When I received Omen Exito: Plague, I’d never heard of Tiny Bull Studios before. That makes sense, since this is only their second game. Tiny Bull Studios is a small indie studio out of Turin, Italy and honestly, for a second game, Omen Exito: Plague is pretty impressive. What you’re looking at with Omen Exito is basically a Choose Your Own Adventure novel with a dark Edgar Rice Burroughs style adventure and a fair amount of H. P. Lovecraft drizzled on top. You play Dr. Jake Huntington and you’ve joined the British military to recover from the death of your wife. Unfortunately, they’ve shipped you off to Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania in Eastern Africa, to look into a plague overtaking the villages there. A bit random, but it’s how the British Empire operated back then and gives a good background show of the effects of colonialism on the African populace. The Germans are also in Zanzibar and things get pretty heated pretty fast, and rather odd and creepy not long after that.
As stated, this is a Choose Your Own Adventure style game. For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, in the 1980s, there were a plethora of game/books where you read part of the book, made a selection, then skipped to the indicated page to see what happened. Every reading of the book was different, and some ended with your untimely demise while others made you into the hero of the story and everything in between. TSR put out the Dungeons & Dragons Endless Quest series, and Joe Dever released the timeless Lone Wolf books which were recently made into a new game. Many other books in this style were also released in the 80s. Omen Exito: Plague follows the style of these books to a T, offering you several paragraphs of dialogue and exposition, then a choice which will direct the story. Choose wrong and you might have friends die, be eaten, or who knows what else. Especially with a Lovecraftian story, things can of course go horribly, horribly wrong.
Omen Exito: Plague manages to suck you in to the story of Dr. Huntington in the last years of the 19th century so quickly that it’s hard to believe how minimalist the game is. It’s simply an incredibly well-written yarn and keeps you engaged constantly. From the hard-drinking Irish kid O’Bannon to your plucky Italian bruiser, your compatriots are varied and interesting. The writing style is its own beast, but it manages to channel Lovecraft’s prose style from time to time, creating a sense of deepening dread that creeps into the edges of the story. And it’s a very adult story. This is definitely not one for the kids, with murder, sex, intrigue, and eldritch horrors, as well as vicious German soldiers. My jaw almost dropped when one of my decisions led to me stabbing a German in the eye socket.
The entirety of the game is presented in book style, with prose being on the left page and pencil sketches of the action and characters being on the right. There is a Map section which is accessed by the L button and Character, Stat, and Inventory screens on the right. Every time you make a choice, the game rewards you based on it, and as you accumulate Experience points, you can add them to your character statistics in a very similar manner to the Lone Wolf books. Put enough into the right statistics and you’ll pass various challenges in the game. Allocate them wrong and you’ll fail, sometimes with fatal consequences. Your choices definitely matter in Omen Exito!
Graphically, aside from the actual book, the game has virtually no graphics aside from Character sketches. Turns out that’s ok, because the whole point is reading the story and it honestly doesn’t make a bit of difference that the only art you see is hand-drawn line art. You won’t even notices after a couple chapters that this is essentially a text-based game. Thankfully the game is also touch-screen enabled and plays the best undocked on the Switch with the touchscreen. It works in docked mode but it just isn’t quite as good overall, as the selections are a bit finicky until you get the hang of them.
However, there are a couple of things that Omen Exito does wrong. First off, the Map screen is a bit weak, with simple pegs on a map and not much else most of the time. It seems a bit superfluous and definitely could have been executed better. Secondly, the controls are a bit odd. They’re noticeably not intuitive, especially in docked mode, and I found myself hitting the wrong button more than once. Eventually you get there, but it takes a while even though they’re simple. Finally, there’s the least important and most irritating issue, updates.
Every time you gain experience or someone adds a piece of information to your notes, you get experience points. They vary by the choices you make, but they add up. And every time you gain even a point or two, the Stat screen icon glows with a sun-like light. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s the only thing moving on an otherwise completely static screen and it’s almost impossible not to look at them. Because of this, you either have to keep glancing at updates or check them, at which point you’re breaking away from the narrative to dismiss a distraction. I honestly don’t know why the designers added this glow but it’s irritating and definitely not optional. It’s the only real negative thing I have to say about Omen Exito: Plague, as it’s an honestly great game that manages to successfully hearken back to the days of the great 80s gamebooks and does so in a truly fascinating and adult fashion with serious and intriguing themes and wild imagery.
For only $10, this is honestly a steal of a game. It’ll keep you reading for hours and it’s absolutely compelling. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into with Omen Exito: Plague and I was completely delighted by the quality and passion that the developers at Tiny Bull Studios put into this hidden gem of an indie title. If you’re not a reader, it might not be for you, but the dialogue isn’t incredibly complex and it should be fairly approachable for most all reading levels from high school up. And even if you’re not a reader, give it a try. You might surprise yourself! Omen Exito: Plague is a unique title in a sea of filler and one worth looking out for. But don’t take my word for it. Use your tentacle and turn the page yourself! You won’t regret it!
This review of Omen Exito: Plague is based on a digital copy of the game provided by the publisher. It was played in a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked mode and was simply awesome. All screenshots are taken from actual gameplay. Don’t blame me if you see unnamed horrors stretching out over infinite vistas in your dreams though. Omen Exito: Plague is also available for Steam.