Endroll is an amazing horror inspired RPG maker 2000 game. By all means it should be played and I believe this is my favourite RPG maker game, even more so than Omori. You play as Russell, a serial killer who has been sentenced to death and takes part in a medical trial where he's given a drug named "Happy Dream", whose purpose is to make him develop guilt and regret his crimes. The whole story takes place inside his dream, where a nameless village with very kind inhabitants is created. You will very quickly uncover the truth about the inhabitants and every day focuses on one of them.
This game doesn't beat around the bush and you could compare it to Omori's creepiest parts. Take that and make it creepier, and then make an entire game out of it. While I thought it looked fairly standard at the beginning, the game hooked me very quickly with its pacing and how on point it was. Almost the entire game has a creepy unsettling atmosphere and it only gets worse as you progress, but it is just translating the game's themes. At its roots it's still a Mother/Earthbound-like game, though, and there's also a lot of comedy.
One of the most interesting things about the narration is that half if not more of the game's content is optional. If you only do the main plot, I estimate you'd beat the game in about five hours, but the game has a lot of side stories or requests from the villagers which make it last longer. Every in-game day, you can talk to them to learn rumours or get a request, and you can revisit previous places to see if any change has happened. Oftentimes you'll stumble upon an entirely new dungeon by revisiting a previous location, or realise that every NPC has new dialogue and an event is on-going and unlock new locations too. After every main quest, you will also advance the day to night time, and the world is very different (and dangerous) at night, some events being exclusive to it. The side content is honestly amazing and it feels like you keep discovering darker secrets continuously. A lot of them will develop the characterisation of the villagers and the creepier story elements.
I think one of the game's most original aspect for me was that unlike Omori, the main character is perfectly aware of his past and it is the virtual characters of his world which are confronted and shocked by the truth. The main character simply develop his guilt by watching their reaction, trauma and protecting them. Often, the quests will actually reveal the story of these characters rather than the protagonist, whether they are stories imagined by him or things he knew, and represent those characters overcoming THEIR obstacles and not Russell. Essentially, the game has several arcs which focus on one character but you can further explore them by revisiting locations related to their story. If I had to give a main theme to this game, it would definitively be the feeling of guilt. I found it very easy to sympathise with what the protagonist would be feeling during the events of the game.
The game also has a very interesting combat gameplay. While it may seem pretty standard at first, it actually has a good focus on buff/debuff and elemental weaknesses. There are also multiple status that enemies can affect and which you have to deal with. One of the more interesting aspects of combat is that you can go to a great extent to customise characters. For example, you can buy spell books to teach a specific ability to a character and turn them into a healer or magician, and there are stat increasing seeds all to increase a specific trait. There are even two seeds which will increase either physical or magical abilities to a very great extent, but they will decrease the opposite one by a great amount too. And the most fascinating is that every character has at least two weapon types, a more magic-focused weapon and a physical-focused one, with different skills being available depending on the weapon type you are using which makes every character very versatile. Did I mention that you can almost freely customise a party of four with NINE characters? They all have fairly unique skills too, even though they can serve almost any roll. The game also doesn't lack challenge and the optional zones will offer great combat value, with the last ones being fairly difficult albeit I never needed to grind.
If it has any flaw, it would be that it seems primitive, considering it's RPG Maker 2000 and there are obvious limitations such as only being able to change maps when you're walking on a road or the hitboxes of buildings, but it didn't bother me once I realise how much depth this game had and once you get there, you have a really wonderful game and in my opinion it is just as great as Omori.
You can get the game for free and in English at: https://vgperson.com/games/endroll.htm
This game doesn't beat around the bush and you could compare it to Omori's creepiest parts. Take that and make it creepier, and then make an entire game out of it. While I thought it looked fairly standard at the beginning, the game hooked me very quickly with its pacing and how on point it was. Almost the entire game has a creepy unsettling atmosphere and it only gets worse as you progress, but it is just translating the game's themes. At its roots it's still a Mother/Earthbound-like game, though, and there's also a lot of comedy.
One of the most interesting things about the narration is that half if not more of the game's content is optional. If you only do the main plot, I estimate you'd beat the game in about five hours, but the game has a lot of side stories or requests from the villagers which make it last longer. Every in-game day, you can talk to them to learn rumours or get a request, and you can revisit previous places to see if any change has happened. Oftentimes you'll stumble upon an entirely new dungeon by revisiting a previous location, or realise that every NPC has new dialogue and an event is on-going and unlock new locations too. After every main quest, you will also advance the day to night time, and the world is very different (and dangerous) at night, some events being exclusive to it. The side content is honestly amazing and it feels like you keep discovering darker secrets continuously. A lot of them will develop the characterisation of the villagers and the creepier story elements.
I think one of the game's most original aspect for me was that unlike Omori, the main character is perfectly aware of his past and it is the virtual characters of his world which are confronted and shocked by the truth. The main character simply develop his guilt by watching their reaction, trauma and protecting them. Often, the quests will actually reveal the story of these characters rather than the protagonist, whether they are stories imagined by him or things he knew, and represent those characters overcoming THEIR obstacles and not Russell. Essentially, the game has several arcs which focus on one character but you can further explore them by revisiting locations related to their story. If I had to give a main theme to this game, it would definitively be the feeling of guilt. I found it very easy to sympathise with what the protagonist would be feeling during the events of the game.
The game also has a very interesting combat gameplay. While it may seem pretty standard at first, it actually has a good focus on buff/debuff and elemental weaknesses. There are also multiple status that enemies can affect and which you have to deal with. One of the more interesting aspects of combat is that you can go to a great extent to customise characters. For example, you can buy spell books to teach a specific ability to a character and turn them into a healer or magician, and there are stat increasing seeds all to increase a specific trait. There are even two seeds which will increase either physical or magical abilities to a very great extent, but they will decrease the opposite one by a great amount too. And the most fascinating is that every character has at least two weapon types, a more magic-focused weapon and a physical-focused one, with different skills being available depending on the weapon type you are using which makes every character very versatile. Did I mention that you can almost freely customise a party of four with NINE characters? They all have fairly unique skills too, even though they can serve almost any roll. The game also doesn't lack challenge and the optional zones will offer great combat value, with the last ones being fairly difficult albeit I never needed to grind.
If it has any flaw, it would be that it seems primitive, considering it's RPG Maker 2000 and there are obvious limitations such as only being able to change maps when you're walking on a road or the hitboxes of buildings, but it didn't bother me once I realise how much depth this game had and once you get there, you have a really wonderful game and in my opinion it is just as great as Omori.
You can get the game for free and in English at: https://vgperson.com/games/endroll.htm