Cartesio is a murdergame set in an industrial countryside town, where the characters spend a month residing in the motel and exploring the many locations in the town. Every week there’s both a task from the Sergeant that will involve lawbreaking and generally making the townspeople’s lives a living hell, and a murder case that will make all the players face against a culprit in a trial.
The goal of the game is not only to ensure your characters’ survival, it’s also to solve what exactly is going on in the town of Cartesio.
After eight weeks, those who have gained the Sergeant’s approval will be allowed to leave, and there are only two ways to gain it: commit a murder and successfully let a scapegoat be executed in your place, or do what the Sergeant wants you to do and help destroy this town’s peaceful days. The choice is yours!
The Mock Round began on May 6th, 2018 and ended on May 13th. Round 1 began on September 24th, 2018 and ended on November 24th.
It can be read on Dreamwidth here.
Cartesio provides examples of:
- Accidental Murder: What the sixth case turns out to be. Kinzie and Bolin were trying to rescue the hostages, but the device they were using misfired and killed Kinzie.
- Actor Allusion:
- Wayne mentions Franciscus looking similar to a younger version of Philip U. Butler. Both of them are, appearance-wise, Expies of Battler Ushiromiya.
- Also, during his confession in the fourth trial, Franciscus' icon changes to Black Battler and his truthful statements are colored in red.
- Affectionate Nickname: Millium is fond of giving these out. Refers to her robot Airgetlam exclusively as "Lammy," Osomatsu as just "Oso," and refers to Bakugou as "Bakky."
- Back for the Dead: For the sixth motive, the Sergeant brings Mako back to life in order to push Bolin into acting. It works, but given that Bolin was caught and executed, it’s doubtful that the Sergeant would have kept him around.
- The Beastmaster: Ryouka can communicate with, control, and even see through the eyes of birds, which has actually come in handy during two trials and one mission.
- Becoming the Mask: Olympia's entire early persona is an act, but after being suspected in an early case, she realizes she actually does care about Millium's friendship. It's why she kills her.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Millium is a cheerful and energetic 13 year old girl who has no issue volunteering to murder Clarisse as revenge for her murder of Bakugou.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Both Natalie and Osomatsu's birthdays pass while in Cartesio. Oso's even falls on the day right before the final investigation and trial.
- Bittersweet Ending: The characters escape the simulated town, both living and dead, but they're all just clones of their original selves, and most of them no longer have their friends and family from home. However, most of them are determined to make a new life in this new world.
- Break the Cutie: The game seems to be specifically targeting Sakura at times, particularly in the second half. In Case Four, her fellow Mock Round member Millium is killed by her close friend, Olympia. During Olympia’s Villainous Breakdown, she learns that Franciscus went Knight Templar Big Brother and murdered Azura to use the motive to escape with her, something that infuriates her since she never asked for it. Then, she can only watch in despair as Parental Substitute Oda tells her goodbye before going to kill Olympia for killing Millium. Then, in Case Five, the two victims are her other Mock Round survivor, Wayne, and her second Parental Substitute, Dazai. By the end of Case Six, where she learns that her good friend Bolin was the culprit due to an Accidental Murder, she’s so broken that Natalie needs to vote for her.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Jughead recognizes several of the other characters as fictional.
- Blood Knight: The majority of the group is often annoyed, unsettled, or anything in-between by how quick Clarisse is to jump to violent solutions to even the smallest of problems. It’s also why most of them aren’t particularly shocked when she’s convicted as Bakugou’s killer.
- Butt-Monkey: Keith, the only one among the "tourists" to wind up imprisoned by the townsfolk, and a frequent victim of teasing thanks to his hot-blooded personality and inability to recognize when perverted jokes are being made.
- The Casanova: Franciscus gets rather flirtatious with various characters, including the Sergeant, in the first week. It becomes less common after the murders begin, though.
- Cassandra Truth: Kino and Osomatsu attempt to tell journalist Robert Miller the truth about the circumstances of their stay during the Week 4 mission. He publishes their side of the story, but it's clear he doesn't really believe them.
- The Cavalry: During endgame, part of the town distracts the Sergeant while another group, including the brainwashed mock round characters, tries to drive the visitors out of town. It fails, but they manage to keep up the distraction so the visitors can investigate the Lodge.
- The Comically Serious: Jughead notes that Olympia's lack of any natural reaction to humor makes her the perfect Straight Man.
- Culture Clash: Plenty of it, thanks to the characters coming from various different worlds with different types of basic setting assumptions.
- Disappointed by the Motive: In the third trial, it comes out that both culprits misunderstood the "immortality" motive. Rose expected cryogenic freezing, and Frasier thought it meant metaphorical immortality in the form of enduring fame. Some of the other characters are so annoyed that they volunteer for the execution immediately so they can be done with it and never have to acknowledge the stupidity again.
- Dishing Out Dirt: Bolin's power as an Earthbender. It proves surprisingly useful. It's also how he executes Dabi and accidentally kills Kinzie.
- Easily Detachable Robot Parts: Olympia casually takes off her arm during week 4.
- Eating Machine: Olympia has some ability to convert food into energy, but no sense of taste.
- Exact Words: The Sergeant is fond of this, such as when he tells the remaining mock-rounders that the other previous participants have gone home. The reality is that they're still in Cartesio - they've just had their memories altered to believe Cartesio is home.
- Extreme Omnivore: Being a Dragon Slayer, Sting can eat anything associated with his element - anything colored white. During Week 2, Dabi catches him snacking on a plastic spoon when he's depressed about the motive.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Moloch is one of the most capable captives in the field of engineering. He even starts working on a radio, which sadly ends up unfinished when he is murdered.
- Gambit Pileup: Week Five. Just...Week Five. To summarize: After receiving the motive, both Franciscus and Olympia start making plans for murder, Franciscus to bring Sakura with him and Olympia to save Seyfried. Franciscus comes across Azura in the park and manages to fight and kill her and dispose of the evidence before returning to the hotel, while Olympia lures Millium to the roof with a forged note and ends up killing Cian as well when she intervenes. Later, after both culprits have been caught, Keith and Natalie convince Dazai to draw out Olympia's execution so that they can try and break into the Lodge. Meanwhile, Oda decides to take matters into his own hands and kills Olympia himself, and is locked up as her replacement for Dazai's execution.
- Green Thumb: Franciscus can make flowers sprout and swiftly grow as long as there's earth available.
- Hated by All: As time goes on and the tourists end up damaging more and more of the town both by doing tasks and committing murders, the townspeople's opinion of them starts going down.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Keith has shades of this in the sixth trial when he suggests that everyone vote for him instead of Bolin, claiming that his Earthbending would make him more useful in a final confrontation with the Sergeant, and is baffled by Osomatsu’s claim that he is their leader.
- Hotel Hellion: Arguably every last one of the "tourists," but especially Nine and Millium when they flood the hotel with soap bubbles.
- I Meant to Do That: How Franciscus reacts after getting himself covered in butter when messing up a puzzle in the Week 2 mission, claiming he was purposefully testing what would happen with a wrong answer.
- Irony: Damon, one of the game’s participants that not only has prior blood on his hands, but is also rather morally bankrupt due to willingly lying to and blackmailing a coworker into taking the fall for him, somehow managed to be one of the only people to never make the suspect list (the only one if you consider Sakura’s first game not having a list as her being suspected).
- It's Personal: How Millium feels about Bakugou's trial. She's completely distrusting of all the culprits, even the ones she was previously on good terms with.
- I Work Alone: Kino operates this way, stating that they can't be responsible for anyone else's lives.
- Lack of Empathy: Millium mentions that she only recently learned what it was like to feel sad enough to cry, that she "doesn't know" how to truly apologize to Natalie, and has trouble grasping the concept that the deaths of people she doesn't know well should still be treated with gravity.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The player characters from the mock week return as semi-amnesiac NPCs that believe they live and work in the town.
- Moment Killer: During endgame, Keith and Natalie's kiss gets interrupted by multiple characters, starting with Kino doing a golf clap.
- More Expendable Than You: Keith tries to argue this as why everyone should vote for him instead of Bolin in the sixth trial. Considering the suspect list also includes Natalie and Osomatsu, no one buys it for a second.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: For some reason, the Sergeant seems to feel nothing but vehement hatred towards Clarisse, even while he praises the rest of the group’s progress.
- The Not-Love Interest: Franciscus and Osomatsu get pretty close over the course of the game, and talk to each other after every trial, even the one where Franciscus is a culprit. Osomatsu even takes care of Franciscus' Pokemon after the former is executed. However, Franciscus has a boyfriend back home, and in fact Osomatsu is one of the characters he never flirts with. However, the endgame reveal that they're clones of their originals means that Franciscus is technically unattached, and their final conversation on a roof has strong romantic undertones.
- Olympus Mons: One of Franciscus' Pokemon is the child of the legendary Shaymin, with a lot of their abilities.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted.
- There aren’t any other Natalies in Cartesio, but an apparent coworker of the Sergeant’s shares a first name with her deceased brother.
- Both Kino and Oda had someone close to them named Sakura who is now dead, and Kino's birth name turns out to also be Sakura.
- Phone Call from the Dead: They contact the living through their choice of jukebox songs, the names used in video game high scores, zooming in on words using a microfiche reader, and the televisions and record players in the record store. They can also only receive communication back through the same medium.
- The Pollyanna: Sakura, who tries to stay positive throughout the entire ordeal.
- Powers as Programs: After gaining admin rights, the survivors are able to pick and choose powers from all the captives to transfer to themselves.
- Prefers Going Barefoot: Azura; this does help draw suspension away from her during the first trial, since the others realize her bare feet would have been injured if she walked through the scene of the crime, the junkyard. In the fourth case, this proves fatal to her when she slips on one of Franciscus' Pay Day coins.
- Public Execution: Done every Monday for the murder culprits, with a volunteer from the cast being chosen to perform it, although characters can choose to skip watching it.
- Revenge Before Reason: Despite knowing it won’t end well for him, Oda’s Tranquil Fury over Millium, who was like a daughter to him, being killed by one of her closest friends, Olympia, is too great for him to resist killing her, and he is forced to take her place in the execution.
- Robotic Reveal: Olympia is exposed as a robot during the second trial.
- Sadistic Choice: In Week 5, when Olympia's programming wouldn't even let her consider not acting on the motive, killing Millium was the only way she could avoid having to face her suspicion and distrust in a trial again.
- Shock and Awe: Olympia can generate electricity over a short range, which can be extended with the help of "someone."
- Shot at Dawn: How murder culprits are typically taken out, with the Sarge providing the gun.
- SkeleBot 9000: One of the first things pointed out after the reveal is Olympia's lack of anything covering her spine between her chest and her pelvis.
- Skewed Priorities: Kinzie's reaction after Franciscus confesses.Kinzie: God, I finally get laid in this hellhole and it's someone working off murder stress!
- Stepford Smiler: Millium's cheerful and zany enough that it's easy to forget she was born and raised a spy. This can lead to some pretty severe Mood Whiplash, such as when she reveals during Bakugou's trial that she fully intended to volunteer as executioner regardless of who the culprit was, when more than half of them were people she considered friends.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Franciscus is very annoyed with Frasier for giving rich people a bad name by choosing to kill Jughead for the purpose of his own fame.
- Stupid Evil: Clarisse sitting on top of a pile of cars in the middle of a thunderstorm while plotting her murder.
- Stupid Sacrifice: How Nine's murder of Moloch is viewed, since Moloch was building a radio to hopefully contact help and get everyone out of town..
- Tomato Inthe Mirror: All the visitors, as well as their hostages for the Week 7 motive, are simply AI copies of the originals. The survivor pool takes this surprisingly positively.
- Torches and Pitchforks: Wielded by the townsfolk during the sixth week's event, when looking for the kidnapped Davis.
- The Unhug: Franciscus gives Sakura an awkward hug when he finds her crying after discovering her friends from the mock trial round are still trapped in town.
- Urban Legend Love Life: An innocent comment about Keith and Cian spending the night together leads to constant discussions from the dead side about their multiple partners.
- Wham Episode: Case 4. Three well-liked victims, two culprits who killed because of their friendships with the youngest characters (in very different ways), and one vigilante killing a culprit only to be executed in her place.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Millium and Sakura are afraid of ghosts.
- Winged Humanoid: Hawks has two large feathered wings. It’s later revealed in the fifth trial that he can fire feathers from them like projectiles and even use them like blades.
