History VideoGame / LostInVivo

* AbnormalAmmo: The shotgun found in the Metro System fires rock-salt shells. This makes sense since it's a police shotgun, and despite sounding absurd, [[ShownTheirWork rock salt shells are real]] and are traditionally used for wildlife control. These rounds deal minor damage against most physical threats, but are highly effective against certain supernatural enemies ([[spoiler: namely the Ghost Girl, the fleshy parts of the Ghost Trains, and the Spitters in the final area]]).

* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: In the drains, there's a short section in which you control the protagonist's dog. [[spoiler: Actually, you're controlling the Siren pretending to be the dog, as shown by a short glimpse of the Siren's hand you can see at the end of the segment, as well as the fact your POV is way too high above the ground to be that of the dog.]]

* AnimalTesting: The tests in Nezumi Labs. Dr. Bowers, the author of the notes, argued to his colleagues that what they were doing had absolutely no practical applications in medicine or the military and seemed to be sadism for its own sake. He was ignored but he and the other objectors were unable to leave due to how classified it was. Eventually their testing resulted in scientific impossibilities, but these were also useless to any sane person. [[spoiler: Dr. Piccini, one of the objectors, eventually went mad and created something that could save the rats (and himself) from the science team, the result being Sotiris.]]
* ArcVillain: Each of the major sections uses a single overarching figure to menace the player.
** The subway uses the [[spoiler: Suicidal Ghost]] to haunt the player in the darkness, and [[spoiler: helping her get over her body-image and abortion guilt issues is the key to escaping.]] The mines has [[spoiler: the dog mimic pursue you viciously, trying to fake you out multiple times.]] The labs has [[spoiler: Sotiris, with his LeaningOnTheFourthWall influence causing him to really mess with the player.]] The drains have the [[spoiler: giant legless Siren.]]
** Unsurprisingly, the titular wolf of the Lost Tape titled “The Wolf”

* BeneathTheEarth: The whole game is subterranean other than the brief intro. All areas are archetypal closed in tunnels of various kinds (Sewers, subways, secret bunkers, etc.).

** [[spoiler: The mine is pretty much just a cat and mouse game with you as the mouse and the mimic as the cat.]]
** [[spoiler: The first train station is a one on one fight against the Ghost Girl, who appears in the dark and very quickly respawns every time she’s killed]]

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: In the non canon Midnight Mode, the demon swordsperson (possibly a woman, if the portrait is a portrait of them) can kill [[spoiler: the two invincible EldritchAbomination antagonists from the main story, Shoggoth and Bayagototh. Though it's ultimately {{Subverted}} in the case of Bayagototh, in which it's made explicitly clear through it's boss title (''Mirage'' of the Starving God), that the protagonist has only managed to defeat an illusion of the Elder God.]]

** [[spoiler:The woman whose notes you can find throughout the first subway area is revealed to have killed herself by walking down the tracks in front of an oncoming subway train due to her body dysmorphia.]]
** [[spoiler: A second woman, the author of the Grand Bulim notes, would later take her own life years later in the same stretch of subway over her guilt about terminating her pregnancy due to her self image issues.]]

** [[spoiler: Bayagototh, the Eldritch Forest God featured in many of Kiras works, appears here as well. Lost Tape #3 is an artifact of his, and Sotiris is implied to be another of his children like Specimen 8 from ''Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion''. He’s associated with woodlands and the animals within, and many of his children seem to be a form of divine vengeance against humanity whom he despises.]]
** Shoggoth the Eel King, a gigantic drooling abomination with RealityWarper powers. When he appears, you die. No matter what. [[spoiler: you only manage to make it through your first meeting with him due to the bizarre nature of the tunnels causing your death to be subject to a CosmicRetcon, possibly by Virgil.]]

** [[spoiler:Sotiris]] is shown to be lacking eyes, as well. Until [[spoiler: He jams a single eye into one of his sockets.]]
** Should you get killed by [[spoiler: Sotiris]], You will be treated to the [[SarcasmMode lovely sight]] of rats crowding around you before gnawing at you with some very squicky sounds. You are then taken to a special variant of the game over screen in which the aforementioned twitching eyeball is replaced with a single, pitch black, empty socket. NothingIsScarier in full effect.
* EyesDoNotBelongThere: In lost tape #3, look carefully at the sky through the chapel window, and you’ll see something is staring back.
* FirstPersonGhost: You don’t even have modeled hands. This seems to be an intentional throwback to early console shooters like {{VideoGame/Timesplitters}}
* FissionMailed:
** [[spoiler: The first fight against Shoggoth the Eel King is both unavoidable and unwinnable. You get a fake game over and the game pretends your save was corrupted, before you’re dropped into a save room with your progress preserved.]]
** Used again during the sequence where you [[spoiler: accidentally kill yourself with bleach and get a game over. You even get to see your own melted corpse on your way through the level again.]]

** The Hotel, and The Way Out, while still found footage (a lost recording/piece of media that is found to have survived in a physical medium) in the dictionary sense, appear to be allegorical stories. The first dealing with an [[spoiler: IronicHell EldritchLocation where tortured souls wander for rest they can never, ever have]] and the second is a pure MindScrew story about abuse, entrapment, and suicide.
* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: Sotiris [[spoiler: talks directly to you in a fake out credits sequence. At first it’s regular credits, then it starts crediting people for blood and Sotiris gets a thank you for being the savior of rats... then it becomes messages to you, as in the person playing.]]

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler: Bayagototh is potentially responsible for what the underground contains, since in the ending where you empower him with a ritual the surface becomes indistinguishable from the nightmarish tunnels]]

* HopelessBossFight: [[spoiler: Any encounter with Shoggoth the Eel King outside of Midnight Mode. The first fight, and the only unavoidable one, results in a FissionMailed, the rest you get a game over]]

** Made ''lethal'' in the mine area. To whit, you are looking for your missing dog, [[spoiler: and the mine mimic happens to look ''exactly like him''...]]
** After making your way through the Nezumi Testing labs and reaching the rear exit [[spoiler: you finally catch up with your dog, and the ambience of the area sudden turns peaceful. However, your dog gets swept away by a flood ''yet again'' when you open the exit door.]]

* MercyKill: [[spoiler: What Sotiris is to provide for the rats. And everything else, had he been completed properly.]]

** In the good ending [[spoiler: you face your fears and are reunited with your dog. It is ambiguous whether your journey was a psychotic break or a real experience, but either way you’ve grown so much as a person that for the first time in your life your claustrophobia has retreated.]]
** In one bad ending [[spoiler: you simply turn around and leave in the first area. Your claustrophobia gets worse and you never see your dog again.]]
** In another bad ending [[spoiler: you shoot your dog. You become depressed and overcome by guilt. The entire journey to that point is all but stated to have been a hallucination]]
** In yet another bad ending [[spoiler: you make it to the end and escape without your dog. The things you saw in the tunnels and your own failure haunt you for the rest of your days. The journey is implied to have been real.]]
** In the nightmare ending [[spoiler: you summon the EldritchAbomination Bayagototh in the tunnels. When you arrive at the surface the entire world now looks the way the tunnels did. You look up in time to see the sky become a solid living membrane and begin to smother the entire world. A claustrophobics literal nightmare come true.]]
* MundaneHorror: The secret Dark Mode scenario. [[spoiler: driving home isn’t normally scary, right? But what about driving home while vividly disassociating?]]
* MysteriousWatcher: A character referred to only as Virgil in the game files observes you throughout the game. He also intervenes several times, never in your favor. [[spoiler: that being said, WordOfGod says he is also the power behind the save rooms which is why the statues look like him. This only makes his motives even more obscure.]]

* NonMaliciousMonster: [[spoiler: The ghost girl is said to only be blindly lashing out, and holds no actual ill will towards you. Accordingly she’s also the only one of the major ghosts who actually gets a happy ending, as she’s able to pass on peacefully once she accepts your help.]]

** Shooting any of the stray cats will [[spoiler: trap you in a pink void surrounded by disembodied eyes, before sending you to the Game Over screen.]]

** Quite a few sections have simple rooms and locations where you'd expect something to happen, such as a delapidated bathroom. Yet again, nothing happens.
** Lost Tapes #2 and #3 end just as shit hits the fan in both of them, leaving it up to the player to fill in the blanks. In the former, [[spoiler: the character escapes the asylum only to end up trapped in a room with strange beings]] and in the latter [[spoiler: the character burns an idol of Bayagototh while the forest lord is watching]]. Neither have their fates expanded upon.

** Alongside that, one of the New Game + skins for the axe and knife, is none other than the axe and Spooky's giant knife from the same game respectively. (Although the last one is rather scaled down.)
* RailroadTracksOfDoom: Wandering too far down the tracks in the subway system results in a subway train hurtling down the tracks toward you, killing you instantly. [[spoiler: A lot like what happened to the woman whose ghost now haunts the subway.]]

* ReliablyUnreliableGuns: The damaged handgun you can acquire early on in the Sewers will occasionally jam when you fire it. Not really making it the most reliable weapon.
* RuleOfSymbolism: Tons.

** The enemy in the mine is based on [[spoiler: paranoias about friends and loved ones.]]

** The station master had the right idea and quit when the subway station revealed its sinister nature to him. Oddly his last notes are from a little over 10 years before the time the game takes place, but it appears the station kept running until [[spoiler: it was the site of a second suicide a couple years before the game starts]] which begs the unsettling question of who was running it in the meantime.

** The talking brains speak like the fetus from P.T. And even give you a similar HannibalLecture on your personal failings.
** The brown bag in the backseat of your car in Dark Mode looks a lot like the talking bag, also like P.T.

** Lost Tape #4 is a long reference to [[spoiler: Franz Kafka’s Literature/TheMetamorphosis. Your character wakes up progressively more and more of a cockroach. Unlike the story it references, you are killed by a disgusted human rather than how Gregor killed himself]]
** The shotgun's New Game+ skin is a double-barreled shotgun which in an update note states that it was based on the famous Boomstick from the ''Franchise/EvilDead'' Series.
** One of the names in the graffiti in the opening sewer section is ‘Julianne Stingray,’ the full name of the protagonist of VisualNovel/VA11HALLA.

* TokenGoodTeammate: [[spoiler: The ghost girl is the only one of the major ghosts who isn’t evil.]]

* VisualPun: In the second to last area, the Drain, the map shows that [[spoiler: fittingly for a psychologically symbolic area, it is all contained within a CT or MRI slice of someone’s brain. Probably yours. Regardless of whose brain it is, it’s a literal “brain drain.”]]
* WhereItAllBegan: [[spoiler: The last level is the same tunnel you entered from, only even more warped than when you entered. You even escape through the same tunnel you came in through.]]
* WholePlotReference: Is essentially a ''slightly'' more surreal one to ''[[Literature/TheDivineComedy Dante's Inferno]]''. The game's supernatural events are proceeded by entering a ominous sewer grate with ''"[[{{Hell}} Abandon all hope ye who enter here]]"'' in graffiti, is set BeneathTheEarth, is a continuous downward (figuratively and literally) spiral through increasingly grotesque, nightmarish locales inhabited by tortured souls and nameless horrors, and the protagonist's "guide" is a mysterious character named Virgil.
** Backing this up are several televisions throughout the game and the lost tapes that display illustrations of Dante and Virgil.

Lost in Vivo is a horror FirstPersonShooter with a ''VideoGames/{{Retraux}}'' graphics style (one of the earliest examples) inspired by classic UsefulNotes/PlayStation horror games. Players control an unnamed claustrophobic as they descend into a nightmare world of tunnels and tight spaces. As they get deeper and deeper into this strange underground world, reality itself seems to break down. The already arduous journey soon becomes a spiraling nightmare in which the protagonist must fight for their life against warped otherworldly horrors.

Lost in Vivo is a horror FirstPersonShooter with a ''VideoGame/{{Retraux}}'' graphics style (one of the earliest examples) inspired by classic UsefulNotes/PlayStation horror games. Players control an unnamed claustrophobic as they descend into a nightmare world of tunnels and tight spaces. As they get deeper and deeper into this strange underground world, reality itself seems to break down. The already arduous journey soon becomes a spiraling nightmare in which the protagonist must fight for their life against warped otherworldly horrors.

Lost in Vivo is a horror FirstPersonShooter inspired by classic UsefulNotes/PlayStation horror games. Players control an unnamed claustrophobic as they descend into a nightmare world of tunnels and tight spaces. As they get deeper and deeper into this strange underground world, reality itself seems to break down. The already arduous journey soon becomes a spiraling nightmare in which the protagonist must fight for their life against warped otherworldly horrors.

->''"You can feel it every you go. The walls getting closer, the sky dropping further down every day. With labored breath your world is shrinking; like a snake constricting its prey, or several layers of cellophane wrapped on someone's mouth. You can't scream, and you can't breathe."''

* KnifeNut: The main character can grab an antique rusty kitchen knife to defend themselves with. After beating the game, they can gain two New Game+ skins, one being the Combat Knife and the other being Spooky's Knife. The former is slower but does more damage compared to the base knife while the latter is quite fast but doesn't do as much damage.

* AdultFear: Finding yourself alone trying to find someone dear to you who got lost, while you are suffering a psychothic breakdown with hallucinations caused by an overwhelming fear.

* NewGamePlus: Allows you to start a new game with all 4 weapons unlocked from the beginning. Your ammo doesn't carry over, but you do start with a couple clips worth for your two guns. Enemies do more damage and new enemies are placed in many areas which were previously empty, to spice up the gameplay now that you know what to expect. Certain creatures which were merely ambient in a normal playthrough will also actually attack you.

* {{Hellhound}}: Monstrous dogs are a recurring theme in the game; troubling, considering tracking down YOUR lost dog is the game's premise. One of the enemies also has the appearance of a dog. [[spoiler:Specifically, yours.]]

* CursedItem: Lost Tape #3 is said to cause serious harm to viewers, and turns others slavishly loyal to the unseen Bayagototh, an EldritchAbomination mentioned across Kira's games. It’s implied to only work on the Neurotypical, as the protagonist and the note writing professor the professor (who is heavily implied to have post traumatic stress disorder from performing tests on animals) were unaffected while Dr. Piccinini started to build Sotiris after watching it.

* CentralTheme: Claustrophobia. The vast majority of the game takes place in crushingly small spaces and the protagonists journey takes them ''deep'' underground. In addition, most of the major areas deal with some kind of crushing ''social'' terror as well- the subway talks about body image issues that are causing the afflicted person a great amount of anxiety, while the laboratory is themed around DemonicPossession.

* ImplacableMan: The Ghost Girl and later the Mimic can be temporarily defeated, but will just respawn offscreen and come after you again. Sotiris is an InvincibleBoogeyman that can't be harmed, and similarly the Siren is a PuzzleBoss that can only be dealt with using certain very specific actions.

* AbnormalAmmo: The shotgun found in the Metro System fires rock-salt shells. This makes sense since it's a police shotgun, and despite sounding absurd, [[ShownTheirWork rock salt shells are real]] and are traditionally used for wildlife control.

* AnimalTesting: The tests in Nezumi Labs. Dr. Bowers, the author of the notes, argued to his colleagues that what they were doing had absolutely no practical applications in medicine or the military and seemed to be sadism for its own sake. He was ignored but he and the other objectors were unable to leave due to how classified it was. Eventually their testing resulted in scientific impossibilities, but these were also useless to any sane person. [[spoiler: Dr. Piccini, one of the objectors, eventually went mad and created something that could save the rats (and himself) from the science team, the result being Sotiris]]

** [[spoiler: The first fight against Shoggoth the Eel King is both unavoidable and unwinnable. You get a fake game over and the game pretends your save was corrupted, before you’re dropped into a save room with your progress preserved]]
** Used again during the sequence where you [[spoiler: Accidentally kill yourself with bleach and get a game over. You even get to see your own melted corpse on your way through the level again.]]

* AnAxeToGrind: Two of the three sledgehammer skins unlocked upon New Game+. One being a fireaxe and the other being the axe from ''Videogame/SpookysJumpscareMansion''.

* ArcVillain: Each of the major sections uses a single overarching figure to menace the player. The subway uses the [[spoiler: Suicidal Ghost]] to haunt the player in the darkness, and [[spoiler: helping her get over her body-image and abortion guilt issues is the key to escaping.]] The mines has [[spoiler: the dog mimic pursue you viciously, trying to fake you out multiple times.]] The labs has [[spoiler: Sotiris, with his LeaningOnTheFourthWall influence causing him to really mess with the player.]] The drains have the [[spoiler: giant legless Siren.]]

* BeneathTheEarth: The whole game is subterranean other than the brief intro. All areas are archetypal closed in tunnels of various kinds (Sewers, subways, secret bunkers, etc).

* BossOnlyLevel: [[spoiler: The mine is pretty much just a cat and mouse game with you as the mouse and the mimic as the cat.]]

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: In the non canon Midnight Mode, the demon swordsperson (possibly a woman, if the portrait is a portrait of them) can kill [[spoiler: the two invincible EldritchAbomination antagonists from the main story, Shoggoth and Bayagototh. Though it's ultimately {{Subverted}} in the case of Bayagototh, in which it's made explicitly clear through it's boss title (''Mirage'' of the Starving God), that the protagainst has only managed to defeat an illusion of the Elder God.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:The woman whose notes you can find throughout the first subway area is revealed to have killed herself by walking down the tracks in front of an oncoming subway train due to her body dysmorphia.]]

** Also by playing with the settings, you can unlock a mode in which you simply drive home in the night, with some [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic awesome music playing along the way]]. Just don't get out of your car.

* EldritchAbomination: [[spoiler:Sotiris is quickly revealed to be far more than just another monster. His chapter has the most LeaningOnTheFourthWall and TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou moments and most of them are his fault. It puts him well above most of the other abominations in terms of power.]]
** [[spoiler: Bayagototh, the Eldritch Forest God featured in many of Kiras works, appears here as well. Lost Tape #3 is an artifact of his, and Sotiris is implied to be another of his children like Specimen 8 from Spookys. He’s associated with woodlands and the animals within, and many of his children seem to be a form of divine vengeance against humanity whom he despises.]]

* EldritchLocation: The Grand Bulim Avenue Station, overlapping with SinisterSubway. The entire station is filled with an odd, red haze, one room's floor ''bulges'' upward like a massive tumour, and the layout is completely nonsensical for a subway station.

* FissionMailed: [[spoiler: The first fight against Shoggoth the Eel King is both unavoidable and unwinnable. You get a fake game over and the game pretends your save was corrupted, before you’re dropped into a save room with your progress preserved]]
** Used again during the sequence where you [[spoiler: Accidentally kill yourself with bleach and get a gameover. You even get to see your own melted corpse on your way through the level again.]]
* FoundFootage: The premise of all of the Lost Tapes but especially The Cabin, The Pound, and The Wolf. The Clinic sits on the borderline since it’s so outlandish for a location not in the nightmare tunnels that it’s hard to tell if the footage is real.

* HopeSpot: Near the end of the opening area, you'll find your dog in the tunnel ahead of you, teasing an early reunion, but as soon as you get close, ''something'' drags it off into the darkness. You didn't really think it would be over so quickly, did you?

* MeaningfulName: Grand Bulim Avenue station is haunted by the ghost of someone with both an eating disorder and self image issues. Aka, they had ''bulim''ia

* NonstandardGameOver: You can shoot your dog a bit after getting the gun. Doing so goes [[PlayerPunch as well as]] [[YouBastard you expect]].

* RuleOfSymbolism: Tons. In vivo exposure therapy, from which the game takes its name, is also called “flooding”. A flood is what starts the events of the game. The term “in vivo” also can refer to live animal testing in lab reports.

* ScrewThisImOutOfHere: The station master had the right idea and quit when the subway station revealed its sinister nature to him. Oddly his last notes are from a little over 10 years before the time the game takes place, but it appears the station kept running until [[spoiler: it was the site of a second suicide a couple years before the game starts]] which begs the unsettling question of who was running it in the meantime.

* ShoutOut: Many subtle ones to ''Franchise/SilentHill'', both in aesthetic and soundtrack. Just compare the opening them [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F_QKr8T_Ig "Broken"]] to the main theme of [[https://youtu.be/QEUS4uh4c4Y the first Silent Hill]] or the sequel's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LB7LZZGpkw "Theme of Laura"]].

** An ad featuring Spooky from ''Videogame/SpookysJumpscareMansion'' is in the subway. Both games were made by the same people.
** Alongside that, one of the New Game + skins for the axe and knife, is none other than the axe and Spooky's giant knife from the same game respectively. (Although the last one is rather scaled down.)

** The shotgun's New Game+ skin is a double-barreled shotgun which in an update note states that it was based on the famouse Boomstick from the ''Franchise/EvilDead'' Series.
** One of the names in the graffiti in the opening sewer section is ‘Julianne Stingray,’ the full name of the protagonist of VisualNovel/VA11HALLA

* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Once you have the gun, you can shoot both stray cats, and your own dog...
* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: [[NonstandardGameOver ...but you REALLY don't want to.]]

* StylisticSuck: The game uses a deliberately low-poly, low detailed art style that brings to mind PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64 games. This is meant to make the world feel even more alien and foreign, and it succeeds in spades.

* ShoutOut: Many subtle ones to ''Videogame/SilentHill'', both in aesthetic and soundtrack. Just compare the opening them [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F_QKr8T_Ig "Broken"]] to the main theme of [[https://youtu.be/QEUS4uh4c4Y the first Silent Hill]] or the sequel's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LB7LZZGpkw "Theme of Laura"]].

** In an early part of the sewers, you can spot a drawing of White Face from ImScared.

** [[spoiler: A second woman, the author of the Grand Bulim notes, would later take her own life years later in the same stretch of subway over her guilt about terminating her pregnancy due to her self image issues]]
* EldritchAbomination: [[spoiler:Sotiris is quickly revealed to be far more than just another monster. His chapter has the most LeaningOnTheFourthWall and TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou moments and most of them are his fault. It puts him well above most of the other abominations in terms of power]]

* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: Sotiris [[spoiler: talks directly to you in a fake out credits sequence. At first it’s regular credits, then it starts crediting people for blood and Sotiris gets a thank you for being the savior of rats... then it becomes messages to you, as in the person playing]]

* NothingIsScarier: There are many parts on the game that are eerily devoid of characters.

** the talking brains speak like the fetus from P.T. And even give you a similar HannibalLecture on your personal failings.
** the brown bag in the backseat of your car in Dark Mode looks a lot like the talking bag, also like P.T.

* EyeScream: The homeless man in the sewer area gouged out his own eyes to appease a “red thing” that was watching him sleep. His model is, obviously, missing them.

* HellIsThatNoise: The game is full of unpleasant noises, and they're often heard before you see what's making them, like the extremely loud and jarring train horn noises that the Ghost Trains make as they screech toward you.

** In the nightmare ending [[spoiler: you summon the EldritchAbomination Bayagototh in the tunnels. When you arrive at the surface the entire world now looks the way the tunnels did. You look up in time to see the sky become a solid living membrane and begin to smother the entire world. A claustrophobics literal nightmare come true]]

** The enemy in the mine is based on [[spoiler: paranoias about friends and loved ones]]

* TokenGoodTeammate: [[spoiler: The ghost girl is the only one of the major ghosts who isn’t evil]]

* WhereItAllBegan: [[spoiler: The last level is the same tunnel you entered from, only even more warped than when you entered. You even escape through the same tunnel you came in through]]

* AnAxeToGrind: Two of the three sledgehammer skins unlocked upon New Game+.

* ReliablyUnreliableGuns: The damaged Ruger handgun you can acquire early on in the Sewers will jam on occasion when you fire it.

* ReliablyUnreliableGuns: The damaged handgun you can acquire early on in the Sewers will jam on occasion when you fire it.