Line #25 NightmareFuel/VoidStranger


1	[[quoteright:1000:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/164ebe3c0a1f79ccdb1b4623af48ab57_43.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:1000:It's not often Lord Bee gets this excited.]]
3
4	While not a straight horror game, ''System Erasure'' provides fourth-wall-breaking jump scare in spades, even more so than their previous work ''VideoGame/ZeroRanger''.
5	----
6	* Dying the first time will leave you in nothingness until a cute bat-like creature offers you an incredibly suspicious "help", advising you to eat something and be part of the land itself. The real scare is when the game suddenly ''snaps'' you back to the desktop if you refuse, with the bat being disappointed that you gave up so easily as Gray's soul faded away into the sea of consciousness, giving you a taste of what's to come.
7	** Accepting the fruit doesn't take away the creepiness of the eventual fate you could have. Should you repeatedly fall in the same floor more than five times, Gray or Lillie will fall down once more and the screen will dim, eventually leaving you in an [[NothingIsScarier empty screen of darkness]]. Tapping the action button over and over will renew their resolve and continue the game as normal. However, if you stop trying to get up after attempting, they will fall back to their knees and eventually collapse, this time for good. After a bit, they will turn into one of the many void eggs you have seen in the Void, [[DespairEventHorizon having fully succumbed to despair]] and [[AndIMustScream staying in this form until you close the game yourself]]. The game will even begin to play the opening notes of 'Voided', to [[TearJerker hammer in that Gray/Lillie is well and truly dead]]. The game will hang on this screen until you hold Esc and [[NonStandardGameOver counts as an actual ending]] [[ItsAWonderfulFailure as the meter takes as long as a normal ending would.]] Rebooting the game will start back at the language select with the void egg still front and center to remind you that they indeed have perished and you must begin a new run from the start.
8	* In some floors, there's no wall between the navigable space and the HUD itself, and you can actually walk onto the HUD. And as it turns out, the tiles here ''can'' be picked out with the Void Rod. The effects can range from harmless to literally BreakingTheFourthWall:
9	** If you pick out a blank tile, nothing bad happens, and you can use it as you would a regular floor tile.
10	** If you pick out the Locust Idol counter, it will actually set your number of Locust Idols back to 0 and the game will [[OminousVisualGlitch start to display error messages and the graphics start to distort]]. This is ''especially'' bad if you're trying to complete the dungeon while alive. Even worse, if you pick out the Locust Idol counter while the Infinite CheatCode is active, the game will cut to a large "-∞" on the screen, [[NonStandardGameOver soft-locking at that point]].
11	** If you pick out your HP counter or one of the items in your inventory, the game ''crashes to desktop''.
12	** If you pick out the floor number, you are presented with an empty void, and an error message informing you that you are now on floor "NULL". You can walk around from screen to screen, where you will usually find ''nothing else'', while ominous ambient noise plays. You can still pause the game, but the only meaningful actions you can take are changing your settings, spending crystals to unlock memories, and exiting the game to reset the floor. \
13	\
14	Sometimes if you travel far enough, you'll get chased by a strange bipedal monster that will grab you and crash the game, or you'll encounter another EasterEgg that leads to a [[GainaxEnding rather strange ending seemingly unrelated to the rest of the game]]: A scientist named Dr. Lily is apprehended by a police-like force, but before the situation can escalate, one of the onion people from ''VideoGame/ZeroRanger'' breaks into the scene and the credits roll, all to an absolutely unsettling ambient tone in the background. \
15	\
16	On the other hand, if you pick out the floor number while on a rest floor, you can safely swap it with the Locust Idol counter to warp to another floor...''as long as'' you don't warp beyond B255.
17	* If you hold down the Escape key, or the Back button on an [=XInput=] controller, you can force-quit the game. However, this causes the HUD to change to the words "End it all", a common euphemism for ''suicide''. In fact, [[DespairEventHorizon being broken into a desire to indeed "end it all"]] is a recurring theme of the game.
18	* As Gray, if you attempt to continue to B225 and beyond in the Void state, you get a bad ending where a vocal track plays and...the dungeon starts acting ''very'' [[EldritchLocation weird]]. You inexplicably get teleported to lower floors before you can complete the previous one, with the game taking you as deep as B450, and then the floor counter simply starts reading B??? instead. You eventually start getting [[UnwinnableByDesign unsolvable]] puzzles (e.g. no stairs), and then you start getting floors that are an incoherent mess of tile types. The music starts getting ''very'' discordant as the floors turn into complete tile vomit while Gray is forcibly teleported around. Eventually she falls asleep, unable to dream, before waking up at a tree on an unknown floor. And then you have to use the Dark Idol warp to start over, as it dawns on you that if you want any sort of advancement, [[NintendoHard you have to complete the dungeon without getting killed and resorting to Void state]].
19	* [[CuteAndPsycho Bee]] starts out as a cheery goof of a Void Lord, but she's not named after the Lord of the Flies for nothing. When Gray attempts to fight her to save Lily from Johann, she displays a [[NightmareFace demented grin]] before [[OneWingedAngel transforming into a]] monstrous fly demon that nearly kills Gray. Then she becomes the BigBad of Lilith's route, tormenting the white-haired girl to the point of despair so she turns into her favorite void eggs that she likes to eat, if not for the head demon thwarting her plan.
20	** A favorite tactic of Bee's is when she's ready to cause a scare, she loves leaning on the text box and getting right up in the [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou camera to stare directly at the player]], as seen in the page image. In Lilith mode, [[JumpScare Bee will do this without warning]] if you try to sleep again after she wakes you up, in a deliberate attempt to frighten the young woman and the player at the same time!
21	* If you reach floor B255 after voiding or playing as Cif, you can move the stairs away from the black idol to proceed even deeper. Doing so takes you into an empty white void with no music and platforms that rise up as you approach them, making you have to carefully explore ahead to navigate. Deep enough, if you stay around a floor long enough, you'll begin to hear cracking and pixels getting mangled as something approaches. You'll begin to see that this is actually Gor's body that was separated from her head. Touch the body and the game will instantly crash. Pausing will not protect you either. The moment you do, Gor's body will [[JumpScare invade the pause screen]], calling you bothersome and attack you, crashing the game. Uniquely, this setpiece is not turn-based like most of the game, it is ''time''-based, meaning if you dilly-dally with your inputs, this tentacled abomination ''will'' catch up to you and kill you.
22	* Inputting the Brand you made at the start of the game in a Brand Room will take you to a strange area that has what appears to be a gigantic opened womb and uterus. Turning the Void Memory off will make the character comment on it, but bumping it will cause the room to shimmer with electronic lines. Bumping it a total of 24 times and the game will instantly crash with [[JumpScare the shadow of Add glaring right at you for a split second before the window closes.]]
23	** The visuals of the room after completing the puzzles at the end of Lilith Mode, with Freya saying that Gray's medical scan mentions her uterus appears to be magically removed, given the implication that the room's imagery are real, ''it belongs to Gray.''
24	* [[DrivenByEnvy Lev]]. One of the Void Lords you initially have absolutely no contact with as at one point they perished. There's a good reason for this. They are a [[FullFrontalAssault completely naked]] HumanoidAbomination that has NoMouth and is exceedingly cruel and violent, perfectly willing to strike down those who directly help her cause to rip control of DIS from Add. Even as a little winged sprite, Lev comes off as unsettlingly cheerful when communicating with the player when they game over, urging them to eat a fruit they themself poisoned in an attempt to drive Gray mad by stripping her of her body's strength and will. There is not an ounce of kindness in Lev's soul.
25	** Their intro cutscene deserves special mention. As their shell is cast off and Lev's true body breaks free, the little sprite becomes suddenly slashed in half with [[NauseaFuel horrible flesh-tearing]] [[HellIsThatNoise sounds]] as Lev is reborn from its body, its remains laying on the ground with entrails spilled out. Lev slowly lands on the ground, standing upright and slices their hair shorter with a swipe of a hand and a close-up of their eye opening to reveal black sclera and unusual pupils as Lev glares down at Gray/Lillie and the player with cold, murderous intent. They even get their own title card to mark how big of a deal their revival is and how dangerous they are as a 'Void Stranger' like Gray, Lillie and Cif.
26	----
27	[[center:'''[[Main/HomePage End it all]]''']]

Context NightmareFuel / VoidStranger