H9: Origin

About H9: Origin

H9: Origin is a horror-themed faux-documentary adventure game from WorldMap, released November 30, 2025. Set in a fictional late-90s Japanese game studio, it investigates the bizarre cancellation of the bishoujo title Tokimeki Strip Rock-Paper-Scissors. Blending visual novel elements with interactive documents, the game unfolds through emails, office memos, and VHS tapes. It’s a niche pick for fans of meta-narratives and developer folklore, with a focus on eerie atmosphere over jump scares. Playing out on PC, it sticks to single-player mode, offering a brisk 10-hour campaign with multiple endings.

Gameplay

You spend most sessions clicking through digitized files, emails, blueprints, and even in-joke developer notes, to piece together the studio’s downfall. Dialogue trees let you pick your path through character interviews, with choices affecting how much you uncover. The horror elements are subtle, relying on unsettling audio logs and distorted visuals. You’ll frequently toggle between a faux-90s office map, document browser, and character timelines. The controls are mouse-centric, with minimal quick-time events. While the pace slows during dense text segments, the nonlinear structure encourages revisiting archives for hidden clues.

What Players Think

H9: Origin holds an 88% positive rating on Steam with 7.8/10 on Metacritic. Players log an average of 8.5 hours, with 32% completing all endings. Community moods skew nostalgic and curious, though 17% of reviews call the writing “overly campy.” The game has 38 achievements, mostly tied to document collection and dialogue options. Fans praise the “clever use of faux-archive media,” while critics note inconsistent voice acting. One user wrote, “Feels like digging through a developer’s cursed hard drive.” The most common gripe? “The UI is a maze, but I kept exploring anyway.”

PlayPile's Take

H9: Origin is a $19.99 curiosity for visual novel fans who enjoy digging through meta-fiction. The 38 achievements add replay value, but the lack of save scumming might frustrate. Its charm lies in the 90s dev studio nostalgia and the slow-burn mystery, though the visuals and audio lag behind modern standards. If you’ve ever wondered what a haunted game studio’s HR files would look like, this is your pick. But don’t expect a polished horror experience, think more “cult classic” than mainstream hit.

Storyline

Set in the late-1990s development studio of the never-released “Tokimeki Strip Rock-Paper-Scissors,” this faux-documentary horror adventure (ADV) draws you into the mystery behind a long-buried incident.