[Chilla's Art] Okaeri | おかえり

About [Chilla's Art] Okaeri | おかえり

Okaeri, Japanese for welcome home, is a 2019 horror game by the Japanese studio Chilla's Art, released before The Convenience Store and the night-shift games that followed. It is sold on Steam for Windows.

A middle school girl and her mother have recently moved into a new house. At 6 pm the girl comes home expecting her mother to greet her, and finds unexpected things happening instead. The makers say it was inspired by short Japanese horror films, and it plays like one.

You walk the narrow back alleys to the house, then its rooms: a kitchen with a calendar full of notes, a living room still full of moving boxes, a dim hallway, a small garden. You collect pieces of the past and present to understand what is going on, with Japanese voice acting, while the feeling that someone is watching grows. A VHS filter puts tape noise, jitter and colour bleed over photo-realistic graphics.

Its Steam reviews are mixed, about two thirds positive; it suits players who want a brief, atmospheric Japanese ghost story and who already like Chilla's Art's later games.

How to play [Chilla's Art] Okaeri | おかえり

1. Buy and install it from Steam on Windows.
2. Walk home through the alleys with WASD and the mouse.
3. Explore each room of the new house and press E to look at what you find.
4. Collect the pieces of the story to understand what has happened.
5. Play it through in one sitting, in the dark, with sound up.

Tips

• Read the notes and calendar in the kitchen; they set up the story.
• Turn the VHS filter's effect into part of the mood by playing in a dark room.
• It is short: set aside under an hour.

Questions