The game involves the player making various choices through menu options to direct the narrative of the story.

Director Koichi Nakamura developed the game, following the financial success Chunsoft had with their Dragon Quest series.

Otogirisō is a sound novel, a term academic Rebecca Crawford described as being applied to Chunsoft's 20th century visual novel games.

[5] Otogirisō has its players advance by reading the in-game text and then can influence how the story will proceed by choosing from a list of options that are presented to them at key points in the narrative.

The two enter the house in various ways, such as ramming into the door or breaking a window, and find themselves in a room that is completely silent with only a murky aquarium and suit of armor worth investigating.

They continue exploring the mansion further, find unexplained phenomena such as a disconnected phone ringing and a door that is nailed shut and a kitchen where food is prepared.

Depending on choices made during the story and how many times the player has gone through the game, various concluding narratives are revealed ranging from Nami's relationship with the family members who remain in the mansion to the characters being hunted by a fish monster.

[12] Programmer Manabu Yamana said prior to the idea of the sound novel, the team attempted a game that would contain elements of Dragon Quest, Sim City (1989), and Populous (1989) which he said "didn't work at all.

"[12] Shukei Nagasaka, a screenwriter, novelist and television writer, wrote the original story and script for Otogirisō.

[14] When the game was first shown at the Nintendo Space World trade show, it still contained its paper texture and occasional animations.

[6] On 23 July 1998, Chunsoft announced that along with the games Banshee's Last Cry (1994) and Machi (1998), Otogirisō would be remade as part of the Sound Novel Evolution[b] series.

[17] The Otogirisō soseihen version of the game was made available digitally on the PlayStation Store in Japan in September 2011.

[25] For the original Super Famicom release, the four reviewers in Weekly Famitsu said that Otogirisō will be very divisive and found it difficult to evaluate.

[26] Yutaka Noguchi of Weekly Famitsu later commented on the game, writing that it had simple graphics which made it an "unusually restrained production".

[27] Noguchi complimented the ability to form a protagonist that ranged from timid to being comic relief and found that having more selectable narrative moves based on how many times you've cleared the game as an innovative system.

The experienced Japanese players we talked to thought it was an interesting change and commented that the great sound made the game.

"[29] Jeremy Parish of Polygon discussed the game in 2018, stating that it "could perhaps be written off as little more than a digital version of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books of the '80s.

However, the mature writing combined with the eerie atmosphere created by the graphics and music set the game apart from anything that had come before.

[23] The two reviewers in Dengeki PlayStation magazine also complimented the new graphics and the ability to view the game from Nami's perspective.

The popularity of the genre would return in Japan with the release of Otogirisou and the later personal computer (PC) games that were influenced by it.

Academic Ko On Chan said that this style used in Otogirisō and Banshee's Last Cry allowed for more text on screen which intensified the experience of reading through sound effects and illustrations.

This style did not have the linear narrative structure seen in games like The Portopia Serial Murder Case (1983) or Snatcher (1988), and would instead have the plot repeat the same period of time over and over.