that you can see. When the music starts he will always start chasing you from behind. So by how this is set up the player is more scared of the music than of seeing the Kuro Oni.

Graphically, Kuro Oni, looks quite good for a game with the use of advanced graphical techniques such as bump mapping and light reflections, but the use of techniques such as these come as expected when the game is made with the popular Unity 3d game engine.

The only complaints I have to mention about Kuro Oni is the 3d model used for the characters aren't exactly convincingly scary characters since they're very smooth looking and not exactly high poly either (but what do you expect from a free game?).

Overall I was quite pleased with the game but wasn't entirely convinced that the Ao Oni idea should be 3D, since I found the 2D version to work better in about every single way. But since the game is still being developed, the creator will possibly make it even better than the 2D at some time in the future.

(The ideas and opinions brought up in this review relate to version 1.3 of Kuro Oni, and may differentiate from later versions of the game).

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