Andy's Apple Farm is a 2021 Freeware game by M36games.
The premise is simple. You, as Andy the Apple, must explore the farm and play mini-games with each of Andy's friends. Beat the games, and you earn bonus stickers that unlock a special prize... the key to your house.
The game is a lot more creepy than the plot would imply. Andy and his friends all have moments of deranged and unnatural behavior, and the game comes complete with some Ominous Visual Glitches, a retraux visual style and sound design, and some really odd looking characters. Gradually, a plot begins to surface involving the developer, Thomas Eastwood, and his troubled family life, as well as a frightening entity that follows him around...
The game is free to play here
, and sees frequent updates.
Tropes found in this game:
- And I Must Scream: It's heavily implied that the game's developer, Thomas Eastwood, was trapped within the game's code by the same entity that has been haunting his family since 1981. It's also implied that he might be possessing Andy.
- Animate Inanimate Object: One of Andy's friends includes Claus, a living clock. Andy himself, being a talking apple, counts as this as well.
- Anthropomorphic Food: Andy is a talking apple. That doesn't prevent his friends from eating other apples, though. Similarly, Felix is a fish, and his minigame is a Fishing Minigame.
- Big Bad: The Entity, aka Peter the Pumpkin, has dedicated himself to tormenting Andy and his family, in addition to trapping the Eastwood family inside the game and turning them into Andy and the other characters.
- Boss Battle: There is only one so far, and it's only found in the Spin-Off game. The Big Bad himself doesn't really count as this.
- But Thou Must!:
- Claus will shoo Andy away to find Melody at the start of the game, stating that he's too busy to play at the moment.
- Once you have all the bonus stickers, Andy's friends will tell him that his keys are in the barn. When you can control Andy again, his friends have formed a semi-circle around him and the barn's entrance, giving you no choice but to enter it.
- When Peter asks Andy is he wants to play tag, Andy refuses, but Peter acts as if he didn't say anything and starts the game anyway.
- Brutal Honesty: Felix arrives at Andy's Christmas party with nothing to contribute and immediately informs Andy: "I'm just here, man.".
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: Once Andy's friends lock him in the barn, his glowing eyes become the only thing visible. The ensuing minigame involves navigating the barn while avoiding other disembodied glowing eyes.
- Carnivore Confusion:
- At the beginning of the game, Claus offers Andy (an anthropomorphic apple man) an apple. Andy is still in the static smiling position, but stays silent.
- Felix has a fish for a head and his minigame involves fishing.
- Christmas Episode: The Steam version has a Christmas episode.
- Dead All Along: Played with. At the start of the game you hear a recorded message by the game's developer, Thomas Eastwood and throughout the game you get cutscenes revealing more and more about his backstory. After winning the barn minigame his picture pops up, underlined by what looks to be both a date of birth and a date of death. That being said, the game characters are possibly possessed by the human characters we see die, and if that's the case, then you technically were playing as Thomas himself all along.
- Death of a Child: One of the backstory scenes features a young boy named Louis, falling from a boat and drowning.
- Disguised Horror Story: A game about a talking apple playing games with his friends sounds like it could be an ordinary kid's game... if it weren't for just how damn creepy everything is. Aside from the constant audio and visual skips, one of the first signs that something isn't quite right comes when his friends casually tell Andy that they're eating apples. Andy just keeps smiling.
- From the Christmas Special:
Peter Pumpkin: Let's play a game. It's called hide the body. - Drowning My Sorrows: After winning Margret's sorting game, a cutscene plays out of Thomas arguing with Kamryn about Louis's death. Kamryn becomes disgusted with Thomas' blaming Isabella for not saving their son and tells him to leave and go to a bar, implying that's what he usually does anyway these days.
- Extreme Doormat: Andy. He can't muster up the courage to say anything when Claus insensitively offers him an apple to eat, and was going to agree with playing his friends' games even before it was revealed they had taken the key to his house and wouldn't give it back to him until he beat all the games. Andy is disturbed that they stole his key, but other then that doesn't fuss and decides to try and win it back from them. At the end he grows a bit of a spine and tells Peter he's not interested in playing a maze game with him, only for Peter to act like he said yes, forcing Andy to put up no more resistance.
- Failure-to-Save Murder: Thomas blames his daughter for not saving her brother when both of them fell off a boat.
- Fishing Minigame: A rather repetitive one, at that. The game involves you repeatedly fishing out the same fish, as a voice-clip of Felix continues to loop each time you catch it. Then a corpse appears in the water with nothing else to catch; once you do, that same audio begins to distort as the characters gain black eyes.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The last minigame is against Peter the Pumpkin, a character never mentioned or even hinted at before. He just shows up in Andy's barn and demands Andy to play tag with him. Even Andy is confused and outright asks Peter who he even is and for how long he's been living in the barn. Justified, as Peter is implied to be the Big Bad itself, and thus he's likely not an intended character for the game in the first place.
- Hidden Object Game: Claus's game is a round of "I Spy". It's not too hard, as his clues are pretty simple, but it starts to get creepy by the fourth round.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Is there actually something tormenting Thomas Eastwood? Or is it just his way of coping with the fact that he murdered Arthur in a fit of rage? The game presents us with a story where Arthur himself first kills Arthur because he thinks Arthur is hiding "them" from him, then Isabella for witnessing, then his wife after getting into a fight with her... The videogame is definitely haunted, but how it got that way is up for grabs.
- Jumpscare: Has a few sprinkled throughout the game, such as a black-eyed Margaret suddenly popping up to loud static after you complete her minigame.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After the scene of Thomas killing Arthur, a picture pops up of a blood-soaked Thomas reacting in horror and asking what he just did.
- Never My Fault: After Thomas Who may or may not be possessed kills multiple people Thomas appears to blame Arthur, chasing him down with an axe and screaming "YOU KILLED THEM".
- Depending on what you believe, Thomas may be doing this again by creating Peter Pumpkin to deal with his own crimes.
- Nice Guy: Andy is really quite a sweet little apple in comparison with his friends.
- Noodle Incident: In the Halloween episode, Felix and Melody both see something that immediately scares the living daylights out of them, even Felix. Neither the audience, nor Andy, ever get to see what they saw. It's partially revealed at the end when Felix refers to "bodies in the basement" later, but the rest is completely up to imagination...
- Ominous Visual Glitch: They're everywhere. Most often, they come in the form of sudden skips in the dialogue and video where it just cuts to a black frame for a moment. Other times, the game itself will break down, duplicate characters, or cut too quickly.
- Perpetual Smiler: All the characters are drawn with huge smiles plastered on their faces for the entire game, save visual glitches and jumpscares. This adds to the horror, as the characters are reacting happily even when the situation isn't a happy one. Outright subverted for Andy when he enters the barn in Chapter 1, and 'especially' during the final part of the Christmas Episode.
- Retraux: The style is reminiscent of old games designed for old televisions, including the rounded screen-edges, static-y visuals, and awkward audio clips.
- Running Gag: Someone saying something offensive to Andy while Andy smiles and says nothing.
- Rhythm Game: Melody's game involves playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on a guitar, trying to press the right keys at the right time to not mess up the song.
- Red Herring: Claus's expression is much more sinister then the others, he won't play his game until you talk to Melody, hinting that he's hiding something important... Or not, considering his role is as one of Arthur's victims, the last part of the game is being alone with Peter.
- Smart People Play Chess: Claus gives off the aura of a sharp individual and tries to get Andy to play chess with him. Andy doesn't know how to play, so they settle for I Spy instead.
- Spin-Off: Another game developed by M36games, Rabbit Knight, is a callback to retro combat and platforming games, but is still equally as important to the plotline of the game as Andy's Apple Farm is.
- Stepford Smiler: The characters never stop smiling-the game portrays the agony of the ghosts with glitches or creepy eyes.
- Stylistic Suck: A lot of the game's presentation is poor by design, from the unmoving artwork, the repetitive dialogue, and the outdated visuals.
- Sudden Soundtrack Stop: The music cuts out once Andy's friends tell him he needs to go into the shadowed and creepy barn to retrieve his house keys.
- Video Game Perversity Potential: In Margaret's minigame, you can grab any part of her, including her breasts. She will complain, "Hey, that's not a fruit!", but there are no other consequences. This becomes darkly hilarious once you take into account the fact that Thomas might be possessing Andy, and Kamryn might be possessing Margaret.
- Wham Line: In Claus's game of "I Spy", the last item he asks you to pick up is something dangerous.
- Another pops up in The Monstrous Manor, after Felix mentions the bodies he found in the basement:
Margaret: Felix... We didn't put any bodies in the basement. - With Friends Like These...: Andy's friends are kind of off-putting. For one, they're introduced eating apples, apparently not caring that Andy is an anthropomorphic apple himself, and even offer him one when he asks what they're doing. They also steal the keys to his house and refuse to give them back unless he collects their bonus stickers. Once he does, they lock him inside his dark barn, ignore his pleas to let him out and seemingly just leave altogether. The Halloween Episode, however, shows that even they have their limits when it comes to pranking Andy, opting to leave the haunted house immediately once he faints.
Claus: Gosh, I knew that Andy would be a little startled, but this is worse than I thought.
