Do you remember that period in the early to mid 2010s when screamers were all the rage? It certainly was a time to be alive. It started with a maze game here, and a weird link there, but soon things started rapidly getting out of proportion, and at the height of it, it really felt like every other site, video or file that you opened was just waiting to catch you off guard and force you to get a new monitor and a fresh pair of pants. Tonight's tale comes from this time, though contrary to popular belief, is not about one of these websites.

Fancy Island (ふぁんしーあいらんど), more known in the west as simply "Lomando", is a Japanese horror website first released circa 2011 (as far as I could tell, anyways, it's really hard to find reliable info on this game.)

Upon first visiting the website, the user is greeted by a cute looking landing page, to unsuspecting users, this may at first just seem like a cute place full of anime catgirls and pastel pinks, however, clicking the large image of the mascot site's mascot Mimi causes... Let's just say "some mild tonal whiplash."

You are presented with a set of double doors drawn in a weird semi-realistic art style, which is oddly similar to that of many pieces of Japanese internet horror content of the time such as the all time classic Username 666. Though it's worth noting that these doors seem to be recent additions, as previous versions of the site would just thrust you straight into some of the website's more... Colourful material.

After stepping inside though the creepy doors, you are randomly presented with one of two "hub pages", and from then on the website opens up more, and you are free to explore the nearly 300 pages of content. These hub pages often have loud sounds and creepy imagery, which would often scare newcomers, and ultimately engrained the website into public consciousness as just another screamer site similar to the defunct shafou.com and many others like it. But ironically enough, there's more to even this dark underbelly of the website.

For despite what one might initially think with its frequent usage of jumpscares, and the initial deception, lomando.com is actually a point and click horror puzzle game, not too dissimilar to the popular notpron.

As stated in the initial page, the main goal of the game is to solve the puzzles and take the right paths to find "the gallery." The more you explore, the more you find codes, puzzles, gateways to other pages, and jumpscares. A ridiculous amount of jumpscares.

I don't want to spoil too much, as I truly do believe that if you have any sort of interest in horror, and are willing to push trough the admittedly at times excessive cheap spooks (though I'll also argue that a lot of of these screamers are some of the coolest moments the site has to offer), you frankly owe it to yourself to revisit this website viewed from a different perspective, or even check it out for the first time!

There does exist a walkthrough to lomando, and as much as it helps with some of the more obscure puzzle solutions, I ask you to only resort to it if absolutely necessary, as exploring fancy island and getting acquainted with its residents is half the fun. Though, I ain't judging.

I'd also like to shed some light on the fairly recent Deep Fancy Island, which seems to be an expansion of sorts, though admittedly I haven't played through it yet.

I really hope this post helped you gain some more interest in what's genuinely one of my favourite pieces of horror online. But even still, if making your way trough this "website type haunted house" doesn't seem like a fun plan for the weekend to you, thank you for reading!

- Kuro