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Protagonists
In General
- Dark and Troubled Past: They all have grim moments from their past, which is brought up in the game.
- Improbable Weapon User: Alex fights with vinyl records, Michael fights with his camera, Rory holds up signs, Vella uses her keytar, and Chondra has her hula hoop. Only Claudio and Essentia use actual weapons, both wielding swords, just that Claudio's is a katana and Essentia's is a BFS.
Alex Eggleston
Alex Eggleston (Class: Hipster "Scum")
Voiced by: Chris Niosi
Alex is a recent college graduate who has returned home to discover adult life is not what he expected, or desired. When a young woman vanishes from an elevator, he becomes obsessed with finding out the truth behind her disappearance.
Armed with his favorite LPs and his childhood best friend, a stuffed toy Panda, Alex is ready for anything.
- All Love Is Unrequited: His attempts to make moves on either Vella or Rory both end with him being rejected.
- All Take and No Give: Whenever he decides to go off and do something, he expects all his friends to drop what they're doing and help him but rarely will he ever extend them the same dedication. After doing it one too many times and getting sucked into Soul Space by Essentia for weeks on end, effectively ditching his entire group a few counties over, he's forced to go to each friend individually and apologize for his careless behavior before they'll consider helping him out again.
- Ambiguously Bi: While Alex does take several female romantic interests throughout the game and spares no details about the many girlfriends he had during college, he also makes a point of mentioning that none of those girlfriends have ever stuck with him always becoming disinterested and he also thinks that giving Rory a kiss would be a viable way to make amends with him even using the same character art from when he earlier tried to kiss Vella in a similar scenario.
- Character Catchphrase: "What the hell is going on?!", or anything of the sort where he just asks anyone in the vicinity to explain the weird shit that's happening during his adventure. Expect to hear it a lot.
- Contemplate Our Navels: Alex engages in a lot of inner monologue, sometimes about a topic that isn't pertinent to the current ongoing conversation. This aspect of his dialogue is absent in the unused ending- he manages to stay on topic regarding what he and his friends ended up doing after defeating Wilfrid and Essentia, suggesting that he actually is changing as a person.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Alex's standard LP attack, which has both the lowest and highest potential damage output out of the available standard attacks in the game.
- Disappeared Dad: Alex's dad only actually appears after the world starts falling apart and speaks with an oddly distorted version of Alex's mother's voice. In fact, Panda is under the impression Alex doesn't have a dad at all. A representation of him shows up in a Mind Dungeon cutscene that explains he left Alex because he regarded him as a mistake and wanted to pursue another woman as opposed to his mother, something that said line of scenes later reveals Alex is still hurt over.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Alex's main motivation for the first part of the plot is to investigate Sammy's disappearance. The story portrays Sammy as a love interest for Alex, even though they had only known each other for a short time. Chondra also calls out Alex's behavior in this regard while also discussing Missing White Woman Syndrome.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Alex manages to grate on everyone's nerves in one way or another and is in general a clueless, self centered jackass. He does, however, show enough positive attributes for his friends to genuinely like him.
- Glass Cannon: Has a very low HP stat, but his LP attack can potentially deal incredible amounts of damage.
- Hate Sink: Was described by
Word of God to have been intentionally designed to be a piece of shit that the player isn't supposed to connect with especially well at first. - Heroic Mime: After the January 2021 patch, there's an option to turn off Alex's dialogue.
- Homoerotic Subtext: With Rory. While Alex is attracted to several women, the option exists for him to attempt to kiss Rory
should Alex have bonded with him, paralleling his attempt at kissing Vella. Like Vella, Rory rejects him. - It's All About Me: He is incredibly self-centered. Several characters call him out for this.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Alex is a clueless, self-centered ass but it's mainly from a lack of real world experience and perspective beyond what he learned at college. In interacting with his friends, he tries to rectify this with... varied... results.
- Lack of Empathy: He gets upset at Rory after escaping Wind Town sewers, accusing the latter of lying about what happened to his sister (who committed suicide) when it's obvious that Rory was hurting and didn't want to open up about it. Keep in mind that Rory knew Alex for less than a day and most people, for obvious reasons, don't open up about something as sensitive as that to a stranger they just met. To his credit, he can apologize for that later on.
- Manchild: He's 26 years old, but he acts like a petulant, self-absorbed teenager.
- A Mistake Is Born: It's explained in the Mind Dungeon that Alex's dad regarded him as one.
- Phrase Catcher: Some variant of "What the hell, Alex!?" whenever he crosses a line or gets his head stuck too far up his own butt for everyone's comfort.
- Serial Romeo: Falls for no less than three girls (and one guy) over the course of the game and mentions having had several girlfriends during his run in college.
- Spell My Name With An S: His last name is Eggleston, but his theme on the soundtrack spells it as Eagleston instead.
- This Loser Is You: If the rest of the game didn't tip you off, he's eventually revealed to be a parallel universe counterpart of the player in the end.
Michael K
Michael K (Class: Photographer)
Voiced by: Clifford Chapin
Michael is the youngest party member, and a recent highschool graduate. He is an obsessive conspiracy theorist, and the co-creator of ONISM1999.
His intelligence is alarming, but often hidden. He keeps quiet about all the things he gets up to, and hides his real personality behind a quick wit, and an awkward shyness about his personal life.
- Alternate Self: He's not this dimension's original Michael. He's eventually able to meet all of his alternate selves at once, transforming him into Proto-Michael.
- Dimensional Traveler: He's eventually able to travel into the Soul Space and communicate with ever other Michael in the multiverse, thereby transforming him into Proto-Michael. Additionally, the player character Michael was never the one from this dimension. He traveled through the Soul Space to a dimension where he could remain with Alex rather than moving away.
- Glacier Waif: Even though Michael is younger and noticeably thinner than Alex, he somehow has more HP than him.
- Look What I Can Do Now!: After Alex returns from Essentia's Mind Dungeon, Michael is absent until the rest of the party has been rounded up. When Alex finally catches up to him, Michael has ascended to Proto-Michael, after having accessed the Soul Space and understood his parallel lives.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Proto-Michael is most vocal about reality fraying in the endgame and keeps warning the others about it, and even tips Alex off about the Essentia lying to him. However, his warnings are brushed off, especially during the Christmas celebration.
- Our Genies Are Different: The alternate version of Michael in the final area is a blue-skinned genie.
- Spotting the Thread: Alex and other characters related to him make a point of mentioning that Michael moved away when they were younger and him being back in town is a surpise. Despite this, Michael acts as if he never left in the first place. This is because he's not the Michael native to this timeline and is filling in the blanks so he can hang out with Alex again. The reworked sewer boss scenario in 1.20 has the Golden Alpaca explain this plainly and count it among the list of interimensional taboos that the group need to be punished for before he fights them.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Or rather, floating shirtless scene. Proto-Michael is constantly topless.
Vella Wilde
Vella Wilde (Class: Musical Prodigy)
Voiced by: Melanie Ehrlich
A gifted pianist from a young age, Vella was hailed as a prodigy of classical music. With time, her recognition faded, and so did her love for performing Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms.
When Alex first encounters Vella she is the change vendor at the Frankton Arcade.
She fights with sound, using her Keytar and amp. This instrument is the anthesis of her childhood.
- Banishing Ritual: Her unique "Banish" skill removes an enemy from battle, placing them in Alex's Mind Dungeon to improve his stat bonuses. This is one of the only ways to defeat invincible Soul Survivors.
- Broken Ace: Was a child prodigy of music who felt that she peaked early. She's also the most well versed in the mechanics of the Soul Space out of the entire group. There is a very good reason for this...
- Broken Bird: Although kind and friendly to a fault, Vella is hiding some serious emotional baggage.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Delivers one to Alex and Michael. This ends up setting up the Mind Dungeon mechanic, as she's been using it to increase her strength, while the first two party members don't know about it.
- Dimensional Traveler: She knows so much about Soul Space because she's not this universe's original Vella.
- Despair Event Horizon: Her arriving at this is what caused her soul to split from her body and travel into the Soul Space.
- Dueling Player Characters: She fights Alex and Michael early in Chapter II after they harass her enough.
- Wingding Eyes: One of her talk portraits depicts her with Xs for eyes.
Rory Mancer
Rory Mancer (Class: Conscientious Objector/Healer)
Voiced by: Andrew Fayette
Rory is a loner from the internet, who is determined to find his missing thirteen year old sister. She vanished two weeks before Rory reaches out to Alex via ONISM1999(A conspiracy theory message board.)
Roy is disgusted by violence. He refuses to attack others, and uses his abilities to heal his party, or take damage in their place. He is the sort of person who would take a punch, or even a bullet, for someone he didn’t even like.
- Counter-Attack: After the combat update in Version 1.25, enemies will "crash into" him when he blocks an attack with Pacifism, taking damage in return.
- Despair Event Horizon: He's DEEP into this when the gang first meet him to the point that his sheer lack of will to live is threatening to shunt his soul into the Soul Space. He remains pretty entrenched into it for the majority of the game. Hanging out with Alex and the gang along with a few optional Pet the Dog moments from Alex will allow him to pull himself back.
- Driven to Suicide: He takes his own life if you don't encourage him at prompted moments and pick him up from his house in Wind Town.
- Go Through Me: Instead of the usual Attack command, Rory has a Pacifism command that lets intercept an attack for a randomly selected ally (or "look out for number one" and protect himself).
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The alternate version of Rory in the final area is a knight with a massive shield
- Optional Party Member: Whether he stays with the party is largely determinant; if you don't encourage him, he commits suicide and the player is locked out of using him again until a New Game Plus or change in save file.
- Sacrificial Revival Spell: His Sacrifice skill.
- Support Party Member: Rory can only deal damage with his counter attack. All of his other battle options defend or heal the party.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Being supportive to Rory eventually rewards you by having him rejoin the party later.
Claudio Unkrich
Claudio Unkrich (Class: Hacky Sack Master)
Voiced by: Anthony Sardinha
Claudio is the owner of a record store, and a master Hacky Sackist. In addition to his love of music, he is also a die hard otaku.
He’s the older brother of Chondra. Unlike his sister, the disappearance of his younger brother hit him hard. He still thinks about him, and is actively running the search for him on ONISM1999.
- Black and Nerdy: While he's older and superficially cooler than most examples, Claudio is still a bespectacled Occidental Otaku with a slew of dorky interests and a propensity to geek out over them. He's also implied to be pretty smart in at least some ways, given his ease in integrating into Japanese culture and him somehow picking up lock picking from being a fan of Sherlock Holmes.
- Katanas Are Just Better: They certainly are when they're the only weapons in the game that are actually weapons.
- Master of Unlocking: Zig-zagged. When Alex mentions that the van holding Essentia is locked, Claudio pre-emptively accuses him of being racist by assuming all black people can pick locks (while Alex hasn't said anything of the sort), then admits that he does know how to pick locks, attributing it to a "Sherlock Holmes phase", and then further admits he doesn't know how to pick car locks.
- Nice Guy: He's described by Chondra as one in a missable conversation later in the game - while his family was trying to get used to the culture on a vacation to Japan, he had already managed to integrate himself locally and had many stories of having fun and inspiring people the whole time.
- Occidental Otaku: Loves anime, uses a katana.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Claudio is proud of his love of shoujo anime. Rory commenting on his "girls shirt" leads to Claudio discussing the genre with him (and missing the fact that Rory was actually commenting on the fact that Claudio's shirt was a woman's cut).
Chondra Unkrich
Chondra Unkrich (Class: Hula Hooper)
Voiced by: Michaela Laws
Chondra is graduate student in Psychology. When she was just a kid her twin brother was kidnapped, and never found. Unlike her brother, she’s spent her adult life making peace with this.
When she isn’t hitting the books Chondra is an avid fan of dance music and hula hooper.
- Combat Hand Fan: The alternate version of Chandra in the final area replaces the hula hoop with a pair of these.
- Dance Battler: She has hints of this, as her fighting style involves her hula hooping.
- Stance System: Several of her skills alter her stance, which bestows her with different bonuses and potentially a few drawbacks.
Essentia
Essentia 2000
Voiced by: Melanie Ehrlich
- BFS: Wields one in battle. It has a revolving device built into its tip to serve as its charging minigame.
- Cast from Hit Points: All of Essentia's skills consume Energy, which also serve as her own hit points. As a robot, healing food doesn't replenish this Energy; batteries do instead. If her Energy runs out, she takes several turns before she gets back up with some of it replenished.
- Ms. Exposition: When Alex finally gets to meet her, she dumps a large amount of exposition about her purpose, the Soul Space, and the Soul Survivors.
- No Sense of Humor: Subverted — Essentia does have some capacity for humor, as seen in her interactions with Alex's mom where she deliberately skirts around the fact that she's a robot, but due to being a machine her sense of humor is pretty dry.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: Available as one of her combat abilities.
- Spell My Name with a "The": The game is inconsistent about whether her name is "Essentia", "Essentia 2000", or "the Essentia 2000".
- Unreliable Expositor: At the end, Proto-Alex claims that everything she had said to Alex was merely a web of lies to put him in a position to defeat Proto-Alex, so that she can usurp his position.
Other Characters
Sammy Pak
Semi "Sammy" Pak
Voiced by: Kelly Nicole Dugan
A woman who disappears in an elevator at the beginning of the game. Alex seemingly witnesses her abduction from Soul Survivors in-person, and later finds video footage of her disappearance on ONISM1999.- Crutch Character: She proves to be fairly powerful when she briefly joins Alex in the factory. Naturally, she gets taken away from the party at the end of the dungeon.
- Expy: A somewhat controversial example, in that she’s based off of Elisa Lam, a real person who famously died in a mysterious accidental suicide at a hotel. Sammy meeting Alex in an elevator and disappearing are direct references to aspects of Lam’s death.
- Guest-Star Party Member: She temporarily joins the party for the factory dungeon, her attack minigame is the same as Vella's and she gains EXP from battles but she is taken away from the party before the mind dungeon is unlocked so said EXP is useless.
- Glass Cannon: Strong enough to one-shot most enemies you can encounter in the dungeon you find her in, but her HP is even lower than Alex's.
- Homeless Hero: She currently stays in an abandoned factory with no home to speak of.
- The Lost Lenore: Her disappearance spurs Alex into action and sets the whole plot in motion.
Panda
Panda
Voiced by: Chris Niosi
A talking stuffed panda that helps Alex early on, both in the overworld for puzzles and in combat as defense.- A Dog Named "Dog": He's a panda who is simply called "Panda."
- Imaginary Friend: Panda's only dialogue is with Alex, and while he's alone. When Alex first meets Sammy she refers to Panda as a stuffed animal. In the lead-up to the final chapter, Panda's voice shifts into Alex's own as he reminds him that he's only a stuffed panda; this has the implication that Panda's dialogue is simply Alex talking with himself.
Krow
Krow Named Marlene
Voiced by: Daman Mills
The first character the player sees in the game. A talking crow that asks the player to input information and later shows up to explain the Mind Dungeon.- Chekhov's Gunman: He shows up at the beginning to ask the player to input some names, and then disappears. Once the Mind Dungeon becomes accessible, he turns out to be the "guide" of the place.
- Mr. Exposition: He tells Alex what the Mind Dungeon is and how it works.
- Vocal Dissonance: When he shows up in the game proper, he turns out to have a deep voice. While his voice does change around for the cutscenes within the Mind Dungeon, it still stays at a low tone whether he's playing the part of a librarian, an astronomer, or Alex's dad.
Golden Alpaca
Golden Alpaca
Voiced by: D.C. Douglas
A strange creature that appears at the end of Alex's journey through Windtown, attacking the group after they meet Rory's Soul Survivor. In version 1.25, the Golden Alpaca received an overhaul, giving it additional plot relevance and a slightly more serious design.
- Anthropomorphic Shift: Twofold. In the original game, the Golden Alpaca starts off as...well...a golden furred alpaca. During the course of the fight, it would summon Soul Survivors that it would then absorb to transform into a humanoid form that would become progressively more demonic as time passed. In the reworked 1.25 scenario the Golden Alpaca's design in general was overhauled into a humanoid, alpaca themed angel of sorts.
- Beast Man: Can appear as this regardless of either design.
- The Dreaded: When Vella senses its approach, she panics, demanding that the party flee before it can arrive.
- Flunky Boss: Summons Entities to its side before absorbing them to gain power. Depending on the version, it will either evolve into different forms or unleash an HP to One attack on the entire party.
- Monster Modesty: In the 1.0 version of the game, when the Golden Alpaca transforms into it's humanoid beastman forms, it gains a pair of red briefs. Going by how that area is modeled out and the camera angles of such, he's clearly got something worth covering up. He trades the red briefs in for black and gains a pair of leggings and sneakers in his 1.25 redesign.
- Time Police: The updated Golden Alpaca is a being that hunts down and eliminates those who would try to escape their world. When it arrives, it destroys Rory's Soul Survivor before attacking the group for trying to (intentionally or not, in one way or another) defy its laws.
- Winged Humanoid: His 1.25 redesign.
