At Dead of Night is a filmed horror game featuring Maya, a lost student trapped with her friends inside a haunted hotel with Jimmy Hall, who has locked them in their rooms. Maya must elude his grasp and uncover Jimmy's secrets to free them. The spirit box she collects from the hotel allows her to communicate with ghosts and learn their story.
The game combines live action footage and computer graphics, taking place from a first person perspective in which you can view an entire room through a 360 rotating camera. The player navigates through the hotel using a point-and-click interface, while being stalked by the axe-wielding, live-action Jimmy who dynamically navigates the hotel looking for you.
This game includes examples of:
- Action Survivor: Maya must venture around the hotel to save her friends, surviving all the while despite being an ordinary college student.
- Ambiguously Evil: Dr. Bose is a downplayed version. Forcefully trying to inject medication into Jimmy certainly wasn't the most moral move, even if he was desperate.
- Bald of Evil: Jimmy covers up his bald head with a hat, leaving only the hair on the sides of his head remaining.
- Batter Up!: Jimmy is shown picking one up from behind his counter, and its his primary weapon throughout the game.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: In Maya's final conversation with Rose, she heavily implies that Hugo would have killed her if she hadn't done it to herself.
- Big Bad: Jimmy Hall, or rather, his split personality, Hugo Punch.
- Bittersweet Ending: Maya manages to escape, possibly with her five friends if they eluded Jimmy. However, Jimmy remains along with Hugo, who is likely to continue hurting other people as Jimmy can't stop him. At the very least, since Maya escaped she can tell the police about what Jimmy did and get him arrested.
- The Bully: Jimmy was one when he was younger towards Amy Bell. This includes setting her teddy bear on fire and tricking her into drinking alcohol.
- Cassandra Truth: Jimmy's mother Rose is repeatedly told that Jimmy is a troubling and lying child, but she doesn't believe them. This typically results in their deaths.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: For Dr. Bose, he ties a noose around his neck and fastens it to the elevator, making the elevator hang him as it rises.
- Dead Person Conversation: One of the primary mechanics of the game involves Maya talking to hotel spirits through the spirit box.
- Death of a Child: Being one of the hotel ghosts, the player shouldn't expect Amy Bell to still be alive. Sure enough, Maya can visit Amy's death scene at the bottom of the stairwell.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Jimmy definitely resents the lack of audience for his Hugo Punch show, but even he balks when Hugo Punch himself decides this merits punishing the children for being "bad eggs".
- Driven to Suicide: After Jimmy accuses Dr. Bose of something implied to be horrible, the doctor ends up taking his own life with a noose tied to an elevator.
- Finally confronted with the truth of Jimmy's growing evil side in Hugo Punch, the weight of guilt from allowing Jimmy's father to abuse him for so long without trying to stop him, and her own role in ignoring Jimmy's increasingly violent tendencies until it grew larger than she could bear, Rose is eventually driven to kill herself by setting herself on fire with the turpentine and lighter.
- Electromagnetic Ghosts: The lights will start to flicker to indicate the location of a ghost sighting.
- Foe Romance Subtext: Maya and Jimmy, given that he's always searching for her. It gets worse during the final act, where Jimmy explicitly says that Maya is different from the rest and he wants her to stay here forever.
- Girlish Pigtails: Amy Bell has her own, emphasizing her innocence.
- Harmful to Minors: Amy Bell ends up drinking alcohol, although she didn't realize it at the time. This also leads to her jumping off of the third floor stairwell and dying upon impact landing on the ground floor stairwell.
- Hell Hotel: The entire game takes place in one, involving all of its floors.
- Jekyll & Hyde: Jimmy Hall is the proprietor of the Inn where Maya and her friends are staying and plays a Heroic Comedic Sociopath named Hugo Punch to entertain guests. Hugo Punch, on the other hand, is a cruel and vindictive personality who frequently drives Jimmy to cause harm.
- Jitter Cam: Used throughout the entire game, from Maya's perspective.
- Jump Scare: Used often for most of its scares. Typically it occurs whenever Jimmy appears or when Maya witnesses a scene from a ghost's life.
- Killed Off for Real: During the final sequence of the game, Maya and her friends are seriously being hunted by Jimmy. If either of them are caught, then Jimmy will kill them off once and for all, rather than knocking Maya out or tying up her friends again. This Game Over even comes with its own unique screen, telling the player as much.
- Nerves of Steel: Downplayed. Maya never screams even while scared. Although the camera is constantly shaking slightly (possibly due to her fear) and she looks terrified during the opening, she's still brave enough to explore the hotel and even call out to Jimmy if needed.
- Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Maya must find one for Dr. Bose's story. The man even notes that this should've made him realize Jimmy's true nature.
- No Sneak Attacks: Averted. Jimmy not only hides behind corners and walls, he can end up hitting Maya from behind if she's not careful.
- A situation can occur where Maya will hide in the wardrobe, see Jimmy enter the room, and then apparently leave. If the sound of the door closing doesn't play, he didn't leave; he's hiding in the bathroom!
- Posthumous Character: Plenty, given that the hotel is full of ghosts. Most notably, the player can even view their final moments.
- Randomly Generated Levels: The items and keys are typically randomly spawned in various rooms and Jimmy wanders different floors, with his position being hinted at by the scrying mirror and other cues. At the very least, Maya can avoid spending too much time on one floor so that Jimmy doesn't spawn near them.
- Roaming Enemy: Jimmy is known to roam floors one through three, never venturing to the ground floor, the basement, or the staircase.
- Say My Name: Various characters yell Jimmy's name, often after he has done something horrible to them.
- Scare Chord: Used constantly whenever Jimmy is seen moving briefly out of view. It's some of the only music featured in the main parts of the game.
- Schmuck Bait: Maya herself can call out to Jimmy, luring him into various places. If she gains certain keys, she can even lock him inside certain rooms.
- Stalker without a Crush: The main conflict of the game is Jimmy chasing Maya around the hotel.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Dr. Bose ends up eating a sandwich Jimmy made for him in an apparent act of kindness. It ends up being a sandwich containing glass shards which cuts his throat and mouth and makes him cough up blood.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: As it turns out, Jimmy himself was quite the troublemaker as a child. This includes putting glass in Dr. Bose's sandwich, getting Amy Bell drunk on "medicine", and causing the deaths of numerous people visiting the hotel.
