World of Horror (Video Game)

Something terrible has begun to awaken in our town.

World of Horror (Kyoufu no Sekai) is a roguelite horror RPG developed by Polish indie developer Panstasz and published by Ysbryd Games. It's made for the PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4. A demo is available here, which was released in the same year, although the pre-2020 demos were initially released in 2018. It was finally released on Steam under Early Access on February 20, 2020, with the full release under multiple platforms out on October 19, 2023.

The year is 198X, and the world is on the brink of collapse. The Old Gods are beginning to stir from their long slumber, and with their awakening, a small coastal town named Shiokawa in Japan begins to fall into chaos as the sanity of its inhabitants slips and strange monsters emerge. It's The End of the World as We Know It, and there's no way to stop it. However, with some courage, tenacity, cunning, and just a bit of luck, it may be possible to hold off the end times... even if just for a little while.

World of Horror is heavily influenced by both H. P. Lovecraft and Japanese master of horror Junji Ito. The game utilizes a mix of Japanese urban myths and ghost stories, relying on a careful mix of Jump Scares and atmospheric horror to build up an atmosphere of dread. The game's aesthetics are reminiscent of 1-bit adventure games; enemy design tends to take influence from both aforementioned authors, with nightmarish results. Players follow one of a handful of characters as they attempt to solve the mysteries haunting their town, collecting items, solving puzzles, and defending themselves from the forces of darkness as they try to stave off the end of the world.

The official site is here. Panstasz can be followed on his Twitter feed.

"Trope the inevitable":

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#-H

100% Completion: The game has loads of unlockables. As of version 1.0, there are:
- 96 achievements
- 180 events
- 100 enemies
- 17 endings
- 22 mysteries
Ability Required to Proceed: A good amount of multiple-choice events have one of their options locked behind having a certain item, ally, perk, or even curse. This also extends to Ending B and A of some mysteries, which they sometimes go overboard with the amount of requirements for Ending A.
Achievement Mockery: The WORLD DOOMED I, II, and III achievements are unlocked by dying from reason loss, dying from stamina loss, and letting DOOM reach 100% respectively. Speaking of which...
Achievement System: An in-game one, with each achievement unlocking a new gameplay quirk, from outfits, to weapons, to new characters, just to name a few.
Action Command: When used, Handcuffs instantly defeat any human enemy with 12 or less HP. If a player is fast enough, they can launch their combat sequence, lower their foe's HP to 12 or less, and then use their Handcuffs mid-sequence to defeat them before their sequence ends.
Action Girl: They make up 9 out of the 14 total player characters, with Kirie, Aiko, and Mizuki being available from the start; All of them fight against eldritch horrors and can potentially stop the arrival of an Old God.
Added Alliterative Appeal: The names of the mysteries all have this. For example, there's "Spine-Chilling Story of School Scissors", "Freaky Feature of Found Footage," and "Horrible History of Household Hell."
Affably Evil: In Ending B of Morbid Mermaids, a half-human half-fish creature comes out of a manhole and kills the Mad Janitor. Afterwards, upon seeing the corpses of the students that the Mad Janitor was trying to turn into mermaids, they merely sigh and matter-of-factly state how he got the two ends reversed before presumably going back into the manhole and leaving the player character alone.
Alien Invasion: Subverted at the end of the Blue Gem sidequest, where alien shiba inus come to Earth to abduct "exceptional individuals" so they can repopulate on another unspecified planet.
Alien Sky: The Arcane Storm town status, which increases the Reason cost of spells by 1, gives the sky a wavy, aurora-like effect on the town screen. Its description also states that the town is covered "in an unnatural green glow".
All in a Row: How your allies follow you every time you investigate an area.
All Just a Dream: If Ktu-Rufu is chosen as the Old God, then existence itself is revealed to be Ktu-Rufu's dream if the player's Doom reaches 100%.
Already Done for You: Downplayed on Skeptic difficulty, where one of the five locks to the lighthouse is already unlocked, meaning that the player needs to solve only four mysteries instead of the usual five.
Alternate Timeline: One of the advanced customization options allows you to set which timeline you're in. For instance, Timeline B presents a reality where Shiokawa is considered a tourist hot spot for those interested in the occult.
Always Accurate Attack: Offensive spells always hit without checking for an Attack Failure Chance like normal weapons.
And I Must Scream: Reaching 100% Doom while under the influence of Cthac-Atorasu will result in all humans being cocooned, waiting for their turn (days, months, even years) to be devoured by the Old God.
And Your Reward Is Clothes: Some achievements grant a new outfit for the player characters.
And Your Reward is Edible: Getting the Exorcism achievement (exorcise a ghost with the right combination of bows and claps) unlocks pancakes, which grant +2 Stamina and -2% Doom when eaten.
Animesque: World of Horror is actually a Polish video game, but it's set in Japan and is both inspired by and imitates the art style of Junji Ito, who also "appears" as the neighbor of the player's character in Timeline B.
Another Dimension: The Otherworld, which features three unique events with a high chance to severely harm the player but a small chance to greatly help them.
Anti-Climax: There's no climactic showdown with anyone or anything in the Lighthouse, and defeating the Old God is a simple matter of clicking on the artifact the cultists placed at its summit and dispelling the impending apocalypse before you get an A Winner Is You screen and it's back to the main menu with whatever new achievements you unlocked. The closest thing to a "final boss" that the game has is the Lighthouse itself, since it's a Marathon Level with very dangerous skill checks and you'll likely have a dangerously high Doom meter by the time you enter it.
Anti-Frustration Features:
- If a player encounters a Ghost enemy as their first tutorial fight it won't have the immunity to physical attacks that it usually has.
- Once the player has solved at least one mystery in their current run, they can make a suspend-save and continue their run later.
Apocalypse Cult: There's a cult rising up in Shiokawa determined to beckon the Old God, and subsequently The End of the World as We Know It (or at least, The End of Shiokawa as We Know It). If you're being Hunted by the Cult, they are even more active.
Apocalypse How: Doom reaching 100% leads to a bad end where the run's Old God unleashes catastrophe anywhere from a class 0 to X.
Arbitrary Gun Power: The Hunting Rifle deals a whopping 32 damage with each shot. However, no other firearm comes even close to doing that much shot damage (the closest is the Old Shotgun, which only deals 15 damage per shot).
Arbitrary Headcount Limit: For whatever reason, students in the Schoolyard refuse to join the player's party when asked to do so if said party has 3 or more people; The player will have to successfully intimidate students if they want them to join.
Arc Number: Four crops up frequently.
- Spending time shopping for items or resting in the middle of an investigation advances the Doom Track by 4% each time.
- Solving one of the mysteries and getting a certain ending (typically the one where the most about the mystery is revealed) will subtract 4% of the Doom Track, though only on Initiate difficulty.
- During one phase of the "Far-Out Fable of Fear Festival", you can make four moves before time runs out for finding any survivors.
- Making four purchases from the History Club gives you a bad ending where you are sacrificed by the club president.
Armor Is Useless: Downplayed with the kendo helmet, which has a chance to negate stamina damage received in combat.
Arrange Mode: Endless Mode; Instead of solving mysteries, the player must simply investigate areas and fight enemies while surviving for as many turns as possible. On every tenth turn, the player can choose a reward, ranging from a new spell to decreased DOOM.
Ascended Glitch:
- The prototype version of the game had an infamous bug with the Magician enemy causing the game to crash. Subsequent versions gave a nod to the bug by adding a glitched variant, with reality distorting around him.
- Versions before 1.0 had a bug wherein Kana doesn't die even when sacrificed in events and mysteries. While the bug was fixed, the main gimmick of playable Kana is them reviving when killed, at the cost of Doom.
As Long as There Is Evil: The ending leans in this direction. The protagonist has stopped the Old One temporarily, but they are virtually-invincible entities existing beyond the ken of mankind; you may have sent them back to sleep for another thousand years and slaughtered their cultists, but you can never truly silence them, merely suppress them.
Attack Failure Chance: All physical weapons have a default hit percentage that leaves them with the possibility of missing an attack that you send out. You can also choose to Prep any physical attack on your turn beforehand so that it's guaranteed to hit, but since this takes extra time it means you'll be making less attacks overall. Part of the strategy of combat is weighing whether throwing out a bunch of attacks that have less of a chance to hit but will cumulatively deal more damage or using only one or two Prepped attacks is more worth it.
Awesome, but Impractical: Guns are quite powerful and deal massive damage per shot, but ammo is extremely scarce and difficult to find, and shots can still miss. They also inflict the Ringing Ears status when fired, slowing down attack speed until the end of the mystery. One of Moriko's perks helps to mitigate this slightly, granting extra ammo after completing a mystery.
A Winner Is You: Completing the final mystery of a run by reaching the top of the lighthouse and dispelling the Old God grants you a quick victory screen, then you get your End-Game Results Screen and you're booted back to the main menu.
The Bad Guy Wins:
- If the Doom Track reached 100%, then the Old God that the player is trying to stop wakes up and destroys Shiokawa, and possibly (definitely in Ath-Yolazsth's case) the world.
- Some of the mysteries can end in this sort of situation too, such as "Violent Vigil" where one of the endings has your presumed grand-uncle successfully resurrect himself, leaving you an accessory to murder.
Bad Moon Rising: One of the possible town statuses is "Blood Moon", in which a crimson moon suddenly appears over Shiokawa, which increases all enemy Power by 20, making your attacks significantly less accurate.
Bait-and-Switch:
- Pulled on the player in one mystery. Freaky Feature of Found Footage is such an obvious homage to The Blair Witch Project that few players will realize until it's too late for that run that the storyline is actually an update of Lovecraft's The Shunned House. There are only two clues beforehand, both subtle — first, that the apparently homaged work is well outside the purview of what the game normally references, and second, there's a reference to an unusual number of dead trees near the village — the aforementioned house was characterized by the strange and unhealthy vegetation surrounding it, including barren trees.
- Near the end of "Abnormal Arms" on Timeline A, it seems as though that the player will have to fight a long-armed creature in the apartment boiler room, only to find the corpse of said apartment's caretaker. This then becomes a double bait-and-switch in Timeline B where the player does fight the caretaker.
Bandaged Face:
- Suffering from the "Holes" curse changes your portrait so your character is wearing bandages on their face to hide their affliction. Also, suffering from the "Burn" injury changes your portrait so your entire face is wrapped in gauze.
- The friend in "Worrying Write-Up of a Wordless Ward" sports one for most of the mystery until the final day, when they reveal that they got extensive plastic surgery to look like you.
Battle Theme Music: When the player encounters an enemy, the mystery's investigation theme goes quiet before suddenly transitioning into the battle theme.
Batter Up!:
- The Apartment Stalker uses a baseball bat to attack, which can hit hard enough to inflict a concussion upon your character, lowering their KNW for the rest of the mystery. On the plus side, defeating them drops their Baseball Bat, allowing you to wield it as a solid weapon.
- It is possible to obtain a Wooden Bat in the Scissors mystery. It's weaker than the Baseball Bat by far, but it's better than nothing.
- Getting both of the bats in a single run unlocks Yumiko, who has her own Lucky Bat that provides a +2 bonus to her luck.
Beauty Equals Goodness: The player characters are all attractive-looking, while their enemies are either horrific monsters or intimidating and/or uncanny-looking humans. Subverted with the School Nurse, who has a horrifying face but treats all of the player's minor injuries for free (visiting her does cost +3% Doom, though).
Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Downplayed. Injuries, curses, and lowering stats are reflected upon your character's portrait, and several of these can have an impact upon their stats. Some of these can be cured, and doing so usually restores your appearance accordingly, but others are effectively permanent.
Bedsheet Ghost: An unlockable outfit for Kirie that the player can have her wear in Timeline B.
The Berserker: Player characters suffering the Blood Frenzy curse become this as it increases their damage dealt and taken by +1, alongside the graphic for the curse being a crazed woman with an angry expression and blood on her face.
Big Bad: The Old Gods who seek to destroy all of humanity one way or another and are the cause of the supernatural chaos in Shirokawa.
Big Damn Heroes: At the end of "Far-out Fable of a Fear Festival", in Ending A, you get captured by cultists and are being prepared as a sacrifice for the being they are summoning, only for an undercover agent to shoot one of the cultists and bust the scene, rescuing you. This is one of the few times Adults Are Useless is averted and the adults save the day, with the professionals immediately taking down the bad guys in one move.
Big First Choice: Choosing which Old God is awakening changes which one's events you get in the playthrough, and the effect they cause.
Bittersweet Ending: Make no mistake - this may be Lovecraft Lite, but it is still a form of Cosmic Horror Story. All the good endings are this. You may have stopped the Old God du jour, but you'll often pay a dear price to do it, and your victories are all temporary in the grander scheme of things.
Black-and-Gray Morality: The Old Gods and the people trying to summon them are unambiguously evil, while the player characters all range in different shades of gray. Sure, they're trying to save the world, but they can do some unsavory things in order to do so.
Black Market: One possible location to visit: the Illegal Den by the seaside. It's your one-stop shop for menacing weapons, extra ammunition, booze, cigarettes, and bandages.
Blade Spam: Easiest to do with the Steak Knife and Switchblade thanks to their low Time Unit usage.
Blinding Camera Flash: You can weaponize this in combat if you have a camera equipped, as using the camera will make enemies easier to hit and give you a chance to dodge their attack.
Blood from the Mouth: Player characters get this when they get the Broken Jaw, Coughing Blood, or Slit Mouth injuries.
Body Horror: It wouldn't be a Junji Ito-inspired game without it. Not only does this apply to a lot of enemies you can encounter, some injuries/curses can cause this to apply to your character - such as holes or eldritch sigils appearing on your skin.
Body of Bodies: The Class of 1971 is a monster that can be encountered at the Seaside, made from the mashed-together bodies of a student group who died in a freak accident.
In the Summer of 1971, a whole class trip fell to the sea when a rock they were standing on collapsed.

They didn't find the bodies... until now.
Bookends: In a meta way; The symbols on the Lighthouse tell the player what events will be in it at the end of their run, meaning that a player who knows the meanings of the symbols will likely immediately go to the Lighthouse to see said symbols at the start of their run, and will then have to return to it as their final challenge.
Boss Battle: Most mysteries end with one, although some can be skipped by fulfilling (or even not fulfilling) certain conditions.
Brain Bleach:
- The Memory Extract spell restores a small amount of Reason in exchange for sacrificing EXP, expunging traumatic memories from the user's mind.
- Most spells can be forgotten to restore one point of Reason.
Breakable Weapons: The box cutter is very powerful when you initially obtain it, but it will eventually break when used in combat, significantly reducing its damage.
Busman's Holiday:
- Some of the cases have you leaving Shiokawa, only to end up encountering mysteries and monstrosities wherever you went instead.
- Averted when Saving and Quitting a session. Doing so means that your protagonist leaves town for a while (i.e. 'Until you continue playing'), giving them a chance to rest and recover, losing any spells they've learned and healing their injuries. Nothing happens to them until you return, meaning they actually get a break from all the horrors for once.
But Thou Must!:
- You cannot refuse to help the creepy substitute teacher, as she just grabs you and insists you help her with no way out.
- In Endless Mode, you must choose a reward before you can continue playing.
Camera Abuse: Blood-splatters will quickly appear on the screen before fading out whenever the player takes damage.
Canine Companion: One of the allies you can recruit is a dog that you rescue from a bear trap. It increases your chances of finding items after combat and is exempt from the effects of the Seventh Curse. Unlike the Shiba Inu shopkeeper, you can also be assured that it won't murder you and turn you into kibble.
Cap:
- Items and spells cap at 4 by default, but these can be raised up to 6 by certain items.
- Depending on the difficulty mode, Stamina and Reason cap at 21, 17, or 13 by default. These can be raised and lowered by items, events, and statuses.
Cast from Hit Points:
- The Demon Mask does this indirectly, as it increases all damage you deal by 1, at the cost of reducing your maximum stamina by 4.
- Certain spells (e.g. Expel Evil) cost Stamina to use.
Chainsaw Good: A chainsaw is an available weapon. You obtain it by investigating the shed during "Perilous Parable of the Peculiar Painting" with a flashlight equipped and is useless unless you acquire and use Fuel. Take these steps, however, and you've got an extremely powerful weapon. Defeating an enemy with the chainsaw while playing as Moriko unlocks the Herald of the Shattered Court.
Challenge Run: Challenges mode is unlocked by beating the game without ever using the "Rest" action during a mystery. Currently there are seven available challenges. The first six involves the character having their special gimmick disabled, while the seventh goes further with it.
- Parole Violation - play as Miku; Doom starts at -10%, but Miku doesn't get her Mayhem ability.
- Going Cold Turkey - play as Haru; you start with a refillable bottle of water but can never use Cigarettes.
- But Dad!! - play as Moriko; you start with an Inspiring Novel but automatically discard all guns you acquire.
- Ghastly Presence - play as Kirie; you start with an extra spell but cannot use offensive actions in battle.
- Ghost Town - play as Mizuki; you start with the Seventh Curse background, meaning you can't get allies, and cannot take any non-investigation action but Rest.
- Wrong Book! - play as Toshiaki; instead of the Necronomicon, you have a cookbook that constantly spawns a food item in your inventory.
- Mimi's Little Project - play as Mimi; perform experimental surgeries on yourself before each mystery, the majority of which decrease your stats and have other drawbacks on top of that.
Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The ribbons around your player character's portrait at the End-Game Results Screen change depending on how it ended: black if you failed, white if you succeeded.
Combination Attack: Among the numerous ways to use allies in combat, one is telling your allies to attack, with it's damage scaling with how many people you have with you.
Commonplace Rare: Empty bottles are very valuable, as they allow you to bottle water while bathing, making for an easy and portable +1 STA recovery. Despite being able to find broken bottles in combat, however, you can only reliably obtain intact ones by either buying them at the pharmacy, or by buying a bottled drink elsewhere and consuming it, both of which are surprisingly expensive.
Contractual Boss Immunity: Zig-zagged; "Circle"-type bosses cannot be attacked through normal means, and also lack any weaknesses. Outside of them, however, bosses have weaknesses just like regular enemies. As an example, human bosses like Aka Manto (base form) and You? can be defeated with the Handcuffs (as long as their HP is 12 or less) just like normal human foes.
Controllable Helplessness: If you go into negative stamina/reason or hit 100% Doom at the end of a mystery, you'll still be taken to the town screen, but you will die at the start of the next mystery if you don't find a way to replenish your health or reduce the Doom counter beforehand.
Cool Sword: The Katana has the distinction of having a base damage of 9, which is the highest of any melee weapon.
Cosmic Horror Story: Downplayed. This trope is to be expected when both H. P. Lovecraft and Junji Ito were major influences; the game is surprisingly optimistic regardless. Even the most horrible monstrosities can be banished with enough hard work and combat skill. Whether this is permanent or simply delaying the inevitable is left ambiguous for lesser monstrosities, but the simple fact that the likes of Ath-Yolazsth can be defeated by Puny Humans places the game firmly into Lovecraft Lite territory.
Crapsack World: It's The End of the World as We Know It; horrifying Eldritch Abominations and murderous psychopaths roam the streets and lurk at every corner, and society is crumbling into insanity and anarchy before your very eyes as you try to survive the apocalypse for as long as you can.
Creepy Cave: The Household Hell and Medusa Metamorphosis mysteries both feature one in their respective climaxes.
Creepy Doll: The Fleshy Doll item, acquired from ending B of "Restless Rumors of a Residential Recluse", resembles a cross between a stuffed rabbit and a flayed human skeleton. Equipping it increases the Doom track, but also gives a boost to maximum Reason.
Creepy Long Fingers: If the player defeats the boss of the Contageous Coma mystery, then it's revealed that what they were fighting was actually just one of the monster's fingers.
Critical Existence Failure: Averted. As your Stamina depletes, your character's portrait will show more and more injuries. As your Reason depletes, your character will begin to appear more tired and haggard.
The Cuckoolander Was Right: The "paranoid patient" was committed when police assumed from their wounds and terrified rambling that they were insane. They're actually no less sane than the protagonist (possibly more so) and only had the misfortune of not being believed. A successful charisma check lets you convince them of the full picture and add them as an ally. The Paranoia curse (which makes YOU the subject of this trope) allows you to auto-succeed, at the cost of raised doom.
Cue the Sun: If you succeed in reaching the top of the lighthouse and stopping the Old God's summoning, the black haze blanketing the town will be lifted, revealing the sun that it was hiding.
Cursed with Awesome:
- Sometimes curse effects actually help your current run.
  - Brain Damage boosts your max reason at the cost of 2 knowledge. If you're playing a low-Knowledge character, this won't hinder you.
  - Masochistic gives you -3 max reason, but gives you +1 reason when entering combat. If you get it early enough (but not so early that it causes your current reason to drop), it ends up being more beneficial than harmful.
  - Insmasu Look gives you random bad effects when investigating the seaside. If you do the Macabre Memoir of Morbid Mermaids mystery, however, you can show your gills to the Mad Janitor, instantly ending the fight with no negative consequences.
  - Blood Frenzy causes you to take +1 damage in combat, but the same bonus also applies to your damage. As you always act first and killing the enemy prevents all damage, it may actually help you stay alive.
- A number of effects give you bonuses at the cost of eating into your maximum Stamina and/or Reason. At the start of a run, this can seem hefty... but by the end of a run, it's almost a certainty you'll never be at max Stamina/Reason anyway, meaning the bonuses become quite a bit more attractive.
- Zhectast's unique events give +3 to one of your character's stats at a small Stamina/Reason cost. And they'll need it, given that they'll be losing stats as Doom increases.
Cultural Cross-Reference: The game runs on this. It's an emulation of PC-88 adventure games with 1-bit/2-bit graphics, combining that with the manga art-style seen in some others, and is stuffed with Japanese cultural references that, although not always perfect, are frequent and sometimes to very obscure material. It even has some use of bad romanization/translation for jokes that is actually consistent with common Japanese issues with letter-swapping, even beyond the well-known L/R.
Damage-Sponge Boss: Oetaru, the boss of Horrible History of Household Hell, who has a whopping 92 HP and can't be damaged by normal combat actions.
The Day the Music Lied: In Timeline A of the Abnormal Arms mystery, right as the player encounters the culprit, the mystery's battle theme starts playing. This is in spite of the fact that said culprit is already dead. The mystery then concludes immediately after this.
Dead Animal Warning: A variation: The "Hunted By the Cult" background has your character, upon entering their apartment for the first time, note that someone has stuffed their mailbox with animal entrails.
Deal with the Devil:
- Implied by 'The Seventh Curse' Backstory, represented by an ominous handshake. The player starts with more Funds, but cannot have any human Allies, for their family is cursed so that everyone around them dies.
- In "Vicious Verses of a Violent Vigil", it is revealed that your presumed grand-uncle made a deal with an eldritch being to cheat death in exchange for two human sacrifices. Ending C shows him succeeding thanks to your unwitting aid, while Endings A and B have you defeat him, voiding the pact and ending his scheme.
- "Perilous Parable of the Peculiar Painting" climaxes with the reveal that Ichiro Mamiya's monster paintings are monsters that he's bound into paintings they can use to access our world, an arrangement his eldritch benefactors allow as long as he furnishes them with the occasional Human Sacrifice. If you interrupt him as he's about to kill his latest starstruck fan, one impatient abomination will kill Ichiro and attack you itself.
Death or Glory Attack: Downplayed with the Desperate Struggle command, which doubles the damage of the player's attacks for one round of combat. While it can only be used if a player's Stamina and/or Reason is 3 or lower, it becomes much safer to use if an enemy targets only the higher of the player's Stamina or Reason.
Defend Command: The Brace command halves an enemy's damage dealt (rounded down) for 1 turn of combat.
Deliberately Monochrome: The entire demo is in strict black and white. The Early Access release has an option to customize it in colors reminiscent of CGA and similar displays in the early age of PCs.
Developer's Foresight:
- One enemy doubles as a Secret Character. Should you be playing as that Secret Character, the enemy will have a different appearance.
- The Young Witch enemy normally deals only Stamina damage, but also deals Reason damage to male characters by playing on their attraction to her. One Secret Character is a lesbian, so she also takes Reason damage from the Young Witch.
- The "Neighbor" sub-location is dedicated solely to talking with Kana. After earning 100% Completion, Kana becomes a playable character. Select them, and Yashiro will take their place in the sub-location.
- If you manage to run out of any perks to take (such as by using infinite XP exploits, a long Endless Mode run, or playing a character with no perks), you will be given the Final Stretch perk that restores 2 points of REA and STA and can be taken multiple times, so as to prevent the game from crashing or softlocking.
Digital Horror: The "Beckoning Bulletin" mystery involves a string of suicides that are caused by a bulletin system. Specifically, a malicious force known as Together uses a bulletin system to persuade people to commit suicide.
Disability Immunity: Played very darkly with the "Brain Damage" Curse. Your Knowledge is reduced, but your maximum Reason increases... because you no longer know enough to be scared by the hideous truths you uncover.
Drone of Dread: Happens while the player is in an Otherworld location.
Drought Level of Doom: There are several Mysteries that take you to a unique location in or outside of Shiokawa that either don't allow you to Rest, don't allow you to access your items in Storage, or both, making the attrition you take in them hurt more.
Dump Stat: Luck; While there are several luck-check events, it's the only stat with no combat benefits since there are no actions whose Time Units scale off of it, neither defensive (Strength and Dexterity) nor offensive (every other stat).
Ear Ache: Firing any gun will inflict the Ringing Ears curse, which makes the player’s combat speed slower by 1.2x. The only way for the player to get rid of it is to either finish the current mystery or prick their ear, which inflicts -2 Stamina and -1 Max Stamina.
Eldritch Location: The backgrounds for the boss of "Violent Vigil" and the true boss of "Crimson Cape" respectively.
Enclosed Space: "Restless Rumors of a Residential Recluse" takes place entirely within your apartment, the walls of which have overgrown all the doors and windows preventing you from leaving.
Endless Game: An alternative mode to the main game, where it obviously lasts until you die. Considering the sheer amount of bad things that can happen to cripple your chances of success in a regular run alone, you have to be real lucky and/or a major Action Survivor to last very long.
The End of the World as We Know It: The Old God's arrival will definitely destroy Shiokawa, though the world's fate in non-Ath-Yolazsth scenarios is unclear.
Enemy Scan: The "Assess the Situation" action let's the player know their enemy's type, weakness, and skill as well as a short description of them.
Escort Mission: In "Bizarre Bruit of the Blood-Curdling Botanist", the only way to save Shiro-san is by protecting him while you escape. If you've taken the optional steps, you can choose to examine him more closely - and realize he's infected by the Cordyceps Fungus and saving him is a bad idea. This is the first step to getting a good ending for the mystery.
- In "Perilous Parable of the Peculiar Painting", to get the best ending you must stay with the art curator you meet as she moves through different rooms of the mansion. You can deviate once - which you need to do if you want the Chainsaw - but doing it more than that will kill her.
"Everybody Dies" Ending: The endings from losing all of your Stamina or Reason are essentially this as the Old God arrives since the player can't stop them due to being dead or having gone insane. This more directly applies to the Old Gods' unique endings (obtained by reaching 100% DOOM), which show how they destroy Shiokawa or even the entire world.
Evil Is Burning Hot: The aptly named Burning Man enemy, whom can be fought while investigating the seaside.
Experience Points: The player gains experience mainly from investigating areas, succeeding certain stat-checks, defeating enemies, and finishing mysteries. Generally, the player can level up upon gaining 100 points, at which point they can choose a perk and increase a stat or heal their stamina or reason, as well as gaining 10% accuracy during battles.
Expressive Health Bar: The player character's portrait will change if their Stamina and/or Reason is less than 10 and if they gain status ailments.
Eye Scream: It's not for nothing that the icon for the game on Twitch implies one:
- In "Eerie Episode of Evolving Eels," it's revealed that the titular eels lay their eggs in people's eyes. Furthermore, in order to get Ending A for the case, you have to pay 3 Reason to puncture your neighbor Kana's eye with a needle to release the eels inside.
- You can encounter a victim of the Scissor Woman who combines this with Facial Horror, thanks to the slashes cutting across her face.
- In one event that pops up when Goizo is your chosen Outer God, you can run into a woman leaving a beauty parlor who's carved her own eyes out, reasoning that it can't see her if she can't see it.
- And if Goizo isn't stopped in time, the last thing you see is the god starting to emerge from the eyes of your lover.
- Lose against Oetaru and enjoy the sight of your hero collapsing, blood streaming from their eye sockets and ears.
- If you decide against all common sense to anger the Shiba Inu Shopkeeper, an eye is all that's left of you once you're minced and cooked.
- One of Ygothaeg's events has the protagonist seriously consider gouging their eyes out just to avoid looking into the god's eyes.
- Using the Glass Eye item entails your character jamming it into their eye socket, destroying their real eye in the process. You gain +1 Perception in so doing, but you lose 3 Stamina from the injury and 1 Reason from the pain, plus your portrait reflects this gruesome change.
Face of a Thug: The School Nurse, despite her horrifying appearance, will heal any of the player character's minor injuries without any payment or consequences.
Facial Horror: More examples than you can shake a Junji Ito manga at. To name just a handful of them:
- The Aspiring Model enemy wears a mask made out of human skin. When she takes damage in combat, the mask falls off and you get to see what a woman with her facial skin peeled off looks like.
- The Ribcage Woman's face is replaced with a gaping hole filled with bony thorns.
- The Glued Corpse's encounter text has the player finding him seemingly crying, and once the fight begins, his sprite graphically shows what happened when he tried to take his hands off his face and ripped his skin off in the process.
- "Something Truly Evil" looks like the front and top of its head have been ripped off, leaving only a pair of lights where its eyes should be against a black void.
- From "Chilling Chronicle of a Crimson Cape": Aka Manto's true form reveals that behind his mask, there is a black void where his face should be. Also, if you take on his human form instead, equip the Crestfallen Mask he drops, then take it off for whatever reason, you become just as faceless as his true form and suffer a nasty stat debuff to boot.
- From "Vicious Verses of a Violent Vigil": Sotomura's monster form has his scar torn open into an enormous hole in his facial skin, exposing two entirely white eyes where just one normal eye should be.
- Collecting eldritch blood and drinking it will cause your character's face to melt. Needless to say, you die if you do this unless you use a special item to collect the blood.
- Poor Juri basically gets half her face torn off once the Horror fully catches up to her. This shows both on her portrait and on her home sprite.
Failure Is the Only Option: For some events, if you lack a specific item, skill, or ally, the only option you can choose is one that penalizes you. This is due to the "Ill-Fated" backstory, which forces every skill check to fail. Endless Mode also enforces this, as you will not be able to stop the Old God's summoning and the game will only end if you die, go insane, or reach 100% Doom.
Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Ghosts, yokai, vampires, Eldritch Abominations, witches... chances are, if it's been used in J-horror, it's in the game.
Fertility God: The final boss fight of "Freakish Fable of a Frightening Flood" is against one of these and its throngs of nude followers, who heal it every turn.
Final Boss: The last enemy you fight in a given playthrough is Takashi-San, a high-ranking cultist who will try to stop you from interrupting the Old God's summoning. While he doesn't attack you, he will instead try to hinder your progress as the fight with him causes the Doom counter to increase with every turn (which, given how high the Doom counter may be by this point, means you need to kill him quick).
Five-Second Foreshadowing: Before every enemy encounter, the screen will go black with white text that foreshadows the specific enemy that the player is about to fight.
Friendless Background: Invoked by the Seventh Curse background, where any human ally that the player gets is immediately killed by a freak accident.
'Your family was cursed. Everyone around you will die...'
Foregone Conclusion: The whole premise of the game is that the world is going to end by the hands of one of the old gods. The most that the player can do is merely delay their arrival.
- Applies to the School Scissors mystery, although to a lesser extent; If a player is on Timeline X and the Friend's Diary has two bow icons, two clap icons, or one of each, then that means that they won't fight the Scissor Lady, and will instead have to try to banish her by using the correct sequence of bows and claps.
Gameplay Ally Immortality: Played with, depending on the mystery and the player's actions: Generally, enemies will only attack the player character during combat and can only kill their allies if a) The player orders them to distract the enemy but fail, or b) Send them against the enemy on their own. On top of this, the player is the only one who can lose health from events.
Gameplay and Story Integration: If you decide to burn down the School in "Macabre Memoir of Morbid Mermaids", you can no longer visit any School sub-locations for the rest of the run, but it's established that classes continue in an older wing of the building. Should you choose "Spine-Chilling Story of School Scissors" as one of your mysteries afterwards, you get to explore the charred remains of the School, and even face a unique variant of the boss as a result.
Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Because some events can trigger regardless of where you are or what mystery you're investigating, it's possible for your character to have their wallet stolen in the middle of a crowded plaza, despite the fact that they're supposed to be trapped in a haunted mansion with only the other guests for company.
- The mystery solving, which constitutes the bulk of the actions that the protagonists take, is not actually connected to the overarching goal of stopping an Eldritch Abomination from waking up and destroying the world. From a purely Watsonian perspective, the protagonist can only disrupt the summoning ritual in the lighthouse because someone keeps sending them keys to the lighthouse's locks, one by one, after each mystery investigation, regardless of how the investigation concluded.
- The start of "Far-Out Fable of a Fear Festival" always mentions the protagonist's parents encouraging them to visit the titular festival, even if the protagonist is Kirie, who is an orphan.
Gardening-Variety Weapon: The shovel, which is a melee weapon that is inaccurate and very slow, but is relatively strong. It may also give the player 1 Fund when they defeat an enemy.
Giant Eye of Doom:
- The Old God Ath-Yolazsth is known as "The Towering Eye" for a reason.
- One of the endings of "Freaky Feature of Found Footage" has you staring directly into one of these.
Giant Spider: Cthac-Atorasu, the Spider God.
Glass Cannon: Invoked by having Ithotu as the Old God, who raises the damage dealt by the player and their enemies by one. The Blood Frenzy curse also has the same effect, and yes, it can be gotten in an Ithotu run.
Going Cold Turkey: One of the achievements, fittingly named "Cold Turkey", is awarded for playing as Haru without ever smoking. Haru starts off with nicotine withdrawal, mind, which makes him weaker if he's not smoking, and his starting perk can only be activated if he smokes. His Challenge Run (where he starts with a bottle of water but can never use Cigarettes) is actually titled "Going Cold Turkey".
Golden Ending: Played with. Almost every mystery has multiple endings. "Ending A" is typically the hardest to get, reveals the most about what was going on, and ensures that whatever horror was behind it is laid to rest for good, or at least for now. However, this does not mean that Ending A is always the happiest ending. A prime example of this is "Horrible History of Household Hell", where the protagonist burns down the mansion and ensures nobody else will disturb what lies beneath it again. To get it, you need to kill one of your companions in cold blood to satisfy the eldritch horror you've awoken.
Group Picture Ending: The default good ending has the five starter characters pose for a photo together.
Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: Happens to the player character and their allies while investigating.
Guide Dang It!: Most mysteries have clearly or easily identified endings, with a lot of the prerequisites for the best ones boiling down to "complete the side investigation", "defeat the boss monster" or even an outright Last-Second Ending Choice (and at least one, "Mysterious Myth of Medusa Metamorphosis", only has one ending to begin with). However, there are still a few endings that are so opaque or reliant on circumstance that they're worth a mention:
- The best ending of "Bizarre Bruit of the Blood-curdling Botanist" requires that you must have the Fire Axe, which can only be obtained by getting the best ending of "Macabre Memoir of Morbid Mermaids" first and nowhere else. Even if you did have the Fire Axe by chance, you'd still have to closely examine one of the special options in the combat with Shiro-san to realize what to do without looking it up.
- "Freaky Feature of Found Footage"'s ideal ending can only be obtained if you have a Can of Acid on hand before entering the final story event, whereupon a new option will be unlocked for you to use. The only reason that you would even think to do this is if you realize the end of the mystery is a reference to "The Shunned House" (in which the monster is defeated with acid), and even then there's no guarantee that you'll put the pieces together yourself unless you consult a guide.
Guns Are Worthless:
- Zig-Zagged; they are among the best weapons in the game due to high damage and low action cost...if they have bullets, which are hard to find and you aren't always guaranteed to get them with the gun. Running out in the middle of the fight just means you have to beat your enemy to death with the empty gun as you can't switch weapons mid-fight which isn't exactly the best melee weapon. Haru's CQC ability buffs gun damage so that they aren't inferior to normal weapons, while Moriko's Deft Handling reduces the time consumed by gun attacks.
- Completely averted with enemies, as Cultist Hunter B wields a hunting rifle, and deals a lot of damage with it. The Lumpy Officer, meanwhile, may randomly decide to shoot you with his revolver, which is just as damaging, if not more.
Handicap Mission: Challenges allow the player to apply special rules to a playthrough. Most of them involve being forced to play as a specific character with their special gimmick being disabled in some way.
- Parole Violation forces the player to play as Miku with her Mayhem ability disabled, meaning that the player is stuck with Miku's low stats.
- Going Cold Turkey has the player playing as Haru with the special rule that all Cigarettes that he requires being replaced by bottled water. This means that his Nicotine Withdrawal Negative Ability, which activates if Haru doesn't have cigarettes, is permanently active.
- But Dad!!! has Noriko acting as the player character, which causes her to automatically discard all firearms she obtains.
- Wrong Book! has Toshiaki being the player character, with the special rule being that his Necronomicon, which gives him access to several exclusive spells, is replaced by a cookbook whose only effect is to allow him to obtain food items occasionally.
- Mimi’s Little Project has the player playing as Mimi, and rather than giving a fixed handicap, the player is instead forced to choose from a list of handicaps before each mystery, which lasts for the rest of the playthrough.
Harmful Healing:
- Going to the Hospital to heal your injuries has a chance of leaving you with severe blood loss or wounds that will reopen as soon as you take damage. ***
- This trope is averted by the School Nurse, however; despite her creepy appearance, she will heal any minor injuries you have without payment or consequences.
- Most of the healing magic in this game comes with a price. Book of Gore heals 3 Stamina and 3 Reason, but also inflicts a random Injury on your character, while Flesh Regrow restores 3 Stamina, but reduces your Max Stamina by 2.
Have a Nice Death: In addition to death screens for running out of Stamina or Reason, there are unique ones for hitting 100% Doom depending on which Outer God you're trying to stop. Also, there are certain special death screens for events such as drinking boiling blood from a glass bottle, getting killed by the boss of "Spine-Chilling Story of School Scissors", or being sacrificed by the History Club.
Heal Thyself:
- The game shows that you can restore 2 Stamina with the "Cauterize" spell, though this is a one-time thing. Other healing spells exist, but they usually cost Reason or increase Doom.
- The Sewing Kit lets you restore 3 Stamina at the cost of 1 Charisma, as your character is left with a scar where they stitched themselves up. If you find Black Hair and use it with a Sewing Kit in your inventory, you get the Sewing Kit (Hair), which leaves a much cleaner scar. This restores 3 Stamina and 3 Reason with no Charisma penalty.
Hit Points: HP comes in two varieties, Stamina and Reason. Run out of Stamina, and you die. Run out of Reason, and you go insane. In either case, it's Game Over.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Happens occasionally to the main villain of a mystery in said mystery's Ending A.
Hopeless Boss Fight:
- If you manage to fulfill the requirements for the additional endings of "Horrible History of Household Hell", you are faced with a boss where you can do absolutely nothing to hurt it. Your only options are to run or sacrifice one of your companions to sate its hunger.
- Should you be unfortunate to encounter Something Truly Evil, you find yourself in one of these - you simply can't run from it or damage it in any way. Your only option is to harm yourself in various ways and hope that your suffering amuses it enough to make it let you go.
Horror Hunger: One curse (aptly titled "Hunger") implicitly causes the protag to grapple with this, leaving their mouth and chin splattered with blood. Gameplay wise, it lowers your Charisma by 2 points, since your character can't help seeing other people as tasty snacks.
Humans Are the Real Monsters: Aside from being responsible for summoning the Eldritch Abomination Old God, some of the toughest enemies are crazed humans, some have charged attacks that deal double damage if they pull it off, while others are incredibly durable and strong despite just being relatively ordinary humans. With two of the toughest bosses being an ordinary (though armed) school janitor, and a Mad Artist armed with a knife.
Hyperactive Metabolism: Some food items like bottled milk or pancakes can be consumed for immediate, if small, healing.

I-R

Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The game has five difficulties, originally three, as of the Halloween 2020 update.
- Skeptic - An easier version of Easy/Initiate difficulty: enemies receive a debuff to their power, making them easier to hit in combat, and you're only required to complete four mysteries instead of five.
- Initiate - Easy difficulty, the player starts with 21 max Stamina/Reason and 5 Funds, resting during a mystery recovers 3 Stamina/Reason and earns 2% Doom, enemies are at full power, and all locations start with no threat level.
- Cultist - Normal difficulty, the player starts with 17 max Stamina/Reason and 4 Funds, resting during a mystery recovers 2 Stamina/Reason and earns 3% Doom, enemies are at full power, threat levels for all locations are random with one being near max from the start.
- True Believer - Hard difficulty, the player starts with 13 max Stamina/Reason and no funds, resting during a mystery recovers 2 Stamina/Reason and earns 4% Doom, enemies are at full power, threat levels for all locations are random with one being at max threat (Doomed) from the beginning.
- Harbinger of Doom - A harder version of Hard/True Believer difficulty: enemies receive a buff to their power, making them more difficult to hit in combat, shop items cost more Funds, and threat level for all locations are random with two being at max threat from the beginning.
I Just Want to Be You: In "Worrying Write-Up of a Wordless Ward," you're asked to stay with a friend as they recover from a surgical procedure in the hospital. As they lie bandaged up, they begin acting strange and possessive toward you. On the final night, they reveal that they admire you so much that they underwent extensive plastic surgery to look just like you — so that they could Kill and Replace you. In Ending A, after killing your former friend, you discover that they had convinced every patient in the ward to get the same face job. In Ending B, it's heavily implied the plastic surgery was actually just the first part of a Grand Theft Me plan.
Impossibly Delicious Food: In "Rancid Report Of The Rotten Ramen" a new ramen shop in town has become so unbelievably popular (it even says in the mystery introduction that they wonder if the meat is made from the flesh of the gods themselves) that even top web critics rave about how good the ramen is and the place is so packed that when the player character goes to study it they have to sit on the floor of the restaurant. This is disturbingly deconstructed: the meat is some sort of Eldritch Abomination that is still alive despite being chopped up and cooked, and the broth has been tampered with by having a highly addictive drug added to it. This revelation makes the player character so sick that they throw up despite not having eaten the ramen and even just looking at the noodles makes them nauseous.
Impossibly Mundane Explanation: In "Alarming Account of Abnormal Arms", while investigating the mystery of a woman who was murdered without any sign of forced entry, you start to learn of neighbors who had personal affects go missing and hearing strange noises in the vents. Given the Old Gods' imminent return and all of the other freaky shit going on in Shiokawa, the root of this mystery turns out to be completely mundane (aside from how inhumanly elongated the killer's limbs got): the building's manager, who simply died getting stuck in the vents of the apartment while perving on the tenants... at least in Timeline A. In Timeline B, it actually is a monster...
- This also goes for "Eerie Episode of the Evolving Eels" as anyone with even a passing familiarity of animal biology can tell you animals typically learn through repetitive behaviors, and these eels have been laying their eggs in corpse eyes for god knows how long. With no corpses to lay their eggs in they have to use a living body. Again this happens in real life with animals upended from their natural environments. There have been several instances of animals changing their dietary habits and behaviors due to outside environmental factors.
Improbable Age: The full release upped the stated ages of most playable characters. The end result is that Shiokawa is now full of 20-year-old high school students.
Improbable Weapon User: The player can defeat eldritch creatures and ghosts with common tools like a carpenter hammer or a monkey wrench.
I Need a Freaking Drink: One of the ways to restore Reason is to drink wine and champagne. The latter is also implied to be shared with your allies, since it heals better when you have a lot of allies.
Increasingly Lethal Enemy: The Aspiring Model and Obsessed Man double the damage they deal after the first round of combat. This can be exceptionally nasty if their base damage is already being boosted.
Infinity +1 Sword: There are multiple of these available in the game, though they're fittingly quite difficult to obtain.
- The katana is the best DEX weapon, doing heavy damage with an acceptable speed. However, obtaining it requires you to get a specific otherworld event, then pass a rather difficult check, making it unlikely for you to get one in a playthrough.
- The DIY Flamethrower is the second strongest DEX weapon next to the katana, where it deals heavy damage with surprisingly fast speed, and is also fast to equip. However, to obtain it, you must achieve Ending A from "Macabre Memoir of Morbid Mermaids" to get the Fire Axe, then go for Ending A of "Bizarre Bruit of the Blood-curdling Botanist" by chopping down the blockage with the axe, then breaking into the van to obtain the flamethrower, all while being hounded by a difficult boss.
- The chainsaw serves as the ultimate PER melee weapon, as it does decent damage while attacking extremely fast, to the point that you can easily hit the cap of 8 actions per turn. However, it requires you to get a light source, use it in the workshed in the "Perilous Parable of the Peculiar Painting" mystery, then spend 3 funds to buy a fuel can and fill up the chainsaw.
- The hunting rifle is the most powerful firearm bar none, doing a whopping 32 damage per shot. It's for this reason that it's the most expensive item in the game, costing 11 funds in the Illegal Den. The other ways to obtain it are to either sacrifice Ryoko in an event (which deprives you of a very powerful ally), or play on the "Hunted by the cult" backstory, then encounter Cultist Hunter B and defeat them.
Instant-Win Condition: Some spells and items, like Thread of Fate or the Mummified Heart, can instantly defeat certain types of enemies. Downplayed with the Handcuffs, which require a human enemy to be at 12 HP or lower to defeat them.
Intangible Price: Inverted in the form of Intangible Sale, where one encounter appropriately titled "Out of Funds" has a sinister man offer to buy one of three things from you for 2 Funds: The most tangible being A Jar of Blood ^note3 Health; Fond Memories ^note3 Reason; or Peace of Mind ^noteAdvance the Doom Track by 5%.
Intentional Engrish for Funny: The game includes the curse Insmasu Look^noteInnsmouth Look and the item Karukosa Mask^noteCarcosa Mask, presumably for this reason.
Interface Screw: The Eldritch Statuette Seaside event has you encounter a heavy statuette of a Cthulhu-esque creature, which calls to you, urging you to take it home. The option to ignore it is black with white text (a colouration reserved for actions you can't take due to lacking a specific perk/ally/item), yet has no actual prerequisites and can be chosen freely.
Interface Spoiler: In the School Scissors mystery, examining the Friend's Diary will tell the player if they'll be fighting the Scissor Lady or not. Seeing two bow icons, two clap icons, or one of each means that the player won't be fighting her, and the abscence of them means that they will have to fight her.
It's a Wonderful Failure: Game Overs are preceded by a positively delightful description of your failure, including (without counting mystery-specific failures):
- Collapsing and dying from your wounds.
- Being institutionalized when your sanity is finally spent.
- The Old God arriving and destroying Shiokawa.
- Melting your face by drinking eldritch blood without protection.
- Being sacrificed by a nearly naked History Club president.
- Getting murdered by the shiba inu shopkeeper, your remains made into dog food.
- Abducted by alien shiba inus because the Earth is doomed.
- Being forced to move into a village where you'll be killed after your child is born.
- Having your inner ears burst with steaming blood pouring out your orifices.
It's All Upstairs From Here: Unlocking the entrance to the lighthouse has the player climb its stairs in order to destroy the Old God's summoning sigil.
Jawbreaker: The Broken Jaw injury prevents the player from casting Spells.
Joke Ending: Completing the Blue Gem riddle gets you a nonsensical Game Over where your character is abducted by alien dogs and told that they are recruiting people in order to face off against a "galactic threat", with a supposed teaser for a upcoming (and nonexistent) "Galaxy of Horror" spinoff. It's all a reference to the "Dog Ending" of Silent Hill 2.
Jump Scare: There's a few sprinkled throughout the game as to be expected with the genre, but they're very brief moments and the game doesn't try to repeatedly exploit them:
- The "Park Guest" event consists of a window viewing outside, and a pair of eyes peering to you from the distance. Moving the cursor over the window has the eyes disappear, then reappear closer, the face concealed by shadow for a moment before the "guest" suddenly comes right in front of the window.
- The "Seamstress Story" event has a jumpscare that occurs when you fail a skill check as the ghost of the seamstress briefly appears, the text window reading "I'VE FOUND YOU AT LAST!"
- If you have the "Creepy Neighbor" setting turned on, tabbing out of the game for a prolonged period of time can lead to the "Neighbor" suddenly appearing with a startling sound when you tab back in.
Katana Superiority: While it's hard to get it and requires you to be very lucky, the katana is, bar none, the single strongest weapon in the game. Its swing is stronger than every other weapon, and it does better damage than a revolver. This is justified, it's also one of the few weapons that is actually intended for use as a weapon.
Kill and Replace: The implications for the Gruesome Altar random event.
"Seeing two chopped off heads, you can't help but wonder who's been preparing your food for the past week?"
Kill It with Fire: The DIY Flamethrower is one the best weapons in the game and can finish off most enemies in one or two turns, depending on your dexterity. It's difficult to acquire, however, requiring specific actions in two different mysteries.
- During the "Macabre Memoir of Morbid Mermaids" mystery, the player can end the final boss fight by setting the entire school on fire and hoping to catch the killer in the resulting inferno.
Klaatu Barada Nikto: During the school event "There Was A Hole Here", this phrase can be partially seen written on the blackboard. It's treated as "eldritch writing" that teaches the player a random spell if they read it.
Know When to Fold 'Em: The defensive command Escape lets the player run from combat at the cost of raising their DOOM.
Last Chance Hit Point: With the "Last Stand" option on, you won't immediately lose if your Stamina or Reason drop to 0 or below, and you will be given some leeway to restore them so long as you do so before ending the event/battle and they don't drop below -5. "Sudden Death" mode, on the other hand, will end the game the moment your Stamina or Reason drop below 1.
Level Editor: While very buggy and missing several features, events and mysteries can be created and shared amongst the community.
Lightswitch Surprise: In the Dead Man's Float event, the player character comes across an indoor pool in the dark. One of the options is to turn on the lights, which reveals... just the pool, which gives +1 Reason to the player.
Limit Break: If the player's Stamina and/or Reason is 3 or lower during combat, then they gain access to the Desperate Struggle command, which doubles their damage dealt (except for the Fire Weapon command) for one turn.
Locked Door: Exaggerated with the entrance to the lighthouse, where the ritual to summon an Old God is; The only way to unlock it is to obtain five keys (four on the Skeptic difficulty) to unlock the locks on its door.
Lord British Postulate: "Invincible" enemies like Oetaru, Something Truly Evil, and the Nameless Horror can still be damaged with thrown objects or spells, so it's possible to "kill" them by doing so (though the sheer volume of spellcasting required will typical tank your stats and Doom to the point the game becomes unbeatable). However, the game doesn't recognize that you killed the enemy, and will treat it as though the encounter ended in a normal manner (i.e. you ran away, or it never happened).
Lovecraft Lite: Zig-Zagged. While there are Eldritch Abominations and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know as expected in this kind of Cosmic Horror Story, most of them can be defeated, placated, or outright stopped. That being said, there's a few aversions that keep the game from being completely free of horrors.
- If the Old Ones return, it's game over - you stand no chance of even opposing them. The game's goal is to stop them from awakening instead. That being said, you will go up against many eldritch horrors throughout the game, and most^note of them can be killed with enough skill; if you succeed at solving all of the mysteries and disrupt the ritual in the Lighthouse, the Old One goes back to sleep, showing that their return can be delayed, perhaps even indefinitely. Though in spite of that, many of the defeated horrors are outright stated to be gone, but can return by someone else summoning them.
- Endings A and B of the "Household Hell" investigation have your foe too far away to attack: the only options you have against the thing you've awoken are to either run away, leaving it to terrorize the coastline, or satiate it by murdering one of your companions.
- You can't kill Something Truly Evil, and aside from spells (which don't kill it even if you deplete all of its HP), you can't even attack it. All you can do is harm yourself in a pitiful effort to appease it or to die trying.
Low-Level Run: Invoked with the Commoner background. With this background chosen, you cannot gain any experience, leaving you with your base stats and any equipment you pick up to complete the run.
Luck-Based Mission:
- The mermaid case has a special ending which requires your character to be afflicted with a specific condition. Said condition is only obtainable through eating the lump of meat, which has the chance of instead giving you the bloated injury or a random curse, by playing a certain character who accumulates curses after each mystery, or by randomly encountering it in the wild.
- Good luck getting the students in the Schoolyard to discuss the Aka Manto case with you during that investigation. Especially if circumstances have led to only one or two students showing up in the Schoolyard at a time.
- "Bizarre Bruit of the Bloodcurling Botanist"'s ending A requires a specific item, which you can only get from another case, and only get from a specific ending.
- Successfully drinking eldritch blood and surviving is a chain of these. You first need a Tiny Key, which is only guaranteed if you get Ending A to "Alarming Account of Abnormal Arms" and do the optional sidequest. Then you need to investigate the School until you get the "Trophy Room" event and use the Tiny Key to get the Goblet. Then, you need to enter the Otherworld - which requires either the Void spell or yet another random event, and it specifically has to be the Upper Kingdom Otherworld at that! - and choose the right options to fill the Goblet with blood. Do all of this and you can get the single best healing item in the game, which unlocks a playable character when you first use it. You can also fill a glass bottle with the blood, but that is not advisable.
Luck Stat: The somewhat-hidden LCK stat, which isn't shown on the player's status screen but is shown on the level-up screen and in stat-check results (if enabled). Every character starts with a 6 in it (except for Ayaka, who only has 3 LCK), and its only use is for checks that determine events outside the character's control.
Made of Plasticine: The Medical History background makes your character into this, as they can suffer injuries regardless of the type of damage dealt to them. Thus, they can have an artery cut by being slapped, or break their ribs from the enemy doing literally nothing.
Malevolent Masked Men:
- An enemy known as the Apartment Stalker can be randomly encountered while investigating the Apartments. He dons a freakish clown mask and bashes the player with a baseball bat.
- In the village, you can randomly encounter two strange men wearing bags over their heads to mask their identities. As members of a cult that worship whatever Old God you're going against in this mission, they pull you aside and ask you if you're also a worshipper. Say yes and they'll unmask themselves and join you as allies because you're their "master" according to some prophecy. Surprisingly, if you say no, they apologize for bothering you.
- Aka Manto wears a mask not unlike Michael Myers. It conceals the black void where his face should be.
- The antagonist of "Nightmare News of the Noisy Nails" is a Serial Killer who wears a Kabuki mask and harvests the nails of his victims.
- You can become one yourself, by equipping one of several masks, all of which will update your character's image accordingly.
Monster Clown: Invoked by the mask of the Apartment Stalker, which reflects their brutal nature. The player can obtain a replica of the mask, which lets them do additional damage to human enemies.
Mook Taxonomy: Enemies are grouped into eight classifications: Circle, Eldritch, Ghost, Human, Vampire, Undead, Plant, and Monster. Various enemy types are weak to different items and abilities (e.g. plants take more damage from being set on fire).
Multiple-Choice Past: Each of the playable characters has their own backstory, with some having personal ties to certain cases. In addition, you can unlock and select extra backgrounds to add more flavor and potential complications to your playthrough.
- The "Medical History" background makes your protagonist more susceptible to injury due to past medical troubles. They also start out with Bandages to help them treat minor wounds, and a medical discharge paper that grants free experience points.
- "Hunted By the Cult" makes the cultists far more active, but solving mysteries reduces Doom more. Your protagonist managed to elude them before, but they seem to be closing in...
- "Seventh Curse" has you start with more funds than what the chosen difficulty allows, at the expense of gaining any human allies. This is because a Deal with the Devil makes anyone who gets close to you die.
- "Ill-Fated" makes it so you automatically fail every skill check during a run. You're so used to it by the time the game starts, however, that you start off with enough EXP to level up right away.
- "Knight-Errant" will start you with a unique book that grants more damage during the mystery it's used in, but penalizes you with a significant Doom gain if you complete a mystery with any ending other than Ending A.
- "Scars" reduces all damage you take by 1, but your max Stamina and Reason are reduced by 3 points.
- "Curious Birthmark" gives you a chance of receiving a curse each time you take damage in combat, but you also start off with a special coin that can be used to remove a curse.
- "Eldritch Parasite" starts you out with 20 more Stamina and Reason than usual, but you're unable to heal by any means.
- "Exquisite Taste" means you can only visit one sub-location in each area.
- "Fatalist" hides the details of each Mystery until you investigate it and forces you to investigate Mysteries in the order that they appear.
- "Commoner" makes it impossible for you to earn any experience.
Multiple Endings: Oh, so many endings, which are split between mystery endings and playthrough endings.
- Most of the mysteries can be resolved in a variety of ways, depending upon what the player does/doesn't do and whether or not they complete their objectives. Some require completing the additional objective, while others require specific items. Generally, endings fall into one of the following classifications:
  - "Ending A", which sees you solve the mystery in its entirety, uncovering the secrets and avoiding any traps, and walking away totally victorious... but not always innocent. True victory sometimes requires a harsh price.
  - "Ending B" typically sees you either resolving the problem at hand at great cost, or else narrowly avoiding success, while still managing to harm or inconvenience the antagonist in the process. It can also refer to avoiding a hopeless death, but making a great sacrifice in the process.
  - "Ending C" are the "bad" endings, that result from half-assing the investigation, missing clues, taking the easy ways out, falling into plot traps, failing to be Genre Savvy, or even being a Dirty Coward and abandoning the investigation when the opportunity arises. These are unequivocally bad, with the problem getting worse, the antagonist winning, the impending disaster kicking off with you being powerless to stop it, or your investigation being stopped cold before you learn the truth. Most of these count as finishing the mystery, however, and let you advance the game.
  - There exist a few "Ending D" endings as well. These are even worse than Ending C's, as you utterly fail in your goals or, in some cases, even accidentally help the antagonist succeed. Again, they still count as "successes" and let you proceed with the game, even though the world is indisputably worse off because of your "help."
  - One Halloween update added an Ending E as well. In this, you accomplish absolutely nothing, and the villain gets away with zero repercussions. You, however, are far worse off, having something horrible happen to you that will inevitably kill you, or cause great harm at best.
- Then there's the playthrough endings, which range from simply losing all Stamina/Reason or reaching 100% Doom to dying in specific ways during investigations. And there are only a very small number of good endings you can get.
Murderous Mannequin: There's the Headless Mannequin as a reference to Junji Ito's Headless Sculptures. It's a female form, evidently without head, that's armed with a knife. She's encountered during the Sculptures event at the School.
Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Something Truly Evil, a mysterious humanoid being who will stalk and eventually attempt to kill the player should they trigger certain events.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: The ally Iwa is based on Dwayne Johnson, specifically his portrait is based on a famous picture of Johnson in his teens, and Iwa is a direct Japanese translation of "Rock".
Non-Indicative Name: If the player opts to roll for all possible perks per level-up, then they can potentially get Moriko's "Daddy's Girl" as a male character.
Non-Lethal K.O.: Played with; Bosses aside, it's not explicitly clear whether the player kills their enemies or merely knocks them out. However, this is played straight with the Rioter, as the player can actually meet them again if they fulfill certain conditions.
- This is also played straight when handcuffing a (non-boss) human enemy.
  You handcuff the subdued enemy!
Not Completely Useless: Multiply Wound is the weakest offensive spell, requiring the player's stamina to be nearly 0 to deal any meaningful damage (5-6 points). Still, sometimes even just 2 points of damage is enough to guarantee a killing blow on an enemy. Of course, like every other spell, it can also just be forgotten for +1 reason.
Not Quite the Right Thing: By virtue of being a horror-mystery game at its core; oftentimes the goals given to you upfront are not wholly accurate or honest, and you need to complete the optional sidequests in each mystery to get the full story. Failing to do so may lead to an ending where you "win" but ultimately miss something critical that causes you to miss the full story.
- In particular, "Bizarre Bruit of the Blood-curdling Botanist" asks you to track down Shiro-san, a missing gardener. The mystery culminates in a battle where you find the gardener under attack by his own garden, which is alive and hostile. The goal presented to you is to keep Shiro-san alive and guide him out. This gets you Ending C, since finishing the sidequest and investigating the gardener once the vines have damaged him reveals the truth: he's been turned into a horrible Puppeteer Parasite for a mutant strain of Cordyceps fungus, and by helping him escape, you likely just doomed the world to a The Last of Us scenario. Once you learn the truth, you now have to kill him - though doing so normally only earns you Ending B. The Golden Ending takes quite a bit more work.
Off the Rails: The "Blue Gem" side-quest completely derails from whatever mystery the player is currently doing; The player must get specific events at specific locations, which culminates in a secret ending where they get abducted by alien shiba inus.
Ominously Open Door: You can encounter one as an event that's trying to suck you in. You can resist it^noteAt the cost of losing 1 Stamina but choosing to go through transports you to the Otherworld.
Ominous Visual Glitch:
- Fail to perform the ritual correctly in "Spine-chilling Story of School Scissors", and you're presented with a full body version of this to represent how you've failed to render the Scissors Woman vulnerable.
- Whenever you encounter Something Truly Evil, some of these flash across the screen.
- Some enemies appear to be glitching out and are even named as such.
One Curse Limit: You wish. Heck, there's even an achievement for having five curses at the same time. Injuries also stack, which can get out of hand if the player has the Medical History background.
One-Hit-Point Wonder: Your allies are effectively this; while your main character can take a beating from the various horrors you encounter, any ally that gets hit or launches an attack goes down hard.
One-Man Army: The player character if they don't recruit any allies.
Only One Save File: This counts for both the player's main save file as well as their suspend save in the middle of a run.
Our Mermaids Are Different: The mystery "Macabre Memoir of Morbid Mermaids" revolves around a janitor whose obsession with mermaids has led him to start kidnapping schoolgirls and sewing their legs together. One ending reveals that mermaids are actually real - but the fish part goes on top... additionally, from the illustration, the human "face" is a fake camouflage growth on top of the real "fishperson" head.
Pacifist Run: Can be done by running from every enemy, including some bosses. The difficulty comes in that 1) The player will gain less experience, and 2) They'll raise their Doom quickly if they don't have Running Shoes or the Small Candle (both lower the Doom cost from 5% to 3%), or the Invisibility spell (running cost no Doom until the end of the current mystery).
Painting the Medium: If the player's counter for Something Truly Evil is high enough, then they'll replace the player character's investigation sprite, then their head will replace the images for all of their items, and finally, when fighting them, several of the texts for UI elements will be replaced with "FOUND YOU".
Pistol-Whipping: If you run out of ammo or don't want to spend it, you can strike with an equipped gun. Two characters also have perks and exclusive firearms that are made for this
- Haru's CQC Training boosts the melee damage of firearms, and the Semi-Auto he can obtain in one of his events happens to be the only gun that uses STR (Haru's highest stat) for melee attacks, as well as striking extremely fast.
- Moriko's starting Old Shotgun has a good combination of melee damage, speed, and hit chance. The Deft Handling perk can then reduce the amount of time it takes to strike with guns, making the shotgun into one of the best melee weapons.
Player Death Is Dramatic: If the player loses all of their stamina, then their character is shown dead on the ground. If they lose all of their reason, then their character is shown in a straight jacket in a psych ward. And that's without mentioning the special game over screens...
Point of No Return: Entering the lighthouse. The game warns you that there won't be any turning back once you begin, offering you the chance to rest as much as you dare before continuing.
Police Are Useless:
- Downplayed. The police in Shiokawa are overwhelmed by the murders, riots, and various paranormal cases when the story starts, and in some instances, they're corrupted and turned into hostile monsters. But you can offer the officers information and tips (in the form of 30 XP) at the Police Station for Funds or request more patrols to lower the chance of combat encounters.
- Also subverted during some events: you have the options to call the police but doing so requires a Charisma check to convince them whatever you've encountered is real.
- Ending A for Far-out Fable of a Fear Festival averts this hard. You managed to delay the cult long enough for a police task force to burst in and stop them. The leader, your aunt, escapes, but the cops disrupt the summoning ritual at the last moment, arrest most of the cultists, rescue the survivors, and clean up all the evidence in a manner of hours.
Pop Quiz: At the end of a run, the player may have to answer the second enemy that they fought and/or the second mystery that they did. Although, once the player figures out that the question(s) is/are the same in every run it becomes more of "did you write this down?" than anything.
Power at a Price: Every spell in the game has a cost that balances out the benefits they bestow. Some examples include Flesh Regrowth, which restores 3 Stamina at the cost of reducing your maximum Stamina by 2; Mind Drain, which inflicts 3 damage on an enemy at the cost of 2 Reason; and Midasu Touch, which provides 1 Fund at the cost of 2 Stamina. If Ath-Yolazsth is the chosen Old God of a playthrough, Reason costs for magic are replaced with increased Doom counter progress.
Power-Up Food: Players can consume items like the Energy Drink in order to temporarily increase one of their stats until the end of the mystery.
Pre-Apocalyptic Conclusion: Should the player reach 100% doom on the "Ath-Yolazsth" scenario, the game ends with the titular cosmic entity becoming aware of Earth and beginning to fly through space towards it. While its trip will take ten years, there is nothing humanity can do to stop it before it eventually arrives to devour the planet.
Press X to Die:
- While trying to appease Something Truly Evil, you can choose to commit suicide. Doing so kills you, unsurprisingly.
- If you get the Upper Kingdom otherworld event, you can collect some of the god's blood if you have either an empty bottle or the Goblet. The blood can only be safely consumed from the Goblet. Trying to drink it from the bottle is a very bad idea◊.
- Using any Stamina or Reason-expending item/spell when it'll lower said stat to 0 or less.
Psychic-Assisted Suicide:
- The Forgotten Specimen is a monster randomly encountered in the School. It's an octopus-like creature trapped in a jar that uses psychic powers to compel its victims to harm themselves.
- The final boss of "Bloody Brief of a Beckoning Bulletin" is Together/the Voice of Humanity, a psychic entity that exists in a computer bulletin board and tries to force this on everyone it encounters so all of humanity can be Together in Death.
- If Doom reaches 100% when facing Ygothaeg, the Game Over has the Old God use its hypnotic power to force you and everyone else in Shiokawa to march into the sea and drown themselves.
Railroading: In most mysteries, the player can investigate several locations (including ones for side-quests), but only the location that is marked will progress the story.
Random Encounters: Can happen when investigating a location that doesn't have a story-based event.
Regenerating Health: Downplayed; If the player completes a mystery without resting once, then they regain 1 stamina and reason.
Retreaux: The game is presented in retro-style monochromatic shades in simulated 1 or 2-bit graphics with a MacIntosh/GEOS style desktop theme. The default display size simulates a CRT monitor with a sticky note attached to the corner.
- Certain cues in-game show it's specifically supposed to be modeled on 1-bit/2-bit PC-88 games, though that was very rarely combined with realistic, manga-styled artwork in actual PC-88 games, with most of the ones that had that art style being in color.
Rising Water, Rising Tension: "Freakish Fable of a Frightening Flood" is a timed mystery: a village and site of a river-based fertility cult is about to be engulfed by rising flood waters. You must rescue as many researchers as possible before the water levels get too high, and it's entirely possible you won't have time to find them all.
Rule of Cute: You can poke the nose of the Dog Shopkeeper, eliciting a cute bark from it. There's even an achievement for booping his snoot!

S-Z

Salt Solution: Salt is an item that deals 8 damage to Ghost enemies.
Sanity Meter: The Reason stat, serving as mental Hit Points and which typically decreases via your character encountering somnething awful or getting stressed out. Many monsters (usually more freakishly warped ones) can attack Reason directly.
Sanity Slippage: Reason gets whittled away as you encounter horrifying events. If your Reason depletes fully, you will suffer a Heroic BSoD as you get institutionalized and the Old Gods return.
Save-Game Limits: There's only one suspend-save slot, and the player can only save between mysteries (modded characters don't get to save at all).
Save Point: After completing at least one mystery, the player can make a suspend-save in their home before starting another mystery. Again, this is disabled for modded characters.
Schmuck Bait: In the Upper Kingdom Otherworld event, you are given the option of putting some of the god's blood in a container. The blood is described as burning hot. The correct option is to carry it in the goblet that's cold to the touch you obtain from the school trophy case using the tiny key. You also can just bottle it and drink it straight. The results, however, aren't pretty.
Scratch Damage: The lowest amount of damage that can be done is 1.
Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Under normal circumstances, if the odds in an enemy encounter are against the player’s favor, then they can escape for a +5% Doom penalty.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Ithotu, the Devouring Fire is contained in a black marble statue currently being exhibited at the town museum. Reach 100% Doom and he will break free, engulfing Shiokawa in flames in the process.
Seen It All: Some of the underwhelming reactions your character can have to various events has them come off this way.
Self-Harm: The "Suicidal" curse gives you a chance to lose Stamina each time you lose Reason, implying this.
Self-Surgery:
- The sewing kit is used to stitch one's wounds, with no painkillers.
- The "Mimi's Little Project" challenge has you doing one of these between each mystery, causing negative effects depending on which one you choose.
Shifting Sand Land: The Bleeding Desert in the Otherworld, which has three seperate skill checks for going into a destroyed temple, venturing further into the desert, or digging through the sand.
Shower of Angst: One of the first things you're encouraged to do after finishing a mystery (all of which end with a horrifying event) is to take a bath, as doing so will slightly recover your STA and REA.
Shown Their Work: The game was made by a single guy from Poland, and yet demonstrates an impressive familiarity with Japanese language, culture and folklore, which only adds to the immersion of the experience. There are tons of small yet accurate details in the game's artwork and storylines that many Westerners will overlook. And he's a dentist by education and trade, adding to the effort needed for all the research.
Shows Damage: As your Stamina and Reason get lower your character portrait changes to reflect that (cuts and bruises, shadows under eyes etc.). Most of the Injuries you can accumulate during gameplay also appear on your character there.
Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: The game lands firmly on the serious side. The player must fight against horrific enemies in order to save Shiokawa (or even the world) from equally horrific Old Gods, and even the Plucky Comic Relief providing most of the game's levity (such as Kana and the dogs) can easily disappear if you screw up.
Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Boreal Expanse in the Otherworld, where the player can try to pass a skill check for either moving towards a pyramid or searching an icy coast. They can also just give up and suffer -5 Stamina but also gain -5% Doom. No matter what, though, the player suffers the Frostbite minor injury upon leaving the location.
Smoking Is Not Cool: While being on a Nicotine Rush speeds up your combat actions, Withdrawal slows you down, and thanks to your character being addicted, they'll burn through their smokes very quickly. The Cigarettes' description also simply states that 'smoking kills'.
Some Dexterity Required: It's possible to handcuff a human enemy while the player’s combat sequence bar is ticking down. However, doing so requires 1) Launching a combat sequence that'll lower the enemy's HP to 12 or less, 2) Selecting the handcuffs, and then 3) Using them, all before the the sequence bar finishes and the enemy attacks the player.
Spooky Painting: "Perilous Parable of the Peculiar Painting," naturally, is about one of these: a painting that contains and/or summons an eldritch horror that, depending on the ending, can attack you and/or an art curator who you meet during the mystery.
Stat Death: Having one of your stats reach 0 instantly ends the run and treats it as if Doom hit 100%. If Zhectast is your run's Old God, this can become an active threat depending on the difficulty and your player character.
Status Effects: Present and accounted for in the form of Injuries and Curses. Injuries come in both minor and major varieties: while all injuries can be treated at a hospital, minor injuries can be healed with a bandage while major injuries require a medical kit. In either case, treated injuries may leave a "treatment" card behind that may help or hinder the player afterwards. Curses, on the other hand, cannot be healed: they remain with the player for the duration of the playthrough, and worse still, they can stack.^note
Steel Eardrums: Averted. As of 0.9.12, firing a gun in combat gives the player the "Ringing Ears" curse, slowing their combat actions for the duration of the current mystery.
Straight Man: The player character becomes this to Kana in the Evolving Eels mystery, as the latter strings them along in an investigation into their neighbor with weird fish.
String Theory: Downplayed. The billboard from which you begin all of your investigations has elements of this as you complete the mysteries, but it isn't as over-the-top as most examples are. Kouji also has an exclusive event where he is shown studying a board with several pictures and notes connected by strings.
Supernatural Hotspot Town: The coastal city of Shiokawa, Japan is a magnet for a whole bevy of cults related to the Old Gods that are trying to bring about the end of the world, has five strange horror-anthology style mysteries plaguing it every run and has countless smaller supernatural events or strange creatures roaming its streets and the surrounding villages as you try to solve all those mysteries. It says a lot when a dog runs a shop in the middle of town and no one bats an eye at it.
Suspend Save: The player can make one in-between mysteries unless they're using a modded character.
Taking You with Me: In "Morbid Message of the Macabre Mermaids" if you distract the crazy janitor with your gills, it's shown that the student who's legs he chopped off and replaced with a fish tail isn't quite dead, as she springs up and strangles him to death while his guard is down.
Talking Down the Suicidal: One encounter offers the chance to intervene when you find a woman on the verge of killing herself. Succeed and she'll give you the dagger she was planning to do the deed with.
Talking Is a Free Action: Played straight when sending an ally to suicide-attack an enemy, but averted when ordering your ally(ies) to attack and/or distract an enemy.
The Secret of Long Pork Pies: During one event, you can acquire a certain "Long Pig Steak." Eating it gives you the Hunger curse.
Three Wishes: The Witch's Tree can grant up to three wishes in a single playthrough, including recovering Stamina, learning a new spell, or receiving additional funds. Be Careful What You Wish For, however, because every wish comes with a curse.
Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Downplayed with the Katana, which deals only 2 damage when thrown.
Timed Mission:
- The whole game is this. Investigating or visiting shops or other places increases "Doom", which is an indicator of how much time is left before the Old Gods awaken. If Doom reaches 100%, well...
- Every move you make during the "Far-Out Fable of Fear Festival" and "Freakish Fable of a Frightening Flood" mysteries scoots the story along, with or without you.
Toilet Horror: The School Bathroom event becomes this if the player tries to close one of the stall doors that opened on its own. Doing so causes an encounter with the Toilet Ghost, which has the form of a girl with a void where her face should be and her two eyes buldging on the right side of her face.
Too Long; Didn't Dub: Done exactly once to emulate the feeling of old localizations, as one enemy is called "Kinoko Gatherer" — "kinoko" being Japanese for "mushroom."
Turn-Based Combat: Combat always starts with the player being able to choose commands to fill their combat sequence bar and then launch their sequence. After it finishes, the enemy attacks the player, and then the process repeats until A) The player dies, B) The player escapes, or C) The enemy is defeated.
Universal Ammunition: Since you only have a single ammo tracker, you can use the same bullets in handguns, shotguns, and rifles. This is an Acceptable Break from Reality, as ammo is already hard to find.
Unlockable Content: Tied to the game's Achievement System for failures as well as success. Releases new content for the game, including new items, allies, modes, even playable characters.
Unwinnable by Design: The game being a rogue-lite, there's always the possibility of a procedural situation where the player's options are minimal to nil. And considering the Old Gods can indirectly impede your progress throughout a run, it's entirely within bad luck to end up heavily wounded, unable to rest or drink water, against insurmountable odds and nothing you can do about it.
Useless Useful Spell: Considering how Multiply Wound works (damage increases the lower the player's stamina is), one would think that they'd deal considerable damage while on low health, especially since it costs 2 stamina to cast. However, this isn't the case, as it'll only do around 6 damage when the player is nearly dead.
Variable Mix:
- The pre-mystery theme gets quiet if the player looks out of the peephole to their apartment room and slows down when they enter the lighthouse.
- For every mystery, there's a slow version prior to starting it, and the main theme gets quiet when the player encounters an enemy. The song then becomes more intense and gains percussion during battles.
Vengeful Vending Machine: One of the events has the Player Character come onto a suspicious vending machine in their apartment building, which makes them decide to buy a drink. Trying to buy an expensive drink while being broke will result in the machine dispensing a can of blood, while getting a cheap drink will result in the machine inflicting an injury on the player if they fail a Dexterity check.
The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The lighthouse, the source of the Old God's summoning ritual. It can only be accessed by solving all of the cases in a given playthrough, and is a race against time and mounting odds to prevent the Old God's arrival.
Video Game Caring Potential: Your allies are much more fragile than your protagonist, and you can strive to keep them safe as you wade your way through whatever challenges the world throws your way.
Video Game Cruelty Potential: Alternately, you can command your allies to throw their lives away in one last-ditch attack on some random monstrosity, make them risk themselves providing a distraction, or otherwise sacrifice their safety to save your own hide. And that's not even getting into how you can force some of them to accompany you by taking them hostage, or enact rituals that let you benefit from their deaths...
Video Game Weapon Stats: Weapons have Damage, Speed, Chance to Hit, and Throw Damage (the last of which is hidden).
Weird Currency: The history club at school can sell you magical items, spells, or character perks... as long as you're willing to accept an often-hefty price in Doom. You can only buy three items from them, though - try to buy a fourth one and you become a Human Sacrifice.
We Need a Distraction: One way your allies can aid you in battle is by distracting your opponent, making you able to attack faster. However, that's because they go after your ally instead. And if they land a hit on them...
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Several of the preludes that open different cases end with some variation of the phrase 'What's the worst thing that could happen?'
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Some spells (e.g. Skin Removal) cost Reason to use.
Whole-Plot Reference: In addition to specific mysteries referencing other works of horror, the overall game is similar to a single player session of Arkham Horror in that you're racing against an advancing Doom Track to complete missions in order to stop the awakening/summoning of an Eldritch Abomination, while things in town get hairier the closer the Doom reaches completion. Other overlaps with Arkham Horror include the dual health/sanity resource system, the emphasis on resource management, encounters/monsters/items/allies/spells being characterized as cards drawn from a deck, locations having both a set purpose as well as random encounters, and so on.
A World Half Full: The player can't even fight the Old Gods, let alone defeat them. That being said, stopping their awakening prevents them from targeting Earth at least for the foreseeable future, along with all of the other eldritch horrors disappearing from Shiokawa.
Worst Aid: An in-universe example. If you get the injury "Swollen Joint" which prevents you from running away from a fight. You can take yourself to a doctor. However, unlike most injuries, where you need a special item to treat yourself, this one you get the option to stick a needle in it without needing an item. Turns out the joint was swollen because it was infected. Poking it cures the injury, but also causes pus to gush out costing you 1 stamina and also permanently cutting your max stamina by 2! It even hangs a lampshade on it by asking if a doctor shouldn't be looking at all the pus gushing out of the infected joint!
You Have to Believe Me!:
- Many of your potential allies, such as the students you can chat with in the Schoolyard, will only join you if they're convinced that there's an actual threat. Otherwise, they'll dismiss your request with comments like "You were always such a kidder!" If you're strong enough, however, you can force them.
- If you want the police to help you with certain events, you'd better hope that you can pass a Charisma check in order to convince them first.
- While dealing with a 'crazy person', your protagonist can realize that the biggest difference between you is that nobody believes them. You can also not realize that they're telling the truth if you don't pass a check, which makes them land in this.
Your Mind Makes It Real: Witnessing good or bad omens affects the Doom counter just like wasting or saving time. The Survivor's Guilt curse adds 2% to the Doom counter after completing a mystery, working against the -3% that normally gets applied. And certain events and endings advance the Doom counter if they make the protagonist feel guilty, such as Ending D: Lacerations of Bizarre Bruit of the Blood-curdling Botanist, where the protagonist is forced to leave Shiro-san behind while escaping from his hostile garden, even though other endings reveal that Shiro-san was already taken by the Cordyceps fungus and the player has to kill him after discovering this.

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