Rabi-Ribi is presented as a cutesy Metroidvania platformer with lots of cute Little Bit Beastly people and Bullet Hell, and while that's not wrong, there's some dark elements beneath the game's surface.
Unmarked spoilers below!
- In contrast to most of the other boss tracks in the game, which can range from hyperactive and cheery to something you'd dance to in a nightclub, the midboss theme
is very dark and foreboding, not helped by most of the bosses it's used for being of non-humanoid nature. - Arurarune's reasoning for why she went deep into the Starting Forest is...surprisingly grim. Long story short, she wanted to die.
- In Chapter 5, you go back to the hospital where Erina awoke as a human back at the beginning of the game. You make your way through, past the child's room to a dead-end room with a mirror. You go back into the child's room and oh god the child's room is full of doodles of red-eyed bunnies now◊, along with Miru. Within the same chapter, the boss's already-creepy BGM (possible spoilers in the title) speeds up as you wear her health down, cranking up the madness factor.
- If you have the Before Next Adventure DLC, you can have the option of facing a special version of Miru called "Miru Syndrome". If you thought she was creepy before, you're in for a surprise. To start with, the entire room is pitch black, but with an evil red tint. And just like before, you don't have Ribbon to help you. Other than that, the fight goes like it usually does, albeit harder. At least until you do enough damage to Miru. Once that happens you find yourself suddenly thrown into the hallway before the room, with a large black void attacking you. And the boss music is played in reverse. Eventually, you get back to fighting Miru, until you're thrown back into the hallway again, but this time with an Illusion Alius fighting you. This sequence continues until you do enough damage to her to make her use her super attack. Once she does that, the music suddenly gets extremely slow and creepy and everything turns deep red as Erina is frozen in place while Miru charges up an attack. Luckily for Erina, Ribbon wakes up at that point and blasts Miru with a charged shot, and you'll have her for the rest of the fight.
- The Hall of Memory area in Chapter 6 is an Eldritch Location mishmash of past areas highly reminiscent of the Chaotic Realm from Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, with bloom and echo effects that make each sub-area feel not quite right.
- Approaching Forgotten Cave II causes the music to slow down and distort in a way that really doesn't sound right, followed by the music cutting out entirely and, if you haven't unlocked the area yet, Ribbon telling Erina that it's way too dangerous to continue, leaving you to wonder just WHAT exactly lies ahead that warrants these cues. It's a Brutal Bonus Level in which you fight illusions of past bosses in succession, which, while not why this area may keep you awake at night, is set to dark, distorted photographs of real-world locations as backgrounds. Any time you're not in a boss fight in this area, a spooky ambient track plays.
- The sound test has multiple speed options, each represented by a visual icon that indicates the context in which the track speed is usually used (such as a "no Water Orb" icon for the speed used when underwater without said Orb and a Cocoa Bomb icon used for the "just used a Cocoa Bomb" speed). The second-slowest speed, used for the Instant Death status effect, is already creepy enough, then there's the slowest speed option, used for the green caverns in the Halloween DLC area, which has a mysterious shadow face with green Glowing Eyes of Doom for an icon.
- The upper Ravine area was added to the game before its official addition in a DLC, but was inaccessible without glitches. Getting into this area abruptly changes the music to this tribal-sounding tune, which can catch you off-guard after several dozen attempts of getting into the blocked-off area and getting in when you least expect it. As for the area itself, it's full of spikes, spike balls, wind currents, and a very high-seeming cliff that can induce a sense of acrophobia, even without the camera pointing down to reveal exactly how high you are.
- The escape from the upper Ravine after defeating its end boss in the DLC takes the above area, and forces you to escape from it on a time limit (that becomes very short on higher difficulties) due to the winds in the area going out of control. The escape is made more difficult by the strong winds causing the area to start collapsing, causing fallen rocks to block your path, forcing you to take detours. The effects even extend to the lower ravine. The entire time, tense music plays, growing faster as the timer runs down. While nothing is shown, the game over resulting from running out of time is implied to be because the sheer force of the winds outright crushes Erina.
- The escape from the upper Ravine after defeating its end boss in the DLC takes the above area, and forces you to escape from it on a time limit (that becomes very short on higher difficulties) due to the winds in the area going out of control. The escape is made more difficult by the strong winds causing the area to start collapsing, causing fallen rocks to block your path, forcing you to take detours. The effects even extend to the lower ravine. The entire time, tense music
- On a more realistic level, Erina and Ribbon getting assaulted by nerds in the real world who have No Sense of Personal Space, much like the infamous reputation of convention photographers who insist on stalking and taking invasive shots of cosplayers. After one of these encounters, Ribbon remarks that she really needs to take a bath when they get back to town.
- When Illusion Alius uses a Super Move Portrait Attack, its portrait◊ looks exactly like Erina's but monochrome of course, except it has no eyes.
