Onto Maizilind Unto Infinity (OMUI) is a first-person narrative horror game about humankind’s suicidal instincts, interweaving grand geopolitical destruction with personal tragedy. It unfolds as a world-ending nightmare: a playful childhood afternoon quickly descends into the trauma of the Iranian Revolution, transforms into a nuclear apocalypse, and concludes with the sudden death of my Uncle Ramin.
Players should expect a deeply personal and tragic experience designed to place you in the shoes and eyes of a child in my own family as the Islamic revolution came and went, followed by the Iran-Iraq War, scattering us in a hundred different directions and uprooting thousands of people from their ancestral land.
Except, in this reality, the nuclear apocalypse comes in its place - and who but Ramin can stop it? You will take on his impossible quest to save his family as the nightmarish reality collides with hallucinations of his real life.
What features should one expect?
Explore a 1970s style Tehran apartment in a first-person perspective.
Play with toys, examine photographs, and struggle to understand the relationships of an Iranian family.
Watch the Shah on TV, try to flip the channels, and piece together the dynamic political situation of Iran from the arguments of the adults.
Listen to the Shah's final speech to the Iranian people.
Run for your life and seek shelter.
Control Ramin as a pilot in his battle against nuclear demons and repressed memories.
Confront Ramin in his final moments.
Immerse yourself in the primeval destruction of Iran.
Find your family in the spirit world and prepare for your journey to the Upper Realm.
Coming to peace with what happened was a long and arduous process. Making this game helped me immensely, but sometimes what was meant to be a way to let go grows into a means to hold on. It is with gratitude to the spirits and to history that I present the complete first edition of Onto Maizilind Unto Infinity in time for the tenth anniversary of a world without Ramin.
It's true that the past is the past, but that doesn't mean we can't change how we feel about it.
For the world to heal, we too must mend.
Let us end the war with reality together.
