Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Onikakushi-hen

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Onikakushi-hen is the first installment in the Higurashi: When They Cry visual novel series. The game follows Keichii Maebara, a teenager who moves to the remote village of Hinamizawa and befriends a group of schoolgirls. As he uncovers the village’s dark secrets tied to the Watanagashi festival and a supposed curse, Keichii’s paranoia grows, leading to a chilling descent into horror.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Onikakushi-hen: Review

Introduction

In the sweltering summer of 1983, cicadas pierce the humid air of the remote Japanese village of Hinamizawa, their relentless cries masking a festering darkness. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Onikakushi-hen (Abducted by Demons Chapter), the inaugural entry in Ryukishi07’s seminal Higurashi: When They Cry series, is not merely a game—it is a masterclass in psychological horror that weaponizes nostalgia and paranoia to unsettle players to their core. As the first installment in a franchise that would spawn anime, manga, films, and cultural phenomena, Onikakushi-hen establishes a legacy of dread through its deceptively simple premise: a boy’s descent into madness when idyllic friendships curdle into terror. This review dissects how 07th Expansion’s kinetic visual novel subverts expectations, transforming text sprites and atmospheric sound into a harrowing exploration of trust, mental illness, and the fragility of human perception. Thesis: Onikakushi-hen is a foundational work of horror gaming, whose brilliance lies in its meticulous construction of unease and its challenge to players’ assumptions about safety and sanity.

---

Development History & Context

Onikakushi-hen emerged from the nascent doujin soft scene of early 2000s Japan, a product of the one-man studio 07th Expansion helmed by Ryukishi07. Released on August 10, 2002, for Windows, the game was built on the lightweight NScripter engine—a pragmatic choice reflecting the era’s technological constraints, which prioritized narrative delivery over graphical spectacle. Ryukishi07’s vision, heavily influenced by Key’s visual novels like Kanon and Air, sought to invert the emotional whiplash of those works. Where Key used tragedy to evoke tears, Ryukishi07 aimed to induce terror. “Instead of leading the player to cry, I wanted to scare them,” he stated, repurposing the “slice of life to shock” formula into a psychological horror framework.

The gaming landscape in 2002 was dominated by console RPGs and early 3D action games, making Onikakushi-hen a radical outlier. As a doujin title, it operated outside mainstream industry channels, distributed via Comiket and online forums. This independence allowed Ryukishi07 to experiment with nonlinear storytelling, structuring the narrative as a series of self-contained “question arcs” (Onikakushi-hen being the first) followed by “answer arcs” in later releases. The title itself, Higurashi (cicada), evokes the oppressive summer setting and the insects’ relentless, droning cry—a metaphor for the inescapable paranoia that consumes protagonist Keiichi. Despite its niche origins, the game’s uncompromising vision would resonate so deeply that by 2006, it had sold over 100,000 copies, a milestone for doujin software that mirrored the success of Type-Moon’s Tsukihime and paved the way for future psychological horror games like Yume Nikki and DDLC.

---

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The narrative of Onikakushi-hen is a masterclass in unreliable perspective and escalating dread. As Keiichi Maebara, a Tokyo transplant who relocates to Hinamizawa, players initially experience the quintessential “slice of life” idyll: sun-drenched afternoons playing games with Mion Sonozaki, Rena Ryūgū, Satoko Hōjō, and Rika Furude. This lull is shattered when Keiichi stumbles upon Hinamizawa’s dark history—the annual Watanagashi Festival is preceded by a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, atributed to the “Oyashiro Curse,” a vengeful deity’s wrath. Ryukishi07 leverages this lore sparingly, planting seeds of suspicion through fragmented TIPS (supplementary lore entries) and cryptic dialogue.

The narrative’s genius lies in Keiichi’s unraveling. Triggered by his investigation into photographer Jirō Tomitake’s death and nurse Miyo Takano’s ominous theories, Keiichi’s paranoia metastasizes into full-blown psychosis. His internal monologue shifts from curiosity to terror, with phrases like “Uso da!” (“That’s a lie!”) from Rena becoming a trigger for violent hallucinations. The climax—a confrontation where Keiichi bludgeons Mion and Rena to death with Satoshi Hōjō’s baseball bat before succumbing to Hinamizawa Syndrome (a fictional malady inducing self-harm)—is not a twist but a tragic inevitability. Thematically, the arc explores the fragility of trust in isolated communities and the horrors of unchecked mental illness. Keiichi’s descent mirrors real-world conditions like paranoia-induced schizophrenia, while the Oyashiro Curse serves as a potent metaphor for societal scapegoating. Ryukishi07’s refusal to explain the supernatural origins of the events in this arc (clarified in later installments) is a deliberate choice, forcing players to confront ambiguity and question whether the horror stems from the village or Keiichi’s mind.

---

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

As a kinetic visual novel, Onikakushi-hen eschews traditional gameplay in favor of narrative immersion. Players advance text-based scenes, static character sprites, and background artwork to progress the story. The absence of branching paths or choices underscores the deterministic nature of Keiichi’s fate, heightening the tension of his inevitable collapse. The core mechanic is the TIPS system, unlocked upon completing chapters. These supplementary entries—ranging from village histories to character backstories—act as a fragmented puzzle box, encouraging players to connect disparate clues. For instance, TIPS about Satoshi’s disappearance and the Hinamizawa Syndrome foreshadow Keiichi’s trajectory, rewarding observant players with deeper context while preserving the arc’s mystery.

The interface is minimalist: text boxes, sprite portraits, and simple menus for saving, loading, and accessing TIPS. This design mirrors the story’s claustrophobia, with the screen becoming a prison of Keiichi’s perceptions. Later console ports (e.g., Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Matsuri) added voice acting, enriching the atmosphere but retaining the original’s oppressive stillness. While devoid of combat or progression systems, the game’s interactivity lies in its meta-narrative features. The “Staff Room” allows Ryukishi07 to dissect the narrative, while the “All-Cast Review Session” breaks the fourth wall, with characters debating the events—meta-commentary blurring the line between player and protagonist. This structural innovation prefigures modern visual novels like Doki Doki Literature Club, demonstrating Onikakushi-hen’s forward-thinking design.

---

World-Building, Art & Sound

Hinamizawa is rendered with haunting authenticity, its idyllic façade masking rot. Based on Shirakawa, Gifu, the village’s sun-drenched rice paddies, rustic shrines, and cicada-filled forests are contrasted with the suffocating dread of its curse. Ryukishi07’s background art, sourced from personal photographs, lends a documentary realism to the setting, while character sprites—drawn by Ryukishi07 himself—emphasize moe aesthetics (large eyes, expressive poses) to amplify the jarring tonal shifts. Rena’s innocent smile, once endearing, becomes grotesque in Keiichi’s paranoid eyes, a visual cue for his mental unraveling.

Sound design is the game’s unsung hero. The NScripter engine’s limitations are transcended through a haunting soundtrack of licensed tracks and doujin music. Tracks like “You” by dai (later popularized in the anime) use dissonant