This surreal, melancholy indie game is a nihilist fever dream, and I kinda can't stop thinking about it

I first clocked the mysterious-looking OU when Japanese indie collective Asobu did their pre-Bitsummit showcase stream in 2021. It wasn't entirely clear what OU was going to be at that point, other than a sort-of-puzzle game about an amnesiac boy who'd found himself in a fantastical world of picturebook pages, and even when Alicia Haddick played it for herself at Bitsummit proper the following year, OU still had a strong, impenetrable sense of ambiguity about it.

But its striking art and rustic guitar soundtrack have stuck in my mind ever since, and finally, OU is now out in the wild. I've only played about two hours of it so far, but it's clear there's still a lot more to discover within its dreamy little vignettes. It's one of those games that's designed to be played multiple times to get the full extent of the story, and I've just hit the first of those Nier Automata-esque restarts. Honestly, I'm not quite sure what to think of it yet, but one thing is certain: I can't get it out of my head.