Let me first sum up my thoughts on this game by going: AAAAAaaaauwaaagh!I hope they make it out alive! Aaaaah! What's going to happen?


Anyway, Hetaoni is generally the Hetalia survival horror video game. Based off a Japanese horror game called Ao Oni (I've never heard of it either). It's generally regarded as the one redeeming feature of the series. Because when you type Hetalia into a search engine you will find pictures of attractive guys having sex with each other, if you type Hetaoni into a search engine what you generally find is pictures of all the characters covered in blood, usually with very distraught looks on their faces.
It's even got a animated trailer, with the Inception music (inception music just makes everything better): [link]

So essentially all the characters (the Allies and the Axis, including Canada and Prussia) go visit a mysterious mansion. Upon arriving they find that they can't leave and there is a giant monster that is trying to kill and eat them.
And not only that (and this is a bit of a spoiler but it's something you become quickly aware of whenever you look at any fanart for the game) is that the characters are all trapped in a time loop, so not only are they being killed horribly, but that they keep reliving these moments and dying horribly, over and over again.
This just seems to make it worse as you're trying to get them out alive but you're worried they might keep making the same mistakes again and just be in this loop forever. There's even a throwaway line from Japan in one scene 'all this effort, this must have taken months, years even' which makes you realise these people might have been stuck here longer than you previously thought.

The main thing that generally makes this game something fans love so much, is the character development. Everyone gets something to do in this game. Everyone is pushed to their absolute limits in a literally life or death situation. Mister 'I'm the Hero' America is trapped in a situation where he constantly fails to save England from being killed by the monster, 'tough as nails' Germany keeps worrying he's a useless addition to the team (although the subplot about Germany that happens in Part 8 I find to be one of the sweetest parts of the game), Canada actually gets noticed, and Italy is quite badass for a change.
And of course some of the most emotional scenes come from the numerous character deaths. In this blog has a list of some of the best quotes from the game and some of the nice fanart: [link] However, if you're actually interested in playing the game, there are spoilers so you might want to miss these.

EDIT: Apparently there several people have created English copies of this game. The one I played was by *Pianodream but I've also been recommended a version by
The main problem with the game that most people had recently was that it didn't actually exist outside of the Japanese fandom, but now thanks this game has finally been translated into English. And we can finally see it in all its glory and its amazingness can be spread to the rest of the world.
The new English copy also seems to have the updated sprites, the improved backgrounds, MMD's are used for cutscenes and best of all, updated avatars so we no longer have that weird deformed face for Germany yes. That was the old face they used, England was the same except for a slightly different hairstyle. Most of them are by completely different artists.
It's been pointed out by other people that the monster design isn't that scary. But the sprite is still weird enough to creep you out when it suddenly appears. Seeing how as, often when that happens, you end up dead.

This being a fanmade game with no budget, the sprites are roughly equivocal to that of Pokemon. But for all this it manages to deliver well in atmosphere, a rather creepy breathing sound being the background music for the most part when exploring the mansion. The music production is actually fantastically good, consisting entirely of newly composed music, which keeps the atmosphere, they've got creepy, they've got sad, and they've also got action packed.
And it's generally done in that way that the Japanese like to do horror, it's not overtly scary although there some really good bits, it's stuff that I imagine will get better as the game goes on. And it's got lots of good head-f***y moments. Especially with all the death and timeloops.

The game seems to have a RPG levelling-up system for some reason. Even though you can't actually change equipment or buy to upgrade stats. But considering some of the descriptions you get with the equipment, I wouldn't want to. My personal favourite is still Germany's weapon, which is a whip, the description actually is:
Germany's personal whip, it's quite worn from use (O.o)
The game also has an ATB system for combat. Now I haven't played any proper JRPG's since… Final Fantasy 9, so I'm a bit behind and probably out of place to comment on this. However, the main difference between FF and Hetaoni's battles is that it's actually fun: mainly because the bar fills up in half a second rather than thirty. So it feels important you get the commands in time rather than having enough time to grab the nearest magazine.
I actually got quite excited at one fight, with some particularly kickass music, bright and colourful FX. I was gonna take that monster down!

Gameplay is extremely linear at times. With it being very much that you play this the games way, and you can at times get really stuck going back and forth on fetch quests, tapping every piece of scenery in the hopes that you find the tiny obscure item that you're looking for.
When you first get to play as the Allies, you will probably have to check every shelf in that library if you want to find the right spot to unlock the single one that allows England and China to have the conversation that continues on the plot.
Even the one bit where you could have a Professor Layton puzzle to figure out a code is solved ingame by one of the characters.

The game can be quite unforgiving as well. If you chose the wrong option on a Quick Time Event what you will generally get is the monster attacks you and then you get a screenshot of the character you were playing as lying dead in a pool of blood. It's fairly grim when that happens. Often this can happen if you forget to lock the door at points (and the game doesn't even tell you can do that) I'd seen walkthroughs, so I knew at some points when to do it. Then I went into a room with a dungeon with a key in the middle, so I went in and picked it up then: BAM! Monster breaks down door, screaming, Horrible Death. Possibly the most haunting thing was that the last bit of dialogue I got before the characters died was Italy constantly screaming: I thought I hadn't mae any mistakes this time! I thought I hadn't made any mistakes!

So, for all that there's a really strong focus on the story, with it's strongest points being characterisation and the plot (still, they won me over from time-loops) everyone's in character, and we already know and like them from the show, and we want them to get out. It even nicely manages to humanise them in a scene where all the characters sit with each other and talk about what they want to do if they ever escape.
It's got some of the nicest moments for pairing stuff, not because of the normal way it's done on the show, but because the relationships have actual emotion behind them for a change. There are some wonderful moments if you like Gertalia, and USUK with the (part that's been drawn into about a million comics already) infamous 'how many fingers am I holding up' scene (I didn't see what the fuss was about over that line, then I found the full quote, and then my reaction was: England! Noooo!)
But it's all done so well that it manages to restore your faith in a fandom drowning under so many yaoi and slash doujinshis. This is proof that something actually good can come from this series. I would have liked to have seen this much heart and effort put into the Hetalia film.

So, all in all, I'd recommend it. Generally, I've been waiting so long for this game to come out in English. It's great to actually play it. Unfortunately it's not finished yet, the English version is up to about Part 9 (Because for some reason the game likes to do this in short chapters) but the credits actually say something more should be coming in 2012, so hopefully we'll see something soon.