Aum Shinrikyo is a cult founded by Asahara Shoko. I don't know terribly much about the cult's inner functions, but in the 80's and 90's it functioned as a doomsday cult, and follows the practice of Buddhism. From what I know, it wasn't a huge deal to the population in the beginning, because they were mostly just doing silly things like performing for others and appearing on talk shows. The cult even had an anime (which is publicly available on YouTube with English subtitles) starring Asahara himself.
The cult is probably most known for the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995, which killed 13 people and injured many more. Shoko was later arrested for it and eventually executed in 2018, along with a few other members of the cult. Despite this, it's still active (now known as simply 'Aleph'), but I have no idea what they do now, or if it's as dangerous as it used to be. The cult has murdered people before for trying to leave or prosecute them.
In response to the sarin attacks, two friends of the developer of Hong Kong '97 developed and released a game about the cult for the PC-98. It was almost sold at Comiket, but the devs decided not to before the event, which I think was a good call on their part. Of course, the game didn't do very well, since it's mostly unheard of.
上九一色村物語 (eng. The Story of Kamikuishiki Village) is a satirical city manager game themed after Aum Shinrikyo. In the game, you play as Asahara Shoko, and are trying to grow your cult to be both well known and powerful in an effort to convert everyone to your religion. Due to the game being a response to the Tokyo subway sarin attacks, everything you do will lead up to this moment, and your fame and power will help you escape consequences.
The developer for this game was HappySoft, who would be mostly known for their unofficial SNES game Hong Kong '97. Despite the janky nature of their only other game, this game boasts a lot of technichal prowess. There are multiple animations of real videos in the game, as well as a soundtrack consisting entirely of sampled audio from the cult itself. The game was released on twelve floppy disks that you would need to install to your hard drive, but the copies floating around online are most often an HDI file ready to boot.
The developers jokingly call themselves Aum Soft, though this appears to have been taken seriously by some people out west. Due to the nature of the game's content (and an obvious language barrier), many have speculated that the game was created by Aum themselves, when this is simply not true. I saw this game credited in a compilation of PC-98 doujin and homebrew under the name Aum Soft—this is understandable, however it's technically incorrect.
When booting up the game, you're greeted with a video of a man trying to levitate, but it looks more like he's violently hopping up and down while in lotus position. The game starts as soon as you input anything, but there seems to be a longer introduction after this first sequence.
Once the game has started, you're greeted with a screen mostly standard for a city manager, with the village bustling around and the name of it in the corner of the screen. On the right-hand side is a portrait of Shoko, with a bit of information:
Underneath that, the game has a line of text telling you (in a tongue-in-cheek way) to pick an action. The actions are as follows:
The game has multiple events that take place and you can do nothing to prevent, the earliest example of which being when a lawyer investigating the cult and his family go missing about two actions in. Unfortunately I didn't gather screenshots for most of these events, however there are many murders that take place through the timeline that the game gives you. Of course, the most important one is the sarin attacks—this one signals the end of the game.
The aftermath of the sarin attacks can go two different ways. If you've done well and gotten enough power and influence, you get away with it, and despite everything, the people convert to your religion and world peace is achieved. Aum Shinrikyo believed in armageddon, so even this ending is fantastical for the cult.
The other ending is rooted in what really happened, but still takes a turn into the cult's beliefs. The sarin attacks fail and Asahara is arrested for being the mastermind behind it—following this is a long animation showing the end of the world. Of course, the world hasn't ended, but Asahara was indeed arrested and executed years later for his crimes.
Unsurprisingly, there are very few (if any) resources for this game. The game itself can be downloaded on the Internet Archive, but not much gameplay footage exists on the internet. I've been considering recording gameplay myself to publish, but that would require playing it and getting both endings separately, since I would want to be completely in depth.
There is a weirdly common misconception that this game was developed and published by Aum Shinrikyo themselves, probably due to the fact most people outside Japan can't read anything other than 'AUM SOFT' in the corner.
This game was also published after the sarin attacks had already failed, but I'm not sure most people are aware of the release date. While I get why people would think this is an actual game from Aum Shinrikyo, it peeves me that people assume so fast.
