YASO, also called Curse of Soiree, is a third-person horror game initially released in 2022.
You play as Kirima Shoka, a woman who finds herself in an unfamiliar Western-style building from the Meiji era. She doesn't know what she was doing, why she is here, or even where she is.Just as she was about to leave the building, she realized that she had dropped the paper crane that she had been holding as a good luck charm. And from there things get stranger for her.
It was created by Vtuber Itimatu Ichimatsu, a self described Kotobuki doll, whose channel can be seen here.
Note; the channel is primarily in Japanese. Ichimatsu also previously created the Surreal Horror game GOHOME.
It can be downloaded on Steam.
YASO has examples of the following tropes:
- Ascended Extra: Kirima turns out to be Piano from GOHOME, trapped as a spirit that plays the piano for eternity.
- Creator Thumbprint: While YASO focuses more on the story elements and isn't as strange in terms of story as GOHOME, it still shares the same habits of enemies appearing very abruptly, rhythm game levels, surreal visuals, and enemies based off of surreal interpretations of yokai.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Kirima is revealed to have this. Originally being in love with Sakamoto, he later became incredibly sick, and Kirima made him a thousand paper cranes to grant him good health. It didn't work despite all of her effort, and Sakamoto's mother thanks her but encourages her to move on and find someone else. She later marries another man whose implied to be physically abusive, and she later kills him.
- Eldritch Location: The house Kirima finds herself in is this, as it's inhabited by hostile spirits agitated by arbitrary actions, appears old and dilapidated, and has giant heads peering in through the window.
- The Lost Lenore: Sakamoto Hyakutaro, Kirima's lost lover who succumbed to illness. It's implied that she never truly got over his death, and his ghost haunts her because he wants her to be free.
- Multiple Endings:
- Ending 1, "Darkness": When Kirima destroys all of the pots in the piano room, after she encounters Nikutensoku and pulls the scissors from his head, she then sinks through the ground. Sakamoto tries to pull her up, but she ultimately succumbs to her despair and exhaustion, and decides to stay in the darkness for eternity.
- Ending 2, "Yomi": After Kirima falls, Sakamoto successfully pulls her back to the surface, and implores her to keep going. He instructs her to keep running straight ahead and to not turn around, which she does, until she reaches a clearing with a piano. Kirima decides that its not so bad to play her piano forever, and that this is the closest to heaven that she'll ever reach. This is implied to be the canon ending, as she becomes a demon and plays her leitmotif from GOHOME.
- Ending 3, "Hell": Kirima follows Sakamoto's instructions and keeps walking straight ahead until the very last second, at which point she refuses to leave behind everything and decides to go back and face her reality, even if its painful for her. Kirima runs back to the house as she apologizes to Sakamoto. She then wakes up in a jail cell: she's in prison for murdering her husband, and will likely get the death sentence.
- Our Demons Are Different: Nyoromi the Snake Woman, Nikutensoku the Giant Head, and the ghost of Kirima's former lover Sakamoto all have varying degrees of hostility towards the player, but seem to operate on a case of Blue-and-Orange Morality and encouraging her to follow a certain path.
- Proper Lady: Kirima appears to be this, what with her elegant style of dress and proper way of speaking, and it's implied that she married a wealthy man, but her temper and murder of her husband bogs this down a bit.
