What would happen ifH.P. Lovecraft worked forNintendo?

APuzzle Platformer where the hero has the ability to warp the very fabric of reality, but only at certain points.

As the journey goes on, the world around you falls apart, and nameless horrors emerge.

At the end of this journey, there will be nothing but the darkness... just the way you like it.

"NOT INDICATED FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION." —The author

You can download the gamehere.

WARNING! There are unmarkedSpoilers ahead. Beware.

• Advancing Wall of Doom: One pitch black one appears in the third level, and the sixth level has another one... made ofblood, whichmay be the avatar ofYog-Sothoth. That shoots out those damned hands of doom.
• And I Must Scream:The secret Steam exclusive ending.
  • X-4 in general, really, since all the enemies are like this.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: One interpretation of thegood ending.
• Anti-Poopsocking:"STOP." "GIVE UP."
  • Inverted once you unlock the timed run feature:"FORWARD!" "ON YOUR MARKS!" "READY! TO RACE!"
• Auto-Scrolling Level: levels 3-4 and 6-7 in old versions. Later versions no longer require waiting for the platforms to scroll in view, but causes theAdvancing Wall of Doom to behave like aRubber Band.
• Beast and Beauty: The first endinginverts this, with the Princess as the Beast. The second and third endings avoid this trope entirely,because now youboth are horrifying monsters!
• Bleak Level: The last level.
• Bloody Hilarious: When you couple Yakety Sax with a fast-speed montage of aLet's Player'smany deaths,it can qualify for a Crowning Moment of Funny.
• Breather Level: World 5 can actually be this after the frustrating jumps at the end of world 4.
• Brutal Bonus Level: Only available if you get all the gems and also introduces the final eversion. In earlier versions, it starts warping randomly between them all. Version 1.7 replaces it with a maze-like level.
• Completely Missing the Point: In theCrispy Gamer review of this game, the reviewer says about the game's recommendation to play alone at night "There certainly were not any special "alone at night" effects, nor any creative use of the system clock."
• Content Warnings: The above quote, displayed when you start up the game. You're thinking that since this is a cutesy platformer at first, that it's just a joke.It's not.
• Crap Saccharine World: The entire game world is falling into decay and ruin, occasionally getting eaten by giant walls ofnothing before turning malevolent and irredeemably evil. The bad ending is whenyou get eaten by the princess, who's already been turned into a monster; thegood ending is whereyou turn into one of the nightmarish creatures as well... but at least you get the girl!
  • Another interpretation is that youare a monster all along, and that you're working your way back from a horrible world to one that, for you, is good and right.
  • Given how evert points operate and the ending, a more natural interpretation may bethat the world is a single entity with multiple faces, and possibly that World 8 is the true face. This would make World 1 a fake, or aCrap Saccharine World.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The good ending.In a very disturbing way...
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: The good ending can be one.See that giant red eye in the picture? Now replace the iris with a heart. In short, first the Princess, then your hero, turn into horrific monsters. The implication manages to turn a horrible ending into a very strangely humorous idea: life is life, and even dark creatures go through it and love in their own distinctly twisted way. Now, picture watching that ending and listening to "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
• Cruel Twist Ending: The endings are considered this, but the bad ending fits even better.
• Dark Reprise: Does the music for X-6 seem familiar?It's an creepy, distorted version of X-2's theme.
• Dark World: The entire point of the game is to progress between various stages of Dark Worlds.
• Demonic Spiders: The hands.
• Dramatic Disappearing Display: Your score goes away in X-7, then everything but the gem counter in 7-8, and thewhole thing in world 8. In time attack mode, however, the timer is always displayed during gameplay.
• Dual World Gameplay: Practically all of the gameplay is this to considerable success. There are 5 to 8 extra layers depending on version, but per level, you'll only be using 2 or 3 of them. At different layers, different objects may be obstacles or even enemies. In the lower levels, clouds can be platforms. In the lowest levels bushes are obstacles, go higher and they are simply dead, with flowers asthorny, spikey death traps, just before that they are just dead and background art. Each of these has an effect on the flow and timing of the player's jumps adjusted for the different levels. Enemies are deadly to different degrees with different one optimised for different levels.
• Dummied Out: In normal gameplay,you will never see the X-8 gems since you'd have every gem before you can even see X-8. At least, before 1.7.3 introducedTime Attack Mode, which have the gems serving to reduce time. But prior to that they do exist, probably so going to X-8 with gems around wouldn't kill the game in earlier versions.
  • In addition, hacking the game reveals levels X-9 and X-0. 9 appears to be aMinus World (all the monsters look like you, and the level properties are whatever they were in the previous layer you were in). 0 was the world used in the map editor, with white tiles. All shrubs are replaced with the word and question mark "Goal?", which triggered the "bad" ending.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Brutally subverted with the bad ending. The good endingmay or may not be aDouble Subversion.
• Ear Worm: All of the themes areear-wormy. Some of them will haunt you for a long time!
• Eldritch Abomination:Nehema turns out to be one. In the good ending,so do you.
• Eldritch Location: As you continue everting, the world becomes more and more like this, peaking in X-8.
• Endless Corridor: World 8 in version 1.7.3 onwards. If you don't find the evert point within two sections, then then you'll have to go through them again until you end the section after everting to lower dimension.
• Esoteric Happy Ending:If you get all of the gems, both you and the princess turn out to beEldritch Abominations.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: The author based this game upon an idea from HP Lovecraft'sCommonplace Book:"sounds - possibly musical - heard in the night from other worlds or realms of being."
• Eye Scream: The fate of the first box in level 4-1.
• Faceless Eye: The normal enemies in X-4.
  • And gem blocks in the world X-8.
  • And almost faceless those stone enemies in world X-7.
• Fission Mailed: In X-6 to X-8, dying will sometimesreplace the "READY!" screen with a fake Game Over.
• Four Is Death: World 4, theWham Level.
  • Also, in X-4, the goomba-like monsters stay still, as if they are dead.
  • X-4 is kind of a dead world. Everything's a dull shade of grayish-green, the plants are curled over, the water is poisoned and lifeless, the boxes have flat expressions...
• Gainax Ending: All of them. Have fun on theWild Mass Guessing page.
• Game Over: The only way to get one in this game is toget the bad ending. However, there is also a (fake) Game Over screen that has a chance of popping up at later eversion levels.
• Genre Busting: It's a platformer, puzzle, and horror game, all at once.
• Giant Eye of Doom:The endings.
• Giant Hands of Doom: The hands.
• Goomba Stomp: In later worlds, this results inmassive fountains of your enemies' blood.
• Goth Spirals: The bright purple flowers from World 1 gradually wilt into gray stalks that become spirals in World 5. As if that weren't enough, they acquireSpikes of Doom from World 6 onward. In HD version, more can be seen in the background during later worlds. And let's not forget what happens to the face blocks in World 7...
• Grotesque Cute: That adorable little flower can make his enemies (or himself, if he's not careful!)explode into globs of blood!
• Guide Dang It: Most players who play the new version of theWorld 8, take the hardest path to get from world X-6 to lower instead of everting from X-6 to X-5 from the easier section.
  • Getting those last five gems in level 6 is frustratingly difficult to say the leastuntil you find the hidden eversion point in the maze.
  • Getting to theend of level 6 is frustratingly difficult without that, let alone getting all the gems while you're at it.
  • Level 7 and those last few gems... and just when you think you've got the blocks destroyed and the gems popped out, if you should ever die in between grabbing the gems, YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN. AARGH. Cue the head-smashing.
  • Partly averted as mostGuide Dang It moments are shortly after automatic saves and you have infinite lives to try everything. In the first example given,you can get trapped within the easier section, forcing you to search for the evert point within a small area.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: X-7. X-8 features accelerating heartbeats. X-5 also has a very slight heartbeat.
• Hell Is That Noise: Those hands! Those horrible screeching hands!
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The after-game logo is hidden behind the pre-game logo, and vice versa.
• High-Pressure Blood: Levels X-6 and beyond.
• Hope Spot:World 7. As you progress through the level you start everting backwards and eventually end up back at the bright, happy 7-1. But if you haven't collected all the gems...
  • Similarly, the same thing happens in World 8 as of version 1.7.3. Complete with anend of level stinger before the ending.
• Interface Screw: The later parts of worlds X-6 and X-7 are plagued by creepy glitches, messages, and other oddities in your UI. For example, your score starts turning into gibberish-- then vanishes outright; instead of "READY!" it starts saying things like "STOP," "GIVE UP,"a fake Game Over, etc etc. In the endings,the gamecloses itself.
• Invincible Minor Minion: In version 1.73, rock monsters in X-7 and X-8. And normal enemies in X-8 respawn.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Get the bad endingGame Over sequence, andyour character will be forced to sit helplessly as Nehema eats him.
• It Gets Worse: The game world slowly decays at first, but by level four, it descends into outright madness and chaos.
• Layered World: In fact, there are 8 layers. Three where things are relatively friendly, midpoint where things are indifferent and four worlds of evil.
• Ludicrous Gibs: In levels X-6, X-7 and X-8, get used to showers of blood every time you kill an enemy, or die. In version 1.73, enemies in world X-8 emit black smoke before resurrecting again though.
• The Maze: Version 1.73 replaces the final level with sections which loop in pairs if player doesn't evert and end the section with other eversion.
• Meaningful Name: Nehema, the Princess, isanother name forNaahma, a powerful demoness in the Kabbalah.
• Mind Screw: The endings are, to say the least, ambiguous.
• Minimalism: At least, in the non-HD version. Maybe even then: the color palette hasn't changed much, the graphics are just larger and more detailed.
• Minus World:Ten of them, but they are only reachable by hacking though.
• Mood Whiplash: Oh, so much.
• Mordor: Levels X-7 and X-8.
• Musical Spoiler: Before you evert, you'll hear what you're everting into. Every time you evert, the music gets less and less cheerful. First it mellows out. Then it becomes dramatic. Then it becomes weird. Then it becomes oppressive. Then you hear the mellow music as if played on a broken record player. Then all you hear is a beating heart. And after that, cue thePsycho Strings...
• Multiple Endings: Two in the free version, three in the Steam one.
• Nothing Is Scarier: World X-7 replaces the music with a heartbeat.
  • Aside the music, World X-4is where this tropetruly begins.
  • One of the randomly selected "READY!" screens in World X-6 to X-8 isa completely blank screen.
  • Additionally, after you have seen theREADY!... TO DIE, the normal "READY!" may feel like this.
• One Hundred Percent Completion: Needed to unlock the "good" ending.
• Overdrawn At the Blood Bank: Levels X-6 and beyond. Even assuming your little flower-guyhas blood to begin with, there'sno way his little body could hold that much.
• Paranoia Fuel:"BEHIND YOU"
  • The endings, especiallyNehema (and Zee Tee in the good ending) turning into a horrible monster, certainlycan make you nervous, always looking over your shoulder...
• Playing the Player: You probably thought it was a nice, happy platformer... until your first few eversions.
• Prepare to Die: In Worlds X-6, X-7 and X-8, sometimes you'll get the "READY!" prompt,with "TO DIE" appearing below it just before the level starts. It works on X-5 as well, but very rarely.
• Save the Princess: What you may well decide youdidn't want to do.
• Scenery Gorn: In theHigh Definition version,theGhibli Hills in the background grow decayed. X-2 makes everything look artificial and X-3 makes it look like it's falling apart. X-4 just shows a flat, completely stagnant ocean. The hills grow CLAWED HANDS and MOUTHS in X-6 and X-7. And then we have LAYERS and LAYERS of TENTACLES in X-8.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: World 4, 6 and 8 are harder than 5 and 7.
• Schmuck Bait: To those who didn't have this game spoiled for them: admit it, youwere wondering why the cutesy-looking platformer game was marked as "not for children or those of a nervous disposition". The fact that it starts with a quote fromLovecraft should have clued you in.
• Scrappy Level: Both of theAdvancing Wall of Doom levels, but especially the second one. In World 7, there's a section that lifts you back to the first, happiest level, in order to open two cubes with gems in them, and then evert back to the higher levels to access them. If you dieanytime during that point, the gems disappear, forcing you to do it all over again.
• Scoring Points: Watch what happens to the score meter when you go to X-6.Because if you go even further, it's gone.
• Shout-Out: The Steam achievementsMetaphor for the Atomic Bomb andBeige Alert.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: As you progress though levels, the end of world jingle slowly becomes a bit... unfitting, culminating at the end of the world 7.
  • The cheeryCocoron music (orits analogue in version 1.7.3 onwards) still plays overthis menu screen.
• Spikes of Doom: The thorns from X-6 through X-8.
• Sugar Apocalypse: World X-1 to X-8,AND F**KING HOW.
• Sure Why Not: The Steam-exclusive third ending was based on a fan-edited screenshot of the original game.
• Surprise Creepy: It's gradual, but it's still here.
  • Also found inthis review of said game byThe Gaming Pixie.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The original release of the game uses music from the Famicom gameCocoron. Version 1.73 uses music that sounds almost, but not entirely, like the music fromCocoron.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: See theWhat the Hell, Player? entry below.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Theother interpretation of the "good" ending. The distinction might be academic...
• Trial and Error Gameplay: Plenty of it, but getting a hundred percent completion on world 7 truly goes above and beyond--it's likely to take at least as long as the entire rest of the game put together to finally get those last six gems.
• True Neutral: X-4 is about as close as you get. Immobilized enemies, blocks with blank expressions, and the music sounds like it's only being produced by all of two instruments.The HD version adds to this, making the background a flat ocean with a dull green sun.
• Wall Master: Level 4.
• Wham Level: As mentioned above, level 4.
• What the Hell, Player?: In the Steam version, the achievement forstarting a game with an edited level is called "What Have You Done".

GAME OVER

• Work
• Pages with Unmarked Spoilers
• Eversion
• Video Game