On 20 March, 1995, a doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo committed a terrorist attack in Tokyo by releasing sarin on three lines of the Tokyo subway. The attack killed 14 people and injured many more. It's considered one of the deadliest terrorist incidents in modern Japanese history, and 13 cult members involved in the attack were sentenced to death.

The cult of Aum Shinrikyo had attempted to seize power in many different ways before. They ran multiple candidates into the Japanese Diet in 1990, winning zero seats; this failure inspired Asahara Shoko, their leader, to begin producing chemical weapons. The cult would also begin to smuggle rifles and ammunition into the country, later attempting to even make their own. They attempted to poison people many times with poorly made chemicals, eventually managing to produce sarin, VX, and some others. Other major attacks (against one or many people) include the Sakamoto family murder in 1989 and the Matsumoto sarin attack, which was the "test run" for Tokyo subway.

Two friends of Kurosawa Kowloon (HappySoft, Hong Kong '97) felt particularly moved by the incident and proceeded to make a game heavily satirizing the cult, using footage and audio directly from various broadcasts and home media releases. The game's heavy involvement of cult-produced media has lead many in the West to believe it was actually developed by Aum Shinrikyo themselves, however even simply Google translating a screenshot will show the true nature of the game.

The Story of Kamikuishiki Village is a city management game themed after Aum Shinrikyo. You play as Asahara and are responsible for making the cult as powerful and influential as possible, making enough money to convert everyone to your religion by the time of the Tokyo subway attack. The game starts in 1989 and continues until the day of the attacks—everything you do leads up to this moment, and your fame and power will help you escape consequences.

The studio calls itself AUM Soft, likely as a joke on the cult's already large media library. The cult had produced music, short TV broadcasts, radio programs, and a short OVA series to encourage people to join.

Gameplay

When booting up the game, you're greeted with a video of a man trying to levitate, though it's obviously just someone violently jumping up and down in lotus. While the game starts at first input, there's a longer opening sequence with more footage (some being from interviews from cult members during the aftermath of the attacks) and a proper title screen at the end.

Once the game has started, you're greeted with a standard city management-style UI, with the village bustling around and the name of it in the corner. On the right-hand side is a digitized portrait of Asahara, with many different bits of information to keep track of:

1. The date; this helps you keep track of important events.
2. Asahara's health. Number is stamina, coloured text is any health condition. Depending on his condition, his stamina may cap at a lower value.
3. Cult members. This helps keep track of your influence.
4. Facilities, shops. This helps keep track of your assets.
5. Money. Well, why else would you need that...

Underneath that are actions you can take, ordered as follows:

1. Meditate. This improves health.
2. Missionary work. This involves making your cult known in the media. This type of work helps gain members.
3. Initiations. This raises funds for your cult, though some of them are quite difficult to stomach. Some are also as dumb as selling your bath water.
4. Investments. This helps with financial and likely political power.
5. Rest. This helps you improve stamina.

Multiple real-life events take place in the game and are unavoidable, such as news of the Sakamoto family murders happening almost immediately after starting the game. Many murders and other major cult events are brought up as they happen.

The aftermath of the sarin attacks themselves can go two different ways. If you've done well and gotten enough power and influence you will get away with everything, and everyone will convert to your religion. This is the "good" ending, and is the fantastical ending the cult imagined.

The other ending is simply what happened in real life, with the added twist that Armageddon happens. The sarin attacks fail and Asahara is arrested due to being the mastermind—the real Asahara was finally executed in 2018.

Resources

Unsurprisingly, very little footage of this game is out there on the internet. While it's not particularly obscure, it seems many people haven't recorded it for themselves or bothered to publish anything for it. You can find a handful of articles (and some crappy YouTube videos) about it, including the VICE article that contacted both game translators and Kowloon to learn more about the game. I've also considered uploading my own playthrough, but I want to make sure I get absolutely everything, and I feel I'd need to know Japanese for that.